Four Years Later, Still Sorting Fallout of (2004) Republican Convention

[struggle4progress]

By JIM DWYER
Published: September 5, 2008

The nation may have finished with the 2008 round of political conventions, but in New York City, the 2004 Republican National Convention lingers on in the expensive and bitter afterlife of civil rights lawsuits ...

This year’s Republican convention is likely to produce its own cloud of litigation, and once again, both the behavior of demonstrators and the reliability of police intelligence could be a central issue: more than 800 people were arrested in St. Paul and Minneapolis over the last week, and dozens of others were detained, handcuffed, photographed and searched without arrest ...

The taxpayers in Minnesota, however, won’t face the same kinds of legal costs as those in New York. Before the 2008 convention, officials in St. Paul insisted that the Republican host committee use its own funds to purchase an insurance policy that would pay up to $10 million in damages for civil rights violations, said John Choi, the city attorney for St. Paul. “When the convention was awarded to St. Paul, we looked at what happened in other cities after everyone had left, especially New York,” Mr. Choi said.

By contrast, New York City not only was responsible for defending city officials and the police from charges of civil rights violations, but also agreed to pay legal costs for the Republican host committee if it was sued, court filings show ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/nyregion/06about.html?ref=nyregion

As of this week, the city had spent $6.6 million to defend the lawsuits, a spokeswoman for the Law Department said. An additional $1.6 million had been paid to settle suits brought by 87 individuals, according to the comptroller’s office.

[klyon]

1. maybe at some point they won't be able to get insurance

then the police will have to change their policy or cities will decline to have conventions