Police declared an unlawful assembly Thursday night in Beverly Hills and made several arrests during a protest.
The demonstration, organized by Black Future Project, started at 6:30 p.m. by Beverly Hills High School at the intersection of Moreno Drive and Lasly Drive, according to the group’s Instagram post.
Demonstrators were demanding “that all schools in LA County receive equitable access to educational funding regardless of their zipcode,” the social media post said.
About 75 people marched through the streets, eventually blocking traffic on North Santa Monica Boulevard near Linden Drive, according to the Beverly Hills Police Department. Some protesters were sitting on the street.
The department declared an unlawful assembly.
“The protesters who failed to comply with multiple dispersal orders were arrested,” the department said in a news advisory.
Sky5 was overhead as several people were being arrested. It was not clear how many people had been taken into custody.
Some demonstrators could be seen sitting or laying on the street, refusing to get up. Officers carried people onto an L.A. County jail bus that was brought to the scene to transport arrestees.
In an Instagram post earlier Thursday, organizers encouraged participants to bring their citations if they’ve previously been arrested while protesting.
“We’ll be collectively destroying our citations as an act of defiance against anti-protesting ordinances,” the post said. “They can call their rules whatever they want: curfews, gathering ordinances, they’re all attempts at suppressing our freedom of speech and our right to assemble! Protesting is not a crime!”