Worthy Christian News > US News > Justice department has charged 150 people with committing crime during protests

Justice department has charged 150 people with committing crime during protests

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The Acting US Attorney for Washington DC said Thursday that the Justice Department has charged 150 people with committing criminal acts during protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd, the Washington Examiner reports. Prosecutor Michael Sherwin made the announcement during an interview with Fox News on Thursday.

In Thursday’s interview, Sherwin said the federal government had helped local authorities with charging cases of assault and battery. “Even though we don’t get a federal stat for those cases, there are hundreds of other cases the federal government has used to assist those local law enforcement agencies to ensure that, look, this violence will not be tolerated and it cannot be condoned in any way,” Sherwin said. “There is a difference between these crimes and legitimate protests,” he added.

Concerning which individuals or which groups are responsible for the violence, Sherwin said: “We have not identified, and this is a work in progress, to identify who is the command and control for some of these groups, but right now, there appears to be with some of these individuals, there’s a loose affiliation with some extremist groups on the left and on the right.”

In regard to the controversial issue of pulling down statues, Sherwin said four men had been charged with trying to bring down the statues of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square last month. “People can’t unilaterally decide what is right and what is wrong. And If those people do make that decision on their own and take the law into their own hands, the law will come after them and the United States will use federal resources to charge you if you’re inciting violence or destroying these monuments,” Sherwin said.

Sherwin stated he did not want to “pigeonhole any specific group” in regards to protest-related criminal acts and said “the FBI has looked at several extremist groups throughout the full spectrum.”