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Though the bar’s employees and management were technically outside after curfew, police have admitted in other instances that the curfew was selectively applied. After police finished their search, they demanded that the group return inside and lock the door.īlazing Saddle employee Logan Murley was also arrested along with the protesters he was trying to assist outside of the bar and eventually charged with a “failure to disperse.” According to Murley, the order to disperse was given to him moments before he was told to get on the ground. He was then brought outside and detained by police along with one of the bar owners, Bryan Smith bar manager Ryan Dennis and a bartender.
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Two officers demanded he return to the upper floor, where he was roughly patted down at gunpoint. He fled to the basement to hide when they came in.
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“Literally all of a sudden, TWO trucks packed with police officers in full armor with big fucking guns (I have never seen a two-handed gun in person in my entire life) stormed the front of our bar in seconds,” he wrote.Īccording to Isaac, police did not announce a reason for why they entered. He was outside helping distribute water bottles and providing first aid to protesters when police arrived on the scene and demanded they stop. Isaac, the assistant show director at The Blazing Saddle (whose full name the Informer is withholding for privacy concerns), posted a harrowing account of the police raid on Facebook. They were drawn outside to tend to injuries sustained by demonstrators who, just moments prior, had been assaulted with chemical crowd-control weapons at the Capitol building in an unprovoked attack. and detaining those gathered outside.Įmployees had been inside after the establishment closed at 8 p.m, an hour before the curfew implemented for Polk County in response to the protests took effect for the night. Video from a security camera made public on Facebook shows officers in riot gear converging suddenly on the bar at approximately 11:45 p.m. He demanded me to put my arms up and turn around, when he frisked me, quite aggressively.On June 1, amid ongoing Black Lives Matter protests on the first day of LGBTQ Pride Month, Des Moines police approached The Blazing Saddle, a gay bar in Des Moines’ East Village neighborhood, and searched the premises - apparently without a warrant. “I put my hands up and was told to come upstairs. “I proceeded to the bottom of the stairs where I was met with an officer with a flashlight and a pistol in hand pointed down at me. Two cops began searching inside the bar, to whom Vana B flagged her location. Vana B claimed her “instinct was to run”, so she curved back into the bar’s basement to hide under a shelf. “I have never seen a two-handed gun in person in my entire life,” she reflected, telling how officers “stormed the front of our bar in seconds.” Three arrested for ‘helping people in agonising pain’, claims witness.Ī 25-minute-long surveillance camera video shows officers emptying out the club. Vana B, a showgirl, described how she and other staffers began administering first aid, stressing that she and none of the workers had attended the protests that night. Riot officers then spilt out, spurring the protesters to scatter towards Blazing Saddle. “We also had bottles of water and towels available for use if needed,” they added, noting that protesters trickled down Locust and E 5th Street as police trailed behind in unmarked pick-up trucks.