UPDATE 2: DCist’s own Mehan Jayasuriya checks in with a report of how things are progressing at the site:

“There were still a number of police cars and at least one fire truck on the scene when I arrived. The entire area was cordoned off with police tape and there were quite a few people milling about, snapping photos and gawking at the damage. There was a glass repair company installing wooden boards to cover the broken windows. As you can see from the photos, pretty much every single window facing P Street was blown out at the banks, though it looked like most of the glass had been cleaned up by the time I got there.”

UPDATE: The key word floating around early blog reaction to the event appears to be “jerks.” Meanwhile, City Paper’s Jason Cherkis reports that the ATM at the Wachovia branch is still operational. (So much for the plans to disrupt the flow of capitalism.)

DCist received a tip this morning from a resident in Logan Circle that the area around both the PNC and Wachovia bank branches on the 1400 block of P Street NW had been severely vandalized, with branch windows broken and neighboring cars at the Whole Foods spray painted. The Washington Post now reports that the vandalism was likely perpetrated by protesters in town for the IMF/World Bank protests which began early this morning.

As the Post reports:

An off-duty D.C. police officer working security at a drug store this morning spotted the six breaking windows of a Wachovia Bank branch and a PNC bank branch in the 1400 block of P St NW, Crane said. The officer arrested two of the suspects. Other officers arrested the remaining four as they fled the area, Crane said.

The group had also spray painted cars parked near the Whole Foods across the street, Crane said.

They were charged with felony counts of destruction of property and rioting, a charge that police said they brought because the group was larger than five people.

We’ll bring more details as they become available.

Photo by Mehan Jayasuriya.