At the end of the March for Our Lives, the police, who were allowing protestors to move into a designated protest pen outside of Madison Square Garden, created a conflict as they used interlocking metal barricades to split the March for Our Lives in half. This police action created the first real conflict of the week as protestors attempted to prevent the police from erecting barricades and attempted to dismantle the barricades once they were put up.
Although it was not entirely clear why the police decided to split the march in half, it seems to have been done to prevent a boisterous section of the march playing drums and waving pink anarchist flags from nearing the final barricade before Madison Square Garden. Once people began to try to prevent the barricades from being created, the police moved more officers into the crowd including a contingent of undercover motorcycle cops that charged the crowd. While there are reports of pepper spray being used to disperse the crowd, the NYPD primarily relied on brute force to suppress and disperse the crowd—pushing with their batons, hitting peoples’ hands as they tried to knock over barricades, and driving motorcycles into people. The police eventually cleared the entire “free speech zone,” an area that is supposed to be set aside for legal protests during the RNC.
