Marchers who defied Denver’s emergency curfew Sunday following a day of peaceful demonstrations were again doused with tear gas and peppered with foam bullets, though police on this fourth night of protests waited longer to deploy crowd-control munitions.
Demonstrators massed at the state Capitol and in Civic Center Park on Sunday afternoon to protest violence by law enforcement and rally for justice in the name of George Floyd, the black man whose killing by police in Minneapolis sparked a national conflagration.
They marched, gave speeches, played music and filled the area around the Capitol. Much of the day was not only absent violence, but notably calm.
Esther Okanlawon said she brought her 6-year-old daughter to Sunday’s protest to show her how to make change. As a black woman, she’s talked to her daughter about racism several times.
“We tell her that unfortunately people are going to treat her differently because of the color of her skin,” Okanlawon said.
Once night fell, though, Denver police carpeted parts of Colfax Avenue, Capitol Hill and the blocks surrounding police headquarters in chemical irritants and fired projectiles at the demonstrators who had continued to march even after the city’s temporary curfew went into effect.
Darian Tindall, 22, of Thornton, was hit in the chest with what she believed to be a pepper ball while marching on Colfax. She said her hands were up above her head when she was shot, and she didn’t see the projectile coming or anticipate the intense pain.
“Whatever they shot at me exploded on me,” she said, showing welts up and down her legs and stomach. “I had my hands up and they shot me.”
While demonstrators rallied throughout the afternoon, Denver police kept their distance. City leaders pleaded for peace, and continued to blame the violence and vandalism that marred previous nights on a handful of unspecified outside agitators. But some protesters countered that Denver’s officers had been too aggressive in using so-called “less lethal” munitions on marchers.
“For those who helped us maintain peace, protect lives and preserve property here in our city, let me state loud and clear that the Denver Police Department values the lives of our residents and are working hard to maintain the peace and safety for all,” Chief Paul Pazen said at an afternoon news conference. “And when I say all, I mean every community member and every police officer.”
The demonstrators left the Capitol grounds after the city’s 8 p.m. emergency curfew went into effect with no immediate action by police, in stark contrast to Saturday evening, when officers had begun deploying tear gas several hours before curfew.
They marched east on Colfax, past boarded-up businesses and watchful officers, including some on rooftops. Around 8:30 p.m., police began firing tear gas at demonstrators in the area of Colfax and Washington Street.
People scream and scatter and all you can see on Colfax is gas, and then this police vehicle emerges. pic.twitter.com/BzgrBQvOxh
— Alex Burness (@alex_burness) June 1, 2020
With eye-burning gas coming from both sides, marchers on Colfax hacked and coughed. Someone lit a fire inside a dumpster. Glass could be heard shattering at, or near, a 7-Eleven store.
A man lied on the ground, seriously hurt. He was talking as blood pooled on the pavement. Bystanders said he had been shot in the head with either a tear-gas canister or some other kind of projectile.
Marchers who’d doubled back on Colfax were met at Clarkson Street by a line of police, who forced the crowd south into the neighborhood. The demonstrators struck out for the Capitol, then hundreds marched after 10 p.m. to the Denver Police Department’s headquarters at 13th and Cherokee streets — where police were waiting.
Some protesters knelt to the ground, others were shouting, and a few threw bottles toward officers. Police in riot gear responded with billowing sprays of tear gas and a barrage of foam bullets, a stepped-up show of force that scattered the demonstrators. One Denver Post reporter was shot four times, including in the head, with the large foam slugs, despite shouting “Press!” at the police.
An hour later, demonstrators were gathered back at the Capitol, where police once more deployed clouds of tear gas and explosions were audible as the crowd again fled.
Pazen, in an interview with Denver’s 7News on Sunday night, said his officers’ use of force came after demonstrators threw “rocks, bottles, fireworks and explosives” at them.
As midnight approached, the larger crowds of demonstrators finally seemed to have dispersed from downtown as another long day of protests wound down.
Outside agitators blamed
Earlier Sunday afternoon, as the demonstration swelled to at least 1,000 people, groups of people at times stood outside the Capitol building chanting “Don’t shoot!” and “I can’t breathe!” — echoing the words of both Floyd and Eric Garner, a black man who died after a New York City police officer put him in a choke hold in 2014.
Demonstrators gathered in Civic Center Park, some shouting obscenities at Pazen and Mayor Michael Hancock as they held a news conference nearby. The city officials ignored the jeers.
A protester who was hit with tear gas says he saw a man knocked unconsious. I saw a limp person being carried away from police by two other people.
— Shelly Bradbury (@ShellyBradbury) June 1, 2020
Hancock and Pazen urged calm, continuing to suggest that the violence that broke out over the previous three nights could be blamed on a small number of agitators.
Police arrested 83 people on charges they violated Saturday’s curfew, which was in effect again from 8 p.m. Sunday to 5 a.m. Monday. Those arrested were not publicly identified, and city officials have not provided specific evidence to support their allegations that outsiders are inciting violence.
