Since Tuesday night, when a police officer shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte, the city has been awash with protests, largely peaceful but sometimes violent.
The situation grew so extreme that Charlotte declared a state of emergency and the Carolina Panthers considered relocating their game Sunday against the Minnesota Vikings.
When the team decided to play the game at Bank of America Stadium, protestors reportedly hatched a plan to block all entrances. To held mitigate against protests, the city of Charlotte classified Sunday’s game as an “extraordinary event.” Per ESPN:
According to the city’s news release, an extraordinary event is defined as a “large-scale event or an event of national or international significance which might attract a significant number of people to a certain geographic area of the city.”
The designation allows the city to “modify its permitting process for activities such as parades and specifies particular items that are prohibited from being brought into certain boundaries of the event.”
An extraordinary event also apparently means one in which police show up in riot gear to preempt any protests.
Police in riot gear now coming to the stadium pic.twitter.com/EEI42UWfPD
— Jonathan Jones (@jjones9) September 25, 2016
— Jonathan Jones (@jjones9) September 25, 2016
nothing will happen to jerome pic.twitter.com/YTTekFeLiS
— bomani (@bomani_jones) September 25, 2016
The protests in Charlotte have gotten more peaceful as the week has progressed, leading to optimism that the game would go on as planned without any trouble.
The game starts at 1 p.m. ET, and so far there has been no reported conflict outside the stadium, but we’ll see what happens as fans begin to arrive.
