AUSTIN - Four months after brawls broke out at the Texas Capitol during a rally against Confederate monuments, state officials are enacting new safety procedures they say will prevent future violent confrontations.
The Texas Department of Public Safety put out a list of 21 items that will now be prohibited from the grounds of the Capitol, including open flame torches like the one's carried during deadly marches in Charlottesville, Va., last year.
Other items on the prohibited list:
- Firearms and other deadly weapons, except when authorized under License to Carry authority
- Improvised items used to lock a person to another person or object
- Plastic bottles containing alcohol or non-consumable substances
- Open flame torches
- Metal signs
- Metal, plastic, and wood objects longer than 12 inches
- Sticks or other objects with protruding nails
- Balloons not filled with air, oxygen or helium
- Bricks, stones or rocks
- Projectile launchers, including water cannons
- Spray paint cans
- Gas masks or similar equipment
- Glass bottles
- Hammers
- Crow bars
- Toxic fluid, gas or solids in any container
- Improvised shields
- Helmets
- Drones
- Pepper spray
- Tasers
Also DPS officials said during protests people will be allowed to counter protest, "but within the Capitol Complex, they must do so at a distance sufficient to avoid physical altercations."
In September, a group called Dixie Freedom, had originally planned a rally near the state's Civil War monument. That rally was called off, but counter protesters still showed up. But the were greeted by their own counter protesters. When a bystander grabbed a bullhorn from one of the protesters, scuffles broke out as protesters tried to take back their bullhorn.
Jeremy Wallace writes about state politics and government for the Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter at @JeremySWallace.