The nation’s capital is bracing for what could be its largest protest yet on Saturday since the death of George Floyd, expanding a massive fenced perimeter…
The nation’s capital is bracing for what could be its largest protest yet on Saturday since the death of George Floyd, expanding a massive fenced perimeter around the White House, even as they send home hundreds of active-duty troops who were stationed outside the city.
Over 10 days of protest, the border outside the White House has progressively been pushed back with extensive fencing and barricades. It now extends to the far outskirts of a park complex known as the Ellipse near the National Mall.
Law enforcement officials said they’d pushed the barrier back even further in anticipation of a major event on Saturday.
“We have a lot of public, open-source information to suggest that the event on this upcoming Saturday may be one of the largest that we’ve had in the city,” Peter Newsham, chief of police of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, said at a press conference on Thursday morning.
It was not clear how many would show up to Saturday’s demonstrations but #1MillionDCSaturday was trending on Twitter in a call for 1 million people to march on the capital in protest of police brutality.
U. S. Park Police told McClatchy DC it was using “intelligence to monitor upcoming events” but would not divulge details that could “pose a hazard to the public and police.
