Do you know how many protest marches have occurred in Littleton recently regarding the current events, and have any of them turned violent or become riots?
Chief Douglas Stephens: So we haven’t had any violent protests occur in Littleton. We’ve been very fortunate. I think that speaks volumes to the Littleton community and the cohesiveness and support that they offer for all people. We did have an incident, not an incident, but a scheduled support march for social change that occurred a couple of weeks ago now. It was kind of a really interesting and unique experience for us as a law enforcement and for our community. We coordinated ahead of time with the organizer when they made us aware of the march they were going to have, and we wanted to make sure that we were able to provide traffic safety to make sure that folks could march peacefully and stay safe. Last thing we want is anybody get hit by a car, right?
So we coordinated with them ahead of time. They told us they expected maybe 75, 80 people. So we made plans to try to keep them on the sidewalk, but be prepared just in case the crowd grew a little bit. It was amazing. By the end of it, there were over a thousand people in that march, and they walked up some of our most prominent streets of Prince Street and then across over to the courthouse, where they had a peaceful demonstration or discussions, and it was a really positive event. I was there that night, and I was standing on a traffic post. I can’t tell you the number of people that came by. I didn’t know what to expect because you get all this stuff in the media about how angry everybody is and how anti-police they are. But that was not what we experienced here.
A thousand people. There was families. They were so nice. Thanked us for what we did. Encouraged us to keep open minds and to improve our own practices, which we totally support. So we’ve been very fortunate that one event is a big event. But it was ran very well by the organizers, and we were lucky that we were able to provide safety services for them during that event.