him not guilty? reporter: well, that is exactly what people are upset about. the idea that that gun could only have one person s dna on it. there s video involved, as well. the officers heard saying i m going to kill that n word and then the shooting happened. so how do you have that happen and then you see maybe a gun coming out of that bag? that s what people think. the judge says that wasn t proven by the prosecution at all. if you look back in this direction, protesters have gathered. they ve been marching up and down the street. you can see the iconic arch in the distance there. and you can see young men carrying assault rifles through the street. that s not against the law because this is an open carry state, but people are walking around with guns. this has remained peaceful except for one skirmish between the police and protesters. police say they had rocks and water bottles thrown at them.
and the crowd shouting back. that actually keeps them sort of motivated. we do know there are perhaps 10,000 people who are coming out here to protest in various forms. it s likely but not certain, anti trump groups, anti-fascist groups, all different stripes of all different people coming out. they will start to gather in different parts of the city in the next couple hours. some of them will be here. it is likely a lot of them will converge on this location later in the evening. phoenix police having the difficult job of trying to allow people their first amendment rights while keeping everyone safe. i should say there are some groups as well, at least reportedly on the conservative side of the right, who are saying, come down here, protect your rights, bring your guns. this is an open carry state.
leading other cities and states to remove their own confederate monuments. doug mckelway joins us now from charlottesville. have things calm down at all there? yes, they have come down tremendously since saturday. that is for certain. it is a sign of the simmering tension that just lie underneath the surface. this morning, we saw another provocative incident. the young man in his early 20s came to emancipation park. he was carrying a confederate flag, and he was having it draped around his shoulder, an assault rifle. it is an open carry state. you can have a weapon on your person as long as it is visible. he had an assault rifle over his shoulder. he stood quietly at the base of the lead statue. giving him the international symbol of goodwill calling him a racist and shouting and shame, shame, shame. the police stepped between those protesters and the young men.
three more people arrested as well, charged with disorderly conduct, misdemeanor assault, battery, carrying a concealed weapon. this got out of hand very, very quickly. this morning, peace in charlottesville and a very heavy police presence. i will talk to the mayor in a minute here. there s been some folks there questioning the police response yesterday. did they stand back too much? there was there were times when you were watching the video that we saw a lot of armed people but those weren t police. who were they? reporter: what s interesting is that some of the white nationalists and neo-nazis and kkk members apparently came here armed and prepared for battle. they were dressed in this almost paramilitary garb, if you will. they had body armor on. some veterans of the military say that some of that looks like it came out of the military. also, they were wearing helmets. they had shields, clubs. some of them were actually carrying weapons. keep in mind, this is an open carry
weekend simply was not sufficient to give them certainly that view. when the president says on many sides, on many sides, and he seemed to be ad libbing that phrase. what signal was he sending there? because you had one group coming in, they were mostly out of towners, as best we can tell, they were wearing uniforms, they had helmets, it s an open carry state. they had weapons many of them, their carrying confederate flags and swastikas, many of them. so obviously you can t say what everyone in a crowd is doing, but that s certainly what was portrayed and certainly with the friday night vigil as well. andrea, i think that was a clear signal, you re right, it was clearly ad libbed, it was meant to temper any sense of condemnation or specific identification of white supremacists, any effort to compare nazis to those who came because they believed in