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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) _ Protests in the streets are mixing with politics at the Republican National Convention as police arrests near 300 following sometimes violent confrontations.
More protests were planned for the final two days of the convention Wednesday and Thursday near where delegates are meeting in the Xcel Energy Center. Some organizers have promised to resume their often confrontational actions until the GOP convention ends its four-day run.
Police said they arrested 10 people on Tuesday, but they declined to offer specifics about each incident. Total arrests for the week were 294, including 137 felonies.
Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner and St. Paul City Attorney John Choi said their offices would file some charges Wednesday against those arrested Monday but release others pending further investigation.
"We have not been able to get reports on a lot of the people that were arrested for a lot of reasons," Gaertner said. "Without documentation of what occurred on the streets, we can't charge someone. We're reviewing as many cases as are brought to us but it's been a slow process."
At least three of the arrests Tuesday came during a march against poverty. The march was tense but neither as widespread nor violent as events a day before, when nearly 300 people were arrested in numerous run-ins in downtown St. Paul.
Police estimated about 2,000 people took part in the poverty march, which lasted about three hours. It ended near the convention arena with police using tear gas and flash-bang grenades to disperse protesters they said were trying to get past security fences, said Tom Walsh, a St. Paul police spokesman.
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 thought it was going well until police used the percussion grenades.
"It was really scary. 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 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.
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.
Associated Press writers Amy Forliti, Elizabeth Dunbar and Ryan J. Foley contributed to this report.
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