Tomorrow marks round three of the national “No Kings” protests across the United States. These protests always raise concerns related to potential rioting and chaos, and with the Department of Homeland Security still shut down, those concerns are elevated.

Another major point of concern is the fact that many of these protests this weekend will be occurring not just in major cities, but also in small towns and municipalities across the state of Texas.

According to the official No Kings website, protests are planned in outlying municipalities like the city of Conroe and The Woodlands township north of Houston, as well as even smaller towns like La Grange, Brenham, and Navasota.

This creates even more potential for chaos, with former Houston Police Department Captain Dr. Greg Fremin explaining: “The great fear a lot of these local municipalities—the smaller ones—have is their officers aren’t trained for massive crowd control events. They just don’t have that.”

There is good news for smaller towns with neighboring big cities, specifically those that make up the Greater Houston Area. They can ask larger agencies like HPD for help. “They know that they’re gonna be having this scheduled event,” Fremin said. “I can tell you right now that the wheels are turning on planning, and they’re gonna be reaching out to other agencies, even DPS.”

Overall, Fremin doesn’t expect things to get too out of hand anywhere in Texas, primarily because we already have a strong reputation for being a law-and-order state.

KTRH Local Houston and Texas News