It’s likely one of many to come: a lawsuit is in the works by homeowner Mike Whalen against the St. Paul police. It’s the outcome of a raid preceding the Republican National Convention on Whalen’s house, in which Whalen and members of a media collective that documents police conduct were detained at gunpoint and later released without charges. My previous blog posts about it are here and here. My colleague Nick Coleman wrote about it here and here. St. Paul has a $10 million insurance policy in place for the inevitable litigation.

And for some really old news, it turns out the Permibus, the former school bus turned sustainability road show and motor home, was freed from RNC-related captivity on Sept. 4, the day after I blogged about its fate. Minneapolis police seized it for safety violations, but it was initially pulled over because the authorities thought it might be a transport for protestors bent on illegal disruptions of the convention. On Wednesday, I reached Stan Wilson by phone in Maine, the Permibus’s latest stop on its nationwide tour.

As the fate of the Permibus became known that Wednesday, Sept. 3, he told me, “people called from all over the world demanding that the Permibus be released… In the end, people power prevailed over police power.”

Wilson said he got an apology from an assistant city attorney, who told him it was a mistake. Wilson doesn’t think so. The Permibus was towed out of the city impound lot and the two mechanical violations, down from the original 23 the city claimed, were fixed. Whoever searched the bus had crushed grapes into the floor, while some organic beef in the fridge went bad. But the In less than a week, Permibus hit the road once again. Still, the family has had nightmares about their encounter with the police. Wilson said they too are considering a lawsuit.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 11:09 am and is filed under Civil liberties, Complaint sagas, Free speech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.