I found myself a part of another news event related to the Republican National Convention last week, and the experience seemed only slightly more bearable than jail.

I swore after I attended a Society of Professional Journalists forum relating to journalists arrested at the Republican National Convention Sept. 22 not to go to another such event. However, I capitulated after an aide for St. Paul Councilmember Dave Thune asked me two days later to tell the story of my arrest while seeking to unobtrusively work on a convention security story for Sun Newspapers.

At the SPJ forum, I'm not sure what irritated me more, listening to forum attendees arguing with each other for hours while supposedly asking questions or a few particular panelist responses, such as an attempted post-forum question I tried to ask about whether journalists with more than one charge still have to worry.

As way of background, the St. Paul mayor's office issued a Sept. 19 statement saying that the city will not press unlawful assembly charges against journalists. While I greeted this announcement as an encouraging sign, I have qualified every comment of "congratulations" I received from friends and coworkers by noting that I still have not heard anything about the "failure to obey a lawful order" charge police also tacked on the Marion Street bridge when I became one of dozens of journalists and hundreds of others arrested Sept. 4.

The specification of the "presence at an unlawful assembly charge" in the mayor's statement has the interesting affect of putting me in a frustrating limbo along with no doubt many common individuals swept up in the mass arrests following what appears to have been a vandalism-free night on the convention's last day.

I still have not received a court date and when I called the courthouse I was told I would have to continue calling every week to find out if one had been scheduled. With a charge with a maximum penalty of 90 days in prison and a $1,000 fine still hanging over my head, I'd like to find out as soon as possible.

I hoped at the forum to learn something about my fate, but it was not to be. First I approached Assistant Police Chief Matt Bostrom but all I got out was an "Excuse me, sir?" before he cut me off with an "Excuse me" of his own, one with a less than apologetic sound to it, and brushed by me toward the exit. I thankfully received a considerably warmer - and smiling - welcome from Deputy Mayor Ann Mulholland, who sympathized with my plight and said she would think my charges would be dropped but still could not fill me in further.

The forum itself seemed to devolve toward the end into essentially name-calling by some audience members, so in fairness I can't blame the deputy chief too much for wanting to get out of there. Still, I silently took issue with his assertion during the forum that people could have left the area around the Marion Street bridge without arrest if they had gone in other directions instead of onto the Marion Street bridge. Like me and many other journalists and arrestees, Jonathan Malat of KARE-11 said police ordered him onto the bridge itself before his arrest.

"I'm taking the police officer's message for exactly what it is, figuring that's where exactly I should go," Malat said.

Caroline Lowe, a crime reporter for WCCO and licensed Minnesota police officer, wondered if any charges from the Marion Street bridge would hold up.

"You have to give people a way out," she said. "That seemed to be missing on the bridge. The only way out would be jumping onto I-94."

In spite of these positive remarks, I decided I probably would not hurt my case by participating in the hearing at St. Paul City Hall. In this setting, most speakers simply read statements in an orderly fashion. An occasional audience member did blurt out some rather unoriginal insults toward police but such remarks generally quickly met with shushing sounds and rebukes from others in the audience. I may have inadvertently rolled my eyes a tad when an anti-war organizer chastised council members, who had voluntarily come to hear the remarks, and gave an impassioned speech encouraging audience members in the council chambers to stand up and make some noise.

Still the majority of speakers I observed showed respect for everyone in the council chambers and spoke politely. As a result, I probably opened my eyes in surprise more than rolled them when I watched excerpts of a press conference that a Fox 9 reporter termed a "preemptive attempt at damage control" by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher.

"We're not going to be part of any gathering that implies that we should be sympathetic to the anarchists that were bent on destroying St. Paul," Fletcher said, who also remarked that Councilmember Thune cannot "go unchecked with his desire to point the finger at law enforcement."

Oddly enough, I don't recall being bent on destroying St. Paul or sympathizing with individuals committing vandalism, who I have said should have been arrested. Somehow City Hall survived the public hearing. I am surprised at the vitriol that was directed toward a hearing in council chambers, an extraordinarily common practice among councils across the land and a guiding principle in democracy of the likes portrayed by painter Norman Rockwell.

I want to be clear here. I regularly interact with police officers and prosecutors for my job and almost always get along well with them. I even had the honor of participating in an unrelated police training exercise not long ago. All officers involved in the exercise handled themselves in a completely professional manner. Many of the officers I encountered who were part of the security force also showed commendable behavior.

However, frankly, some did not. Additionally, some of the tactics used are questionable and the leaders of the force itself should take a step back and focus on honestly evaluating techniques that worked and techniques that need improvement instead of doing "damage control" that does nothing to focus on real problems.

Comment on this story at our website, www.mnsun.com.

Still the majority of speakers I observed showed respect for everyone in the council chambers and spoke politely. As a result, I probably opened my eyes in surprise more than rolled them when I watched excerpts of a press conference that a Fox 9 reporter termed a "preemptive attempt at damage control" by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher.

"We're not going to be part of any gathering that implies that we should be sympathetic to the anarchists that were bent on destroying St. Paul," Fletcher said, who also remarked that Councilmember Thune cannot "go unchecked with his desire to point the finger at law enforcement."

Oddly enough, I don't recall being bent on destroying St. Paul or sympathizing with individuals committing vandalism, who I have said should have been arrested. Somehow City Hall survived the public hearing. I am surprised at the vitriol that was directed toward a hearing in council chambers, an extraordinarily common practice among councils across the land and a guiding principle in democracy of the likes portrayed by painter Norman Rockwell.

I want to be clear here. I regularly interact with police officers and prosecutors for my job and almost always get along well with them. I even had the honor of participating in an unrelated police training exercise not long ago. All officers involved in the exercise handled themselves in a completely professional manner. Many of the officers I encountered who were part of the security force also showed commendable behavior.

However, frankly, some did not. Additionally, some of the tactics used are questionable and the leaders of the force itself should take a step back and focus on honestly evaluating techniques that worked and techniques that need improvement instead of doing "damage control" that does nothing to focus on real problems.

Comment on this story at our website, www.mnsun.com.