Trump's Federal Fun Police Spent Weekend Pissing Off DC, Here Are Some Photos!
Making Sundown Laws Great Again.
Over the weekend, almost 2,000 masked and unidentified federal agents fanned out across Washington DC to harass and arrest people for largely petty crimes, or no crimes.
Like those federal agents, I spent Friday and Saturday roaming the U Street corridor, a stretch of this 10-mile-wide city that has grown into a bustling bar district over the last 15 to 20 years.
The basic scene worked like this: a Washington Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) cruiser would tool around patroling the street, just like any other weekend. If the cruiser stopped to investigate something or someone, another car behind it would stop too. MPD would hop out of their cruiser, and a second car full of masked and unmasked Homeland Security (HSI) would pop out. A moment later, a car full of masked FBI agents would show up too. HSI seemed to perform the actual searches and "investigations," and MPD — the agency with the authority and power to make most general arrests (for now) — would take that person into custody.
People on the streets screamed that it was a ridiculous show of force and waste of taxpayer dollars.
Because this is Washington DC, a number of these stop-and-shakedown fishing expeditions happened in front of the public, and members of the press. And this greatly annoyed the hell out of federal agents.
Was it because these highly trained public servants were being ordered to patronize and annoy people in the very same bar districts they would otherwise be hanging out in on any other weekend? Was it because they were afraid their families would see these photos, and be ashamed? Did they now feel personally responsible for perpetuating America's lunge into an authoritarian state ruled by wealthy crackpots, religious zealots and bigots?
When one man and his friends were pulled over shortly after 2 a.m. on Saturday, a crowd began to form. It wasn’t exactly clear what anyone was looking for as HSI tore through his car. An MPD officer sighed and rolled his eyes, and the FBI agents — relegated to crowd control — stood around looking bored. The driver and his partner posed for cameras and said, “Fuck the police.”
Earlier in the night, I watched a group of teenagers standing on U Street suddenly get mobbed by cops and agents.
"What the fuck," yelled one kid. "It's fucking illegal to stand on the street now?"
About a dozen cops and federal agents surrounded the kids and started demanding answers to inaudible questions. The kids kept trying to walk down the street. It wasn't until agents saw me step out of the shadows with my camera that they left the kids alone.
This kind of interaction became fairly standard throughout the course of the evening: if you were getting hassled, and a journalist or person(s) with a phone emerged to document the interaction, you were probably about to be let go. Federal agents, it would seem, did not want anything to be documented by a third party.
A reporter and anchor with the local Fox affiliate also witnessed the whole thing and recorded. They narrated the obvious, as TV journalists tend to do, and followed the kids as they walked quickly down the street. He tried to interview them, but they refused to go on camera. When he asked me, the only other witness, I did a quick stand-up for him where I concluded by saying something to the extent of, "I didn't know it was a crime to be standing on the street."
As of this writing, he still hasn't posted the footage, and the station hasn't reported on it. The affiliate is parroting the administration's claim that almost 250 arrests were made, though it’s not very clear what those arrests were. Considering this past weekend is when college students started flooding back into the city, and the struggling bars, it might be important.
The whole scene has pissed off enough of the city’s residents that a hastily arranged protest Saturday drew a few thousand people to march on the White House, despite the miserable heat and humidity.
As the marchers rounded the eastern entrance to Pennsylvania Avenue, I watched as a gaggle of Trump-supporting tourists in MAGA hats shielded their faces from cameras and protesters. Scuttling away, a man gripped his son tightly with chubby fingers and muttered, “No respect! I can’t believe this.”
"Nope,” I said to him while lighting a cigarette. “Neither can they.”
