A protester who recorded members of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) while they removed tents at DC’s Black Lives Matter Plaza was briefly arrested and banned from the street, the NBC4 Washington reported.
The man who goes by the name “Dirty Knucklez” on social media shot many videos of the interactions between demonstrators and the DC police during the George Floyd protests.
As a person experiencing homelessness, he took his few possessions to the Black Lives Matter Plaza.
On Saturday morning, he took a video with his cell phone of DC police tearing down tents that were used by protesters to cover their food and coolers and spraying a chemical substance to disperse the crowd.
He was arrested the following day for carrying a dangerous weapon, which was a gardening knife. He said that he carried it for safety as a homeless person.
He told NBC4 Washington that the police seized his phone that he relies on for collecting donations through his Instagram account.
The judge granted the request that he be given a stay-away order from Black Lives Matter Plaza.
DC Council member Charles Allen has asked the DC police chief for comment about the “tent incident.”
On June 5, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that she renamed the section of 16th Street in front of the White House as “Black Lives Matter Plaza” in a rebuke to President Donald Trump after he ordered authorities to forcibly clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square for a photo op outside St. John’s Episcopal Church.
Bowser had also unveiled a mural painted onto the street leading up to the White House reading “Black Lives Matter” in giant yellow letters.
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