Miami-Dade police arrested three people Tuesday involved in organizing protests against next week's international free trade summit in downtown Miami.

Authorities said the arrests had nothing to do with the Free Trade Area of the Americas gathering, though the three were arrested two blocks from a warehouse protesters had rented to coordinate their demonstrations.

Kaitlyn Tikkun, 32, of Vermont, and Michael Pitula, 25, of Illinois, were charged with loitering and resisting arrest. Joshua Grimm, 23, of Pennsylvania, was charged with carrying a concealed weapon after, police said, they found a knife on him.

They were arrested by the county's anti-robbery detail, which was passing along Miami Avenue in Miami when they noticed Tikkun and Pitula walking down the street carrying backpacks. Both had tubing and wire in the backpacks and refused to say why, police said.

''These guys looked like they had just burglarized something,'' said Detective Juan DelCastillo, Miami-Dade police spokesman, noting that it was Veterans Day and many of the businesses in the area were closed.

''And when they were stopped they did not provide anything to dispel the alarm of the officers that stopped them. We had no other choice than to arrest them for loitering and prowling,'' he said.

Grimm was arrested after he approached the officers and was found carrying a knife, DelCastillo said. The three were in jail Tuesday night but could be released today.

DelCastillo said county police did not know that protesters had set up in a nearby warehouse. ''There's no productive purpose for us to arrest anybody now for anything to do with FTAA. They'll be out in a few hours,'' he said. ``It's not going to stop them from protesting. Unfortunately, it might be misinterpreted by them, but I believe that any police action that they disapprove of might be misinterpreted by them.''

Organizers of the protests, however, said they could not believe any officers in South Florida were unaware of their presence on Miami Avenue.

''To claim that two people can't walk down the street with backpacks on because it's Veterans Day is a really good example of the efforts the people of FTAA are willing to go to to manipulate a local police force to keep protesters off the streets,'' said Dave Meddle, a protest organizer working at the warehouse on 23rd Street. He said all three people arrested were involved in protest preparations.

Meddle said Miami's city police department knows the protesters are working in the warehouse -- they were on hand Saturday when the protesters first set up there.

''To think that the county police are so far out of the loop that they didn't know that we were working in this area, it's ludicrous,'' he said.

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