RNC '08 Report Police Chief Harrington previews department's report on Republican National Convention

With no serious injuries and a national event that went off with nary a hitch, St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington said Wednesday his department and officers succeeded before and during the Republican National Convention.

Mostly.

In his longest and most-detailed remarks to date on the Sept. 1-4 event, Harrington acknowledged to the City Council, and the media afterward, that some things didn't work so well.

He said "absolutely" innocent people were swept up along with suspected anarchists planning vandalism.

"We tried very diligently to sort out the folks caught up in the marches," he said. "Some were truly innocent. ... We tried to release them as soon as possible."

Mass arrests are just one of a number of police tactics being questioned in the wake of the convention, which saw 818 arrests, tear gassings, vandalism and thousands of peaceful marchers.

Harrington's presentation before the City Council on Wednesday was an early look, he said, into a police "after-action report" being prepared by the department.

Harrington said for the first time Wednesday that the police internal affairs division will look into individual allegations of police misconduct -- even if it doesn't receive a formal complaint. The department has received only one formal complaint despite dozens of people who have said they were -- or were seen on film -- being subjected to police force.

Harrington's commitment to, for example, review police and media videos with a specific eye for officer conduct came after Council Member Melvin Carter III pressed him on the issue.

After the presentation, Carter, who has been among several elected officials to raise questions about police actions during the RNC, said he appreciated the commitment.

"I think it is important to understand the police perspective on what happened," Carter said.

Guided by a slideshow summarizing each day's intelligence and what actually happened, Harrington painted a picture of a department forced to change its tactics and ramp up its use of force as "anarchists and rioters" sought to disrupt the convention and damage property.

Among the new information Harrington provided:

"In excess of 100 officers" had urine or feces thrown on them, although he said he's unsure how much of that is documented in police reports.

The tab for property damage, including broken windows downtown and a vandalized police car, stands at $69,000 and could rise by another $10,000. "I will note that as one of our failures," he said.

"Gas was our primary tool to move people," he said, including pepper spray in that category. A command order was needed to escalate to tear gas.

Officers have been swamped by 7,000 hours of video taken by cameras they installed throughout downtown. He said that was a reason why, of the 26 requests for information under the Minnesota Data Practices Act, Harrington said he didn't know if any have been fulfilled.

Twice during the presentation, he said a pre-RNC raid on a St. Paul home on Iglehart Avenue that yielded no weapons was "totally unrelated to the RNC." His slideshow also characterized a lawsuit stemming from the raid as unrelated to the convention -- except the search warrant for the raid sought to intercept an alleged shipment of weapons to be used during the convention. When pressed by a reporter afterwards, Harrington said, "You're correct. I misspoke."

This article was printed out from the RNC '08 Report website found at http://rnc08report.org. The RNC '08 Report is a citizen's archive of media reports, government documents, and other resources relating to the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN. The source material posted on this website will ultimately used to compile a truly independent, publicly available, citizen's report on what happened during the 2008 RNC. Why we deserve your support.

You can find the original page where this article appeared at:
http://rnc08report.org/archive/377.shtml