
Around a dozen animal rights activists were arrested for heckling truck drivers who were just trying to make their deliveries during a protest outside a meat processing plant in North Carolina on Thursday afternoon.
The incident occurred on February 1st at the Smithfield packing plant off of Highway 87 in Tar Heel, North Carolina.
According to local paper Bladen-Journal, the crowd of protesters gathered at a traffic light outside the meat packing plant, wielding signs with slogans such as “Meat is Murder,” and “Smithfield kills 35,000 pigs a day,” as well as chanting “shut it down!” over and over again.
Police officers attempted to keep the protesters out of the roadway as they shot water at the semi trucks and approached the trailers in an attempt to “say goodbye” to the animals, but the officers soon lost control, and witnesses say at least 12 protesters ended up in handcuffs.
“He was on the ground, and they [officers] punched him in his face. Five officers were in control of him, so he was no danger to anyone. We have it on video,” said protest spokesman Dacia Thorston about the arrest of one protester, Anthony Collini.
“This is a totally different atmosphere than what we normally see… I just went to one not long ago, and it was a calm, peaceful feeling, almost Ghandi-like. Not like this at all,” said Sean Monson, a filmmaker who attended the protest as research for his vegan documentary.
Witnesses say that one of the protesters under arrest may have even reached for the officer’s gun.
Soon after the arrests were made, law enforcement implored the group of protesters to choose an end time for their protest so that officers could plan to escort the group safely across the highway and back to their vehicles without further issue, but the group began disbursing on its own around 4:00 p.m.
Check out the wild video of the protest and arrests in the footage below.