1/ Millions protested across the country for months after George Floyd's murder — and in protests in several cities, demonstrators were predominantly white.

But racism in policing, the issue at the center of the protests, meant that many Black protesters have paid a higher price

2/ Black people are more likely than White people to have criminal histories due to racial bias in policing, meaning some took greater risks when they chose to protest.

3/ Las Vegas resident Ricardo Densmore is one of those people.

He felt a call-to-action after watching the video of George Floyd being murdered by Minneapolis police.

4/ During a protest in Vegas in May, Densmore recorded 2 other protesters lighting a squad car on fire.

Federal prosecutors have not claimed that he actually set the fire. But a grand jury indicted him on 2 counts each of conspiracy and arson, along w/ 2 co-defendants.

5/ The 3 young men were swept up in a nationwide crackdown on the movement for Black lives led by Atty. Gen. William Barr, who pushed US attorneys to file charges against protesters.

Densmore has pleaded not guilty, but those charges could mean a minimum of 5 years in prison.

6/ As of November, prosecutors have initiated cases against at least 340 people, charging protesters for acts such as arson, theft, property damage and making threats online. https://revealnews.org/article/go-after-the-troublemakers/

7/ The aggressive push to prosecute protesters appears to be matched by an aggressive push to detain those defendants pretrial.

8/ With @typeinvestigate, we reviewed prosecutions by U.S. attorneys offices and found that more than 60 people arrested for acts of protest in the spring & summer were ordered detained pending trial, despite COVID-19 outbreaks inside the federal prison system and county jails.

9/ Often, judges denied a prosecutor’s request for pretrial detention. But in more than a dozen of those cases, prosecutors appealed the release order. Densmore’s case was one of them.

10/ In June, the U.S. attorney’s office in Nevada moved aggressively to keep Densmore detained until trial.

That month, COVID-19 was spreading rapidly through the facility where Densmore was detained.

11/ In our latest story — in collaboration with @typeinvestigate — we take a deep dive into how federal prosecutors hold protesters for months pretrial, in the midst of growing COVID-19 outbreaks. https://www.revealnews.org/article/federal-prosecutors-hold-protesters-for-months-pretrial/