Interim D.C. police chief lauds force’s handling of weekend demonstrations

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Despite skirmishes with protesters Friday, Newsham described his department’s handling of crowds during President Donald Trump’s inauguration and the Women’s March on Washington as “very successful” and said, “I couldn’t be more proud of the way this department responded.”

Meanwhile, D.C. police arrested a 30-year-old Florida man Saturday in connection with Friday’s anti-inauguration demonstrations in which several officers were injured, authorities said Sunday.

Police said Dane Powell, of Largo, Florida, was charged with assault on a police officer while armed. Powell allegedly threw at rock at officers, knocking one unconscious, then fled.

The incident occurred about 2 p.m. Friday at 12th and K streets NW, as dozens of demonstrators gathered near Franklin Square and police in riot gear blocked off multiple streets, authorities said. The incident came during late-morning mayhem as protestors set fires and hurled rocks, bricks and other objects at riot-clad police officers.

According to an incident report, Powell was seen throwing “what is believed to be a stone” at officers. Police said one officer was knocked unconscious when a rock hit his helmet.

“It dented the helmet and he was knocked out,” Newsham said Sunday, appearing on WTOP radio.

Newsham said six officers suffered “minor” injuries in Friday’s chaos, adding that “some of our officers suffered some pretty serious impact from those rocks.”

After Powell fled, police reviewed video footage and continued to search for him Saturday, eventually learning his identity, police said. Officers eventually found him in front of the Fifth District Police Department and arrested him, police said.

Friday night, after the inauguration, Newsham told reporters than 217 demonstrators had been arrested during the mayhem near 13th and K streets NW.

In praising the department’s crowd-control efforts, especially during the melee, Newsham said officers “maintained their calm. They only used force when it was necessary to control aggressive crowds. They allowed for peaceful demonstrations throughout the city. I was very, very pleased.”

He said: “We had very, very large demonstrations on Friday throughout the city, and the largest majority of those demonstrations were very peaceful.” However, near 13th and K, “we had a small of group of folks that had an intention of coming to Washington, D.C., and breaking the law. … And all the police officers were outstanding in the judgment that they used. They used the least amount of force necessary to bring those folks safely and respectfully into custody. I couldn’t be more proud of the way this department responded.”

Witnesses, including Washington Post journalists, saw police officers throw flash or concussion grenades in trying to bring the crowd under control during Friday’s violence, which occurred on the street outside the Post’s newsroom. Just as Newsham on Friday did not acknowledge that his officers had hurled grenades, he indicated Sunday that the issue was still under investigation as part of his department’s “after-action” inquiry.

“We’re going to look into every detail,” he said on WTOP. “We’re going to do an after-action on everything we did, look into every instance where a use of force was made, look at the planning, look at the staging of our folks, see if that was the way to do it. The goal when you do an after-action is to make sure every single time we do something like this, that we learn.

“I don’t know exactly right now where we could have been gotten better,” Newsham said. “But we do a very thorough review to make sure next time we have an event, we can be that much better.”

(c) 2017, The Washington Post · Faiz Siddiqui, Paul Duggan

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