As most of the on-air cable television personalities focus on the national politics of the Republicans’ nomination of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for vice president, stories and footage of clashes between the St. Paul police and protesters at the Republican National Convention are turning up on the internet.

The Uptake, an online citizen-journalism training outfit in Minneapolis, has been at the forefront of documenting much of the unfriendly interaction between the police and the protesters.

In many of the live-streams, which can be seen on the organization’s website, it’s difficult to tell what’s going on because much of the footage seems to have been recorded on an impromptu basis from the citizen-reporters’ cellphone cameras.

Nevertheless, some of the video is dramatic.

In the clip above, police are in a stand-off with RNC protesters holding a black-and-red sign with the words "Against Capitalism," on it. One of the protesters provokes the black-clad, helmeted cops by shouting "Sieg Heil!"

The police, who look as if they’ve just stepped off the set of Brazil, didn’t appear to find that funny. Shortly after the taunt, a group of people advance toward the police line, and the cops respond by firing off "flash bangs," which Tom Walsh, the St. Paul police department’s public information officer, describes as a "percussive instrument" that’s meant to disperse crowds.

In an interview, Walsh declined to comment on any specifics, but he pointed out the local media’s favorable reports on the restraint that police are exercising against the "excesses of the rioters."

He pointed to the Poor People’s March on Sunday (which was still going on yesterday), where he said the rioters co-opted the peaceful demonstrators’ events and started hurling feces, urine, rocks and bottles.

"The peaceful protesters lost control of their march because of these rioters, and that continues to be the pattern," he said.

When asked about the arrest of Amy Goodman, the lefty Democracy Now journalist and the show’s producers, Walsh declined to comment.

In both an online broadcast and during a press conference with St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington on Tuesday, Goodman says that she had approached the police to ask them about the arrest of the show’s producers, and the police had simply arrested her despite seeing her press badge. Goodman’s been charged with a misdemeanor.

"I would submit to you that there are thousands of journalists on the ground, and they’re not being impeded on their ability to report," Walsh said.

In addition to footage from The Uptake and Democracy Now, The Minnesota Independent, a local blog run by the Center for Independent Media in Washington, D.C., has graphic photos and an account of a 17-year-old peaceful protestor being beaten up by police.

More documentation of some of the chaos is in the Kentucky Kernal, a student newspaper at the University of Kentucky, whose photo staff and an adviser got swept up in the arrests.

All-in-all, if you lived in a world without television and used social media applications exclusively to keep up with what’s going on in St. Paul, your view of the convention would differ significantly from everyone else’s.

For example, searches using the phrase "Republican National Convention" for the most recently uploaded photos on Flickr Tuesday night yielded hundreds of photos of authoritarian-looking police in their riot gear.

Similarly, searches for #RNC08 on Twitter on Tuesday night brought up a lot of messaging between protest organizers and by protesters themselves of the police’s movements on the streets.

Free Press, a media reform group, is gathering online names and signatures to sign a letter protesting what the group says are intimidation tactics by the St. Paul police. As of Wednesday, the group had gathered more than 35,000 signatures. Free Press intends to deliver the letter to St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and the Republican National Convention host committee.