D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department is pushing back against Students for Life of America’s (SFLA) version of events over the weekend that led to the arrest of two of its activists outside of a local Planned Parenthood facility.
SFLA said it applied for an event permit that included a request to paint “Black Preborn Lives Matter” on the street outside of Planned Parenthood Whitehill Moses Center.
The organization claims that MPD granted them a permit to gather at Planned Parenthood and, in a separate conversation, verbally told them they would not be prevented from painting their message on the street.
But MPD public affairs specialist Alaina Gertz told Fox News that the department “did not issue a permit to put a message on the street.”
Gertz added that MPD didn’t have “any information to corroborate the statement that the group was told they would not be stopped from painting.”
According to SFLA spokesperson Kristi Hamrick, both SFLA’s permit request and a separate letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser stated the group’s intent was to paint on the street outside Planned Parenthood.
