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Summary of Minneapolis Chalk the Police Event
The following post was written by Melissa Hill.
During the early evening hours of October 1st, the Chalk Police event in Minneapolis met outside City Hall to prepare to chalk the downtown area. The City Hall building also has a light rail train stop near it. One of the first acts of chalking was to chalk “Film the Police” in order to encourage light rail passengers to use their cameras. Why? Just two weeks earlier at another train platform downtown, a Metro Transit police officer grabbed my wrist and camera in order to interfere with the filming of an arrest incident near a train platform. Clearly, the Metro Transit police need to be filmed more often.
Oddly, we found ourselves filming the Metro Transit police again! While we had intended to only chalk the police, two of us started cop watching when we ran into a group of Metro Transit police surrounding a person on the ground outside City Hall. The person appeared to be in pain so we immediately pulled out our cameras and kept them rolling until the cops had placed the person into a squad car and drove away. When asked why the person was being arrested, the Metro Transit officer, G. Wyatt, declined to tell us. Unfortunately, Officer Wyatt then decided to detain us because of “damage to property” at “his train station.” Chalk is damage to property? There was one lone chalking that read “Film the Police” on the ground near the lightrail. While we were detained, we had to identify ourselves so that he could make sure we didn’t have “outstanding warrants.” When that came back clear, we were finally free to go. Our punishment was a trespass ban from the train platform until 6AM the following morning for this alleged “damage.”
Luckily, the rest of the evening went much smoother and no one else was detained and/or harassed. After the two of us were “free to go” we regrouped on the other side of City Hall and chalked a nearby “Tippy,” a mobile surveillance camera spotted everywhere in Minneapolis and the Minneapolis 1st Precinct Police Station downtown. Here are some photos from the evening. The next day at lunch, I went back and checked to see most of the chalk erased except a few pieces remained outside near the surveillance camera at City Hall.
Summary of Minneapolis Chalk the Police Event is a post from Cop Block – Badges Don't Grant Extra Rights
2012-10-04 03:52:36
Source: http://www.copblock.org/21812/summary-of-minneapolis-chalk-the-police-event/
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