Denver arrests No Kings protests

By Lauren Penington
The Denver Post

(The Denver Post) Eleven people were arrested in downtown Denver during a wave of secondary marches after Saturday afternoon’s main “No Kings” protest disbanded, police said.

A group of protesters marching west on Sixth Avenue through traffic at about 6:45 p.m. Saturday tried to access Interstate 25 near Santa Fe Drive, a spokesperson for the Denver Police Department said in an email to The Denver Post.

Denver officers made several loudspeaker announcements declaring the march an unlawful assembly and ordering the group to disperse, the spokesperson said.

After an unspecified amount of time, officers deployed smoke to scatter the crowd and arrested three people on suspicion of unreleased charges, according to the department. Officials denied using other means to disperse protesters, including firing pepper balls.

Another eight protesters were arrested during other secondary marches, police said. One person was arrested during the main “No Kings” event earlier that day for possession of a knife.

Police said Sunday that the 12 protesters arrested Saturday were still being processed. The arrestees’ suspected offenses include assault, assault on a peace officer, graffiti and “other municipal offenses.”

It’s unclear how many people were arrested in each category. None of the arrestees had been publicly identified as of Sunday.

The dozen people arrested were a fraction of the thousands estimated to have marched through Denver on Saturday in protest of the policies and actions of President Donald Trump and his administration.

An unknown number of protesters marched in more than 50 cities and towns across Colorado, rallying against Trump’s deployment of federal agents and military forces into U.S. cities, targeting of immigrant families and threats to the country’s integral democratic systems.