Hundreds of Black Lives Matters protestors gathered in Gettysburg’s Lincoln Square Friday afternoon to highlight and denounce incidents of police brutality against African-American people.
Whereas the protestors had had the square to themselves in their prior two demonstrations earlier this year, they were joined this time by a contingent of motorcycle riders, restaurant diners, as well as law enforcement vehicles from the Gettysburg Police, the National Park Service, and the Adams County Sheriff’s Office.
There was also a scattering of lone but highly visible people carrying rifles.
Traffic in and around the square ground to a halt during the Friday rush hour.
Although the expectations for conflict were high, and the authorities were prepared, the day ended peacefully.
“There was a great deal of yelling back and forth between the different ideologies and some complaint of obscene language, gestures and threatening behavior,” said Gettysburg Police Chief Robert Glenny. “There were no arrests.”
Glenny said although the initial plan was to handle the protest by placing only plainclothes officers on the square during the demonstration, a decision was made to move in uniformed officers after observing the heightened tensions between some of the groups.
“We felt a heavier visible police presence would prevent any real problems. We had always had a number of officers staged out of sight during each of the previous protests, we just never felt the need to deploy them before,” said Glenny.
Glenny said the organizers were cooperative but some of the participants, “not so much.”
The protest organizer Matthew J. Anselmi did not request a permit for the event, saying he did not believe in “in asking permission to exercise our most important constitutional right.”
Glenny said the organizers were advised that any additional scheduled protest would require a permit or enforcement action would be taken.
“We felt all in all the event went as well as could be expected from a policing prospective,” said Glenny. “There were no physical fights or altercations. Some obscene language bantered back and forth and there were a few complaints of threatening behavior but based on the potential for problems with such a volatile mix we thought it went fairly well.”
Charles (Chuck) Stangor is Gettysburg Connection's Owner, Publisher, and Editor in Chief. I would like to hear from you. Please contact me at cstangor@gettysburgconnection.org.
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