Officers on Sunday also arrested a person who is accused of smashing their car into a Denver police vehicle the night before, injuring three officers — including one who remained hospitalized — and a person they were in the process of taking into custody. Police have not yet publicly identified that suspect.
Hancock, in an appearance on CNN on Sunday morning, said police have “intercepted, quite frankly, groups that are coming into Denver. We have confiscated weapons including assault weapons that were headed to the demonstrations.”
Sunday night #GeorgeFlyodProtests in Denver @denverpost pic.twitter.com/DLtcwHbswI
— RJ Sangosti (@RJSangosti) June 1, 2020
Later Sunday, Denver police tweeted that they’d arrested six people that day on weapons charges, and shared photos of a knife, machete, handgun, hammer and a baseball bat affixed with metal spikes.
“You don’t show up at peaceful demonstrations with assault weapons, handguns, baseball bats, golf (clubs) and flash-bang bottles with the intent of being peaceful,” Hancock said during the interview.
Jason Dunn, the U.S. attorney for Colorado, announced Sunday that, at the direction of U.S. Attorney General William Barr, his office will work with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate any potential violations of federal law connected to the protest activity in Denver.
“The last few days have seen protests in Denver hijacked by criminal elements, who have turned these protests into violent riots in our own communities,” Dunn said in a prepared statement.
Pointing fingers at police
Denver’s police chief on Sunday afternoon defended his officers’ use of tear gas, pepper balls and other “less lethal” forms of ammunition on people during the first three nights of demonstrations in the city.
“Active aggression is that threshold to use tear gas,” Pazen said, citing the department’s use-of-force guidelines. “And somebody throwing rocks, a few agitators throwing rocks, individuals that hide under the veil of peaceful protest and create criminal and assaultive behavior, must be addressed.”
But many of the demonstrators, including Emily Graham, have been sharply critical of Denver police, saying officers’ use of chemical agents often has been unprovoked. Graham said she’s been out with the marchers for several days and has been shot by projectiles and gassed. She said the worst she’s seen protesters do is throw plastic water bottles at officers.
“I think there’s a big difference between harming bodies and harming property,” she said of the vandalism at the Capitol and downtown. “I think that the police presence in full riot gear and throwing tear gas is more violent than a little spray paint.
“This is peaceful protesting and it’s met all around the country with violence. Unprovoked violence from the police. That’s exactly why we’re here.”
8 p.m. howl. Someone shouts, "Protect your eyes!" pic.twitter.com/KeR7AMkg5J
— Shelly Bradbury (@ShellyBradbury) June 1, 2020
Maya Johnson, who said she knew Elijah McClain, the 23-year-old who died after a struggle with Aurora police last year, echoed Graham’s perspective, saying events on Saturday escalated due to the police, not the demonstrators.
“It was a peaceful rally until the other side became the aggressor towards the protesters,” she said. “It started as something peaceful and no one was fighting.”
On Saturday night, Denver police officers in riot gear fired tear gas, flash-bangs, pepper balls and sponge bullets at hundreds of protesters who ignored the city’s 8 p.m. emergency curfew, announced by the mayor earlier in the day after two prior nights of protest and violence.
Marching and cleaning up
As the mayor’s news conference ended around 3 p.m. Sunday, a large crowd marched out to Speer Boulevard to the call-and-response chant of “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” Once they reached the Denver Center for Performing Arts, many protesters got down on their stomachs with their hands behind their backs and chanted “I can’t breathe!” for nine minutes in honor of Floyd.
Shawn Gladys, 23, said he turned out to Denver’s rally on Sunday because he is of mixed race, a “white black man and a black white man.”
“I can’t have mixed grandkids and tell them I sat around on Facebook,” he said.
Crowd plans to chant "I can't breathe" for nine minutes to honor George Floyd. pic.twitter.com/YYCcWJCfjC
— Shelly Bradbury (@ShellyBradbury) May 31, 2020
Chauncey Session, 30, said she had never been to a protest before, but wanted to be a part of this one.
“It’s history,” she said. “Kids get shot for no reason by the police and it’s been going on for years.”
Throughout the day, some people around the Capitol picked up trash from earlier protests while city crews and volunteers tried to scrub off graffiti. Profane spray-painted messages were still visible on the outer walls of many city buildings. One bit of graffiti said, “All pigs go to hell.”
Reilley Bray scrubbed the exterior of the Capitol building, saying she’d marched with the protesters for two days but on Sunday decided to remove graffiti instead. She wiped away spray paint that read “Kill them all.”
“The violent aggression that comes in the evenings is destroying the Capitol and the city I love,” she said, adding that there is a marked difference between the peaceful daytime protests and the violence that happens after dark.
As elsewhere around the country, the protests in Denver were spurred by the death of Floyd on Memorial Day after a Minneapolis police officer placed his knee on Floyd’s neck and pinned him to the ground for nearly nine minutes while the man pleaded that he could not breathe.
That officer has been charged with third-degree murder.
