Video footage shot in the nation’s capital appears to show a group of Trump supporters being locked inside their hotel by Metropolitan Police officers following Wednesday’s protests against the certification of electoral votes on Capitol Hill.
As the group of the President’s supporters watched from the hotel’s lobby, an officer wearing sergeant’s stripes can be seen shoving a bar between the two front doors in an effort to lock the group inside, before tauntingly waving at onlookers through a set of windows.
“That’s a fire hazard!” several can be heard shouting to no avail.
“Look at what Officer Weinfeld did for us,” a woman says, “he gave us a fire hazard.”
“Now we can’t get out,” a man then says.
The video, posted to Twitter Friday morning by The Red Elephants’ Vincent James, has quickly begun to go viral.
The police locked Trump supporters in their hotels in DC at night.
ACAF pic.twitter.com/KCTg7neyKg
— Yo Dat Elefent (@MrElefantes) January 8, 2021
As protestors gathered outside the nation’s Capitol building on Wednesday, D.C.’s Democrat Mayor, Muriel Bowser, issued a 6:00 P.M. curfew, reportedly ordering officers to arrest any persons found within a 6 block radius of the building or its grounds. Subsequently, Bowser declared a 15-day public emergency citywide, allowing for the use of martial law for the remainder of President Trump’s term in office.
According to a report from National File’s A.J. Cooke, Bowser’s plans to set up an arrest radius went out the window following the police shooting of Ashlee Babbitt, a protestor who had entered the United States Capitol building after Capitol Police officers opened the building’s doors, inviting a large group of demonstrators inside.
In the ensuing mayhem, a Capitol Police officer was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher, leading his death.
The Metropolitan Police Department responded to the Capitol, eventually deploying tear gas on protestors gathered outside.
Bowser’s Metropolitan Police Department’s response to the unrest has been called into question by conservatives nationwide, who have attempted to compare and contrast the Mayor’s response to long-term violence instigated in the city by Black Lives Matter and AntiFa members last summer. Some have also suggested that agitator members of the two militant groups were responsible for instigating violence at the Capitol, having infiltrated the crowd.
Previously, Bowser has offered her support to the far-left Black Lives Matter movement, renaming a stretch of 16th Street NW “Black Lives Matter Plaza” in honor of the group, while repeatedly lambasting President Trump and his supporters.