As the Nationals game against the Philadelphia Phillies got underway Friday night, thousands of Major League Baseball fans streamed into Nationals Park in Washington as they would for any other game.
Outside the stadium gates, young people packed into picnic tables outside bars and restaurants, enjoying a warm and muggy Friday night as vendors hawked water, sausages and merchandise.
There weren’t any federal law enforcement agents around as the game began, as far as this reporter could tell, and even the Metropolitan Police Department presence seemed fairly muted.
Two friends, Meredith Barnett, 45, and Kimberly O’Connor, 56, said they had come for the game but also for the Sam Hunt concert that was expected to start at the end of the ninth inning. The pair had come into the city from the Virginia suburbs. Ms. Barnett, a federal contractor, said she was supportive of the efforts President Trump had made to crack down on crime, which she said was a problem in Washington. Just the other day, she said, she saw a man being arrested in downtown Washington after he had tried to mug a woman in broad daylight.
“Cleaning up the city, getting rid of people doing bad things — I just don’t understand how anybody cannot support that,” Ms. Barnett said. “People are doing bad things — shooting people, robbing people.”
But both women said they weren’t personally concerned about their safety in the city on Friday night or other nights. They still go out at night, and they said it was always a good idea to be aware of one’s surroundings.
A little before 9 p.m., about an hour after the Navy Yard’s nightly youth curfew had gone into effect, a group of federal agents began a patrol of the area, walking slowly down Half Street. They weren’t there to enforce the curfew, one agent said, just conducting a normal patrol. The agents, most of whom wore masks over their mouths and noses, wore uniforms that identified them as members of the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. The group paused on a corner near the stadium’s entrance to pose for photos with a young boy and his parents and then continued on their way.
As the group of agents passed a bar, one woman sitting at a counter outside called out to them, mockingly. “Oh, scary,” she called. “Oh, the F.B.I. I’m scared.”
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