Republican National Convention

ST. PAUL (AP) ― Police arrested 10 people Tuesday, including at least three people during a tense march against poverty.

A police spokesman declined to be specific about all the arrests Tuesday, but the three occurred during the march that ended near the Republican convention arena with police using tear gas and flash-bang grenades to disperse protesters they said were trying to get past security fences.

"There's a group that appears to be trying to breach the (Xcel Energy) Center," said Tom Walsh, a St. Paul police spokesman. Police successfully moved the protesters away, he said.

Police estimated about 2,000 people took part in the march, which lasted about three hours. They said the number of arrested might go higher.

A day after nearly 300 people were arrested and violence broke out following an anti-war march, police were on alert Tuesday.

Hundreds of officers, many in riot gear, shadowed the rally and march by a group called the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign. Officers handcuffed a woman in a black bicycle helmet, and in a separate incident, handcuffed a man and a woman after a brief skirmish.

About 50 people watching the arrests of the man and woman chanted, "Let them go, let them go!" The heavy police presence included officers on horseback, others in riot gear, and officers on bicycles and on foot.

As the march wound toward its end, police trailing the rear grabbed one marcher and began spraying pepper spray on people in the area. It wasn't immediately clear what led them to grab the man.

Marchers stopped near the end of the fenced-off parade route near Xcel while organizer Cheri Honkala made them promise to remain nonviolent. She and about a dozen others continued to the fence where she shouted through a megaphone at the riot police.

"We want to charge the folks that are in the Xcel Energy Center with crimes against humanity," Honkala said.

The crowd took up the chant, "The whole world is watching," but no officers came to the fence.

Honkala said she would leave the citizens arrest on the hope that they would deliver it and the marchers then turned around and began dispersing.

Not long after, police discharged a series of flash-bang grenades and smoke canisters at an intersection not far from a security fence surrounding Xcel. Walsh said the tactic was aimed at protesters trying to breach the fence.

Police then pushed remaining protesters north, away from the arena and toward the Capitol grounds, and the crowd slowly trickled away.

Jan Nye, 62, of Minneapolis was part of the march and then the group of people pushed away from the arena.

"Everything was going really well, and all of a sudden it just got heavy. It seemed like people were getting moved for no reason," Nye said.

She said she was right in the intersection where the police percussion grenades went off.

"It was really scary," she said. "But most of the scariness comes from them," she said, meaning police. "They really got adrenalized and there was this horrible inevitability to it. They've got their toys and they want to use them."

The arrests on Tuesday came a day after violence erupted following a largely peaceful anti-war march by some 10,000 people. Afterward, police blamed a splinter group of about 200 for harassing delegates, smashing windows, puncturing car tires, throwing bottles and starting at least one fire.

The RNC Welcoming Committee, a self-described anarchist group that has worked for months planning convention disruptions, claimed success in e-mails to its members and media. "The spectacle has been crashed!" read one.

That group wasn't officially connected with the organizers of either march.
According to search warrant application and supporting affidavit obtained by news organizations Tuesday, the Ramsey County sheriff's office and other law enforcement agencies started investigating the RNC Welcoming Committee just over a year ago. The document said investigators determined that the group's membership had fluctuated between 30-35 members who had met more than 100 times in the past year.

The investigation included an undercover investigator and two confidential informants who all posed as members of the group, as well as a review of publicly available information such as the group's Web site and videos posted on YouTube, the document said.

It described the group as "an organized criminal enterprise" that had a three-tier strategy of blocking the Xcel Energy Center, immobilizing the delegates' transportation and blocking connecting bridges.

It said the organizers' discussions included talk of blocking traffic; attacking police with Molotov cocktails, sharpened poles and shields; using marbles or ball bearings to trip police horses and people; using liquid sprayers filled with urine or chemicals; sabotaging the Xcel Energy Center and the St. Paul Downtown Airport; and even kidnapping delegates.

The committee traveled to or communicated with "anarchist affinity groups" in 67 cities and hosted two major meetings -- attended by 150 to 200 people, and more than 100 people respectively -- to develop plans for disrupting the GOP convention, the document alleged. The committee also hosted an "action camp" July 31-Aug. 1 in Lake Geneva, Minn., to teach "direct action techniques" to other groups from across the country, including the use of Molotov cocktails and techniques for blocking traffic.

Investigators identified six leaders of the Welcoming Committee, all Minneapolis residents, who they alleged were particularly active in organizing efforts and in stockpiling materials. Five of them were arrested last weekend when authorities executed the search warrant.

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The Republican National Convention will be at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul from Sept. 1 through Sept. 4.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)