Protesters gather near the White House in Washington on Tuesday, June 23 2020, amid continuing anti-racism demonstrations following the death of George Floyd.

Alex Brandon / AP Photo

Police and protesters clashed for a second night in a row on Tuesday after the protests had largely been peaceful for weeks. A day of demonstrations ended in the early morning with an intense standoff between protesters and police, with officers unleashing flashbangs, deploying pepper spray, and making nine arrests.

The day started around 10 a.m. as D.C. police began clearing out Black Lives Matter Plaza of aid stations and tents. Just before noon, Metropolitan Police Department officers set up a line two blocks from the White House, pushing protesters back to I St. NW., a line they held well into the night.

By 9 p.m., protesters had gathered in rows against the police line, some standing on barricades police had placed on 16th Street earlier in the day. For the most part, things remained peaceful for hours, with protesters chanting and drumming into the early morning hours.

Behind the police, black fencing once again blocked the entrance to Lafayette Square, where demonstrators had attempted to remove a statue of President Andrew Jackson the night before.

Things turned violent around 2 a.m., as police shot flashbangs and fired pepper spray to break protesters up, according to multiple accounts on social media. One observer said it looked like a “war zone out here.”

Police had pulled back their line, and protesters used the opportunity to try and move back into the zone that had been cleared earlier, blocking it off with plywood and scattered debris, according to the Washington Post. MPD officers moved back in and began taking protesters into custody.

The Metropolitan Police Department said it made nine arrests throughout the night and early Wednesday morning, and charged the individuals with assault on a police officer, felony rioting, burglary, and threats to do bodily harm. MPD said in a statement that it used sting balls and OC spray to try and control the crowds, and that one officer was injured.

“There were multiple instances of individuals igniting of fireworks, intentionally setting fires, throwing projectiles, Molotov cocktails, and smoke grenades at officers in the area,” the department said in an emailed statement.

Protesters stand atop barriers on 16th Street. Daniella Cheslow / DCist/WAMU
Toni Sanders, 36, is a longtime D.C. resident. She said she endured pepper spray and police using batons during protests on Monday.Daniella Cheslow / DCist/WAMU
Protesters stand at Black Lives Matter Plaza facing the White House on Tuesday night.Daniella Cheslow / DCist/WAMU
Protesters face a line of law enforcement officers at Black Lives Matter Plaza on June 23.Daniella Cheslow / DCist/WAMU

Toni Sanders, a longtime D.C. resident, was one of the demonstrators holding the line and said she was pepper-sprayed and hit with billy clubs the night before during the protests at Lafayette Square. She added that her family members were in the crowd that was cleared from Lafayette Square on June 1, when President Trump held a photo-op in front of St. John’s Church.

“I am here because I am protesting that. I am here because I’m protesting Muriel Bowser and her performative activist work,” Sanders, 36, told DCist/WAMU.

A Ward 8 resident, she also said she wants city officials to answer for the killings of D.C. residents at the hands of police, naming Alonzo Smith,Rafael Briscoe, and Terrance Sterling among them.

“You wrote Black Lives Matter on the street, and then we got our Black asses beat on Black Lives Matter Plaza,” she added, “and Muriel is nowhere to be found to hold her officers accountable.”

The crowd of about 200 shouted “No justice, no peace, no racist police,” with drum beats in the background, and also yelled at a number of officers with their faces exposed to “wear a mask!”

Devante Newsome, 26, hung back as others shouted at the police. He has come to the protests nearly every day, and wants to see the police defunded, with that money reallocated to education and programs that benefit low-income communities.

Newsome, who identifies as Black and Filipino, says he used the space to host a dance event and raised $3,000 for the NAACP and Advancement Project, a civil-rights organization that focuses on racial justice.

Still, he called the painting of Black Lives Matter on the road a bit of window dressing from the mayor’s office. The crowd on Tuesday was noticeably smaller than earlier protests, he said, as someone set off fireworks in the background.

“A lot of us feel like all of that was for show,” Newsome said of Mayor Bowser’s BLM Plaza dedication. “As you saw, it did bring out a lot of people … but where are they tonight?”

Police had cleared an encampment at the plaza earlier in the day, following Monday night’s clashes between law enforcement and protesters at Lafayette Square, where demonstrators attempted to topple the statue of Andrew Jackson.

D.C. Police used pepper spray on protesters, despite a police reform bill that was passed by unanimous vote in the D.C. Council, prohibiting police from using tear gas. (The bill was sent to Bowser on Tuesday and she has until July 7 to sign it, according to Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who introduced the bill.)

The encampment, “BHAZ” (or “Black House Autonomous Zone”), refers to the Capitol Hill Organized Protest Zone, a self-declared autonomous protest zone in Seattle. The letters were spray painted across the pillars of St. John’s Church on Monday evening.

In a tweet that violated Twitter’s rules, President Trump said that anyone attempting to create such a zone would be met with “serious force.”

Late Tuesday night, workers in orange vests were seen building a fence around the church.

“Pillars can be repainted. Buildings can be rebuilt. Black and brown people killed by police cannot be brought back from the dead,” Rev. Mariann Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington said in a statement to Fox 5, in response to the graffiti.

Elsewhere across the District on Tuesday, demonstrators blocked traffic on 395 South—laying down for 8 minutes and 46 seconds to signify the time Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck. At one point, a group marched through the 3rd Street Tunnel.

Just before midnight, a group set fire to an American flag, attached to a traffic light, per the Washington Post’s Perry Stein. Shortly after, Trump called protesters who burn the flag “lowlifes” on Twitter.

Filed Under: 2020 BLM Protests,