Center City Antifa counter-protest to Blue Lives Matter march ends in arrests

The pair of protests overlapped on Saturday

Protesters at the intersection of Broad and Arch streets, demanded an end to the police stop-and-frisk program and called for the Berks County Residential Center, a family detention center operated by ICE, to be shut down, Tuesday, July 31, 2018.
Thom Carroll/PhillyVoice

Protesters at an Antifa counter-protest in response to a Blue Lives Matter march were arrested near City Hall on Saturday, according to multiple reports.

The Blue Lives Matter protest began at Independence Hall and was aimed down Arch Street towards Logan Square, WHYY’s Darryl C. Murphy noted from the scene.

As is evident from Murphy’s videos, and this photo from Bastiaan Slabbers for WHYY, the march had a substantial police presence along its path:

At some point late in the morning, a counter protest began at City Hall, according to WHYY’s Taylor Allen who was on the scene:

Once police arrived on the scene, the scene between protestors and police seemed to grow tense, according to Allen’s reporting, including at one point a chant about killing cops:

And then, Allen reported, arrests began:

Among the Blue Lives Matter march crowd was Republican nominee for U.S. Congress Bryan Leib. Leib is running in Pa.’s 3rd District.

The demonstrations ended a little after mid-day, according to Murphy.


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