Police outnumber demonstrators at inauguration event in S.C.
Police officers are the only people seen at the South Carolina Statehouse on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, in Columbia. The capitol was closed for safety concerns for President Joe Biden's inauguration.
COLUMBIA (AP) — Police officers and journalists outnumbered demonstrators Wednesday at the South Carolina Statehouse, which was closed to the public because of security reasons.
About a dozen people, both for and against new President Joe Biden, stood on the sidewalk in front of the capitol as Biden was sworn in at noon.
More than 40 officers scatted across the Statehouse grounds watched them with others staged nearby after the FBI warned of possible violence at state capitols across the nation on Inauguration Day following a mob breaking into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as Congress formalized Biden's win.
It was a much smaller crowd than eight years ago when the public ceremony around former President Barack Obama's second inauguration happened on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in 2013.
Thousands at the state NAACP's annual civil rights celebration at the Statehouse paused to watch Obama take the oath of office again.