A protester is arrested by Metropolitan Police officers during a protest on June 1, 2020, in GETTY IMAGES
Dozens of protesters in Washington, D.C., took shelter in a private home on Monday night to escape arrest as officers cornered demonstrators on Swann Street in the city’s Dupont Circle neighborhood, hours after police fired tear gas and flash grenades to disperse peaceful demonstrators outside the White House.
“It was a human tsunami,” Rahul Dubey, a 44-year-old businessman who opened his door to protesters, told the Washington Post. “I was hanging on my railing, yelling, “Get in the house!”
Dubey told the Post that when he asked the police for help, they told him to go back inside the house or they would arrest him. “It feels like a hostage situation,” he said.
Around midnight, the police attempted to enter the home on the grounds that someone inside had dialed 911 to report a medical emergency, the Post reported, but protesters inside denied that and the police were not allowed in.
The protester also told WSUA9 that police had attempted to break through the backyard fence and convince the group that they could leave freely through the back alley.
Protests in D.C. over the death of George Floyd in police custody escalated Monday night after President Trump vowed to deploy the military if local officials aren’t able to stop the violence that has escalated amid a wave of protests over the death of the 46-year-old black man last week in Minneapolis. President Trump called himself an “ally of peaceful protesters” in a press conference on Monday in the White House’s Rose Garden, remarks that contrasted sharply with events outside the grounds minutes earlier, when National Guard military police and local police fired tear gas and flash grenades to disperse a group of peaceful demonstrators ahead of Trump’s photo op at St. John’s Church.
Navy Vet