D.C. Police Arrested Five Times More BLM Protesters Than Capitol Building Rioters

On June 1, Washington, D.C. police arrested more than 300 Black Lives Matter protesters during marches against police brutality.

Last Wednesday, when Trump supporters overran the Capitol with zip-cuffs and the intent to kill members of Congress, only 61 were arrested, and on less serious charges, according to a CNN analysis.

“We are a city that deals with mass demonstrations all the time,” Monica Hopkins, the ACLU of D.C.’s executive director, told CNN. “For any law enforcement agency in this city to say they were caught flat-footed or they didn’t know what was coming is just incredibly false.”

That 61 number also pales in comparison to more than 10,000 Black Lives Matter protesters from around the country that were arrested during nonviolent protests in early June.

Here’s what Alicia Garza, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, told CNN:

I think what the events of this week have shown us is that there have always been multiple Americas. There’s been an America that we read about in history books — a romantic America that is made of fairy tales. And then there’s America that some of us live in — an America where the rules have been rigged against us for a very long time. It’s an America where the rules around race and gender and class are fundamental, and they shape and impact people’s everyday lives. It’s also an America where we function under a particular sense of amnesia.