Plan is to house the accused in county jail’s communications center
By Mara H. Gottfried
The Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. — People arrested for misdemeanors during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul will be processed in a building that houses Ramsey County’s 911 center, Sheriff Bob Fletcher said Monday.
Processing will take two to six hours, and arrestees will be provided bag lunches and access to portable toilets, Fletcher said.
The sheriff’s office has been planning for 18 months, and is paying special attention to some of the problems with detaining protesters that arose during the RNC in New York in 2004, Fletcher said.
“We’re confident we’ve addressed the issues of concern that were there in New York,” Fletcher said. “Likely, we’ll avoid millions of dollars in federal lawsuits.”
Ramsey County sheriff’s office deputies and correctional officers were winding up the last of four training sessions Monday and today for the mobile booking and receiving teams that will be used during next week’s convention. Fletcher said his staff was given copies of a New York Civil Liberties Union report called “Rights and Wrongs at the RNC” and was trained on the issues it highlighted.
Fletcher said “it’s fair to conclude” the number of convention-related arrests will be between the 600 during the 2000 RNC in Philadelphia and the 1,800 arrested during the 2004 RNC in New York.
The sheriff’s office has never done mobile booking operations, Fletcher said. Provisions were made for them when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev visited St. Paul in 1990 and for Y2K computer
turnover in 2000, but they were “never this extensive,” Fletcher said.
Teams will move to wherever St. Paul police request them for arrests, Fletcher said. They’ll fill out paperwork and use cameras and camcorders to record what’s happening.
Photographs will be taken of arrested parties and officers for an “evidence trail” of which officers arrested which person, Fletcher said. Video recordings will be used to “protect the sheriff’s office from unfounded accusations about the behavior of arrestees and officers,” he said.
Arrested protesters will be driven in vans to the Ramsey County Jail sally port, but what happens next will depend on the seriousness of the alleged offense.
People accused of felonies and gross misdemeanors will be booked into the jail, which is what happens during non-RNC times. People accused of misdemeanors -- examples include obstructing traffic and disorderly conduct -- will be brought from the sally port to a building next door for processing.
That building’s second floor houses the Ramsey County Emergency Communications Center, and the first floor, which usually stores St. Paul police vehicles, will be used for processing. The floors are painted, and it’s “extremely clean,” Fletcher said.
There will be chairs, and everyone will be given water, a sandwich and a piece of fruit, Fletcher said. In the courtyard between the jail and the ECC, there will be portable toilets, he said.
Fletcher said those arrested for misdemeanors should be released in two to six hours, after his staff verifies identification, checks whether they have warrants and, if they don’t, issues a citation.
Copyright 2008 The Pioneer Press