Seven zombies who were arrested in July in Minneapolis have filed a civil-rights lawsuit against the city and county, a local news station reported yesterday. The group, which luckily turned out to be just people in bad zombie makeup and tattered clothes, said they were part of a "zombie dance party" being held in downtown Minneapolis, one of a number of zombie events that have apparently been held in the area.  A "zombie pub crawl" last year reportedly drew nearly 200 undead.

A police spokesman said this particular group was arrested for "behavior that was suspicious and disturbing," which I assumed would turn out to be brain-eating but instead involved "meandering and dancing to music" while carrying bags with wires sticking out of them. Police said they were concerned that the bags might be bombs, but the zombies said they were backpacks modified to carry "homemade stereos" and insisted they had been detained for no good reason.

But police maintained that the arrests were valid. In addition to the meandering, they said the zombies were intimidating people with their zombie bombs and "ghoulish" makeup, and that they were uncooperative (presumably while being arrested). Inspector Janee Harteau said that police were on high alert to begin with because they had received a bulletin about people in clown makeup attacking and robbing people in other states. Therefore, anyone wearing makeup would be properly subject to immediate detention . . . I guess.

As I have been saying for some time, we need to fight the clowns and zombies over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.

In the lawsuit, the zombies claimed that they had been arrested without cause, but had cooperated with police and voluntarily shambled after them to the station where the six adult zombies were booked for carrying "simulated weapons of mass destruction." (The website has what appear to be zombie mugshots.) The suit claims that the arrest was a violation of the First Amendment, among other things. It demands more brains and other unspecified relief.

Link: KSTP.com (Minneapolis/St. Paul)
Link: same (article on the July arrest)