The city won’t institute a curfew on Thursday, June 4 for the first time since the weekend.

Tyrone Turner / DCist/WAMU

This story was last updated at 8:31 p.m. on June 4.

D.C. will not have a curfew on Thursday night, the first time the city won’t have a restriction in place in four days, and federal officials said they would begin to pull back some of the heavy military and law enforcement presence in the city.

Mayor Muriel Bowser made the curfew announcement in her daily press conference, which she has been holding with Metropolitan Police Department Chief Peter Newsham since the start of daily protests over police brutality and racism began on Friday.

This comes after D.C. police arrested zero people during demonstrations on Wednesday, an evening marked by large crowds and peaceful protest.

Bowser first put an 11 p.m. curfew into place on Sunday. After a night marked by intense clashes, fires, and looting, she instituted a 7 p.m. curfew on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, the District again put in place an 11 p.m. curfew. Each time, the curfew ended the following day at 6 a.m. There were exceptions for essential workers and journalists.

Bowser and Newsham maintained that the curfew allowed them to separate peaceful protesters from people looking to cause property damage and destruction. “This is not a decision we make lightly,” Newsham said during Monday’s announcement of the two-day 7 p.m. curfew. “This will disrupt your lives. This is a decision that was forced upon us.”

However, some local lawmakers criticized the curfew and called on Bowser to rescind it, including At-large Councilmembers Robert White and David Grosso.

“The only people the curfew is stifling are the people trying to exercise their rights to protest,” White told DCist/WAMU on Tuesday.

In particular, Bowser faced criticism for starting the curfew on Tuesday, the day of D.C.’s primary election, an hour before polls closed. Voting was exempted from the curfew, but officials and advocates expressed concern that it would depress voter turnout.

Since the curfews began, the vast majority of arrests by D.C. police related to the demonstrations have been for curfew violation, followed by rioting and burglary. The night with the most arrests was Monday, per Newsham, when 289 people were arrested, followed by Sunday, which had 90 arrests. Tuesday had 29 arrests and Saturday had 19.

National Guardsmen retrieve riot shields from a bus downtown on June 3. Matt Blitz / DCist

Meanwhile, Attorney General William Barr told reporters Thursday that some federal law enforcement may be removed from the District now that demonstrations are increasingly peaceful.

Demonstrators and members of the media have pushed back against characterizations of violent protesters, describing the presence of police and military forces as excessive.

Law enforcement and military from at least 15 agencies have been deployed to Washington to respond to days of protests that erupted after George Floyd was killed in police custody last week in Minneapolis, according to CNN. That includes National Guardsmen deployed from states including South Carolina, Utah, New Jersey, and Maryland.

President Donald Trumpvowed Monday to mobilize “all available federal resources, civilian and military” to crack down on demonstrations, calling himself the “president of law and order.”

Mayor Muriel Bowser urged the president to remove military assets from the city on Thursday. “We want troops from out of state out of Washington D.C.,” Bowser said. Earlier this week, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said that “unleashing the military on this city, protestors, and residents is unacceptable and unnecessary.”

Amid intensifying criticism of the high number of police and military personnel stationed in downtown D.C. during this week’s protests, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling on Trump to provide a list of which law enforcement agencies remain in the city and who ordered them to be there.

“We are concerned about the increased militarization and lack of clarity that may increase chaos,”says Pelosi’s letter, sent to the president on Thursday. “Congress and the American people need to know who is in charge, what is the chain of command, what is the mission, and by what authority is the National Guard from other states opening in the capital.”

U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) has called for an investigation and a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the use of force during a reportedly peaceful demonstration outside the White House Monday.

Evidence continues to mount that federal law enforcement used tear gas to disperse peaceful protesters near the White House on Monday evening, despite Trump and other officials’ claims that officers did not deploy tear gas.

WUSA reporter Nathan Baca tweeted Thursday that news crews gathered multiple tear gas canisters on the ground near where demonstrations have taken place for several days.

Baca tweeted that he and anchor Darren Haynes collected the canisters after they were gassed Monday near Lafayette Square in downtown D.C.

In addition to statements from Trump and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, U.S. Park Police denied using tear gas, despite reports to the contrary from journalists and demonstrators on the ground. Acting Chief Gregory T. Monahan said in a statement that officers responded to “violent” protesters who threw projectiles at police, “including bricks, frozen water bottles and caustic liquids,” and that authorities only used smoke canisters and pepper balls to disperse the crowd. Reporters and demonstrators who were there have maintained that protesters were peaceful.

Pepper balls are projectiles that release a powdered chemical that produces a reaction similar to tear gas. The term “tear gas” takes many forms, notes the Associated Press. The Centers for Disease Control uses it to describe any riot-control agent that makes “people temporarily unable to function by irritating their eyes, mouth, throat, lungs and skin.”

Federal law enforcement’s clearing of the park is now the subject of a lawsuit: Black Lives Matter D.C. and other protesters filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Trump and Barr over the dispersal at Lafayette Square.

The Park Police says it is also investigating two officers who were caught on camera hitting two Australian journalists while trying to clear the area.

“As is consistent with our established practices and procedures, two U.S. Park Police officers have been assigned to administrative duties, while an investigation takes place regarding the incident with the Australian Press,” Monahan said in a statement on Thursday.

In a video posted on social media, the officers hit Australia Channel 7reporter Amelia Brace with a baton and shove cameraperson Tim Myers into a fence.

“We told them we were media, but they don’t care,” Brace says in the video.

Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne has “directed her country’s ambassador to the U.S. to investigate the incident and figure out how to register Australia’s ‘strong concerns’ with American officials,” USA Today reports.

But D.C. officials remain concerned with the amount of law enforcement operating throughout the city.

Bowser said Thursday that she and her administration are concerned about the recent encroachment of federal agents beyond the immediate area of the White House and into downtown city streets as protesters in the nation’s capital continue to demonstrate en masse.

While those agents appeared to have retracted to Lafayette Square as of Thursday morning, Bowser and Newsham said they communicated with federal officials to make that movement happen. Neither specified which federal officials they’ve been in touch with.

Numerous armed federal agents moved as far out from the White House as L and K streets NW Wednesday, according to District officials and other accounts. This expansion in perimeter has raised serious questions about who’s actually controlling D.C. streets and public rights-of-way during the protests.

“We were all very concerned about how the federal assets pushed out from the federal complex,” Bowser said while gesticulating her hands forward at a press conference Thursday. “And we worked with them to push back.”

Bowser added that local officials want troops from other states to leave the city, but said the Trump administration has the right to police the area immediately around the White House, including Lafayette Square. She pointed to D.C.’s lack of statehood as the “root cause” of the push-and-pull over street management.

“Until we fix that, we are subject to the whims of the federal government,” she said. “Sometimes they’re benevolent, and sometimes they’re not. And so we have to fix that.”

Asked if she thought the federal law enforcement agents would remain positioned at Lafayette Square, the mayor demurred. “We’re dealing with a fluid and unprecedented situation,” Bowser said in response to a reporter’s question. She added that she worries some of what she called “the hardening” around the White House may not turn out to be “just temporary,” and that the White House being walled off from people is a “sad commentary” on the current state of affairs.

Newsham, for his part, sought to reassure those watching that D.C. police are at the table with federal leadership about the activity of the law enforcement agents.

“If the federal government expands their footprint, we’re obviously not going to get into a physical conflict over that,” he said. “I think that’s more of a legal battle that may have to play out moving forward into the future.”

Filed Under: 2020 BLM Protests,