The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Police Raid Activists Ahead of GOP Convention

    By Ripper on Sun, 08/31/2008 - 4:20am |
    Police armed with automatic weapons raided at least six buildings in Minneapolis and St. Paul used by activists and seized a bus carrying others in what one attorney for the National Lawyers Guild called "unwarranted" acts of "preventive detention" to deter protests at the Republican National Convention.
    At least five suspected leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee, a self-described anarchist group, were taken to the Hennepin County jail, and another was being sought, said Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher.

    On Saturday afternoon, he displayed a number of the confiscated items: a gun, throwing knives, a bow and arrows, flammable liquids, paint, slingshots, rocks and buckets of urine.

    "We know these things were going to be used as weapons," Fletcher said, a charge protesters and their advocates vigorously disputed.

    Fletcher however, stressed that he and other agencies had informants planted inside this and other groups for "a long period of time."
    Is this a roundup of violent extremists, a breach of civil liberties or a GOP tactic to provoke wider protests and portray Democrats as allies of extremists?