Last week, a group of about 40 activists used their bodies and cars to block city officials from cleaning the site of a homeless encampment under Interstate 45 in South Dallas. Some of them carried rifles.

Then, on Monday, activists showed up again even though there weren’t city officials around. At least one man with a long gun could be seen from the street.

The freedom to criticize our government is one of the most important rights enshrined by our nation’s Constitution, but there is a line between protest and intimidation. Activists who physically interfered with the work of code enforcement officers should be investigated by police.

It’s clearly a scare tactic to bring a long gun to a protest against an encampment cleanup, and activists last week positioned themselves to prevent city workers from reaching the camp. Christine Crossley, the city’s director of homeless solutions, told us that city staff were alarmed by the presence of guns.

City spokeswoman Catherine Cuellar added: “The normalization of this behavior is making the work for city staffers and the city as a whole more dangerous.”

We cannot as a society tolerate people using weapons to frighten city employees who are merely trying to do their jobs. The city of Dallas gave camp residents advance notice that they would show up to clean the site, which is critical and time-consuming work necessary to make the camps safer and more sanitary for the people who live there.

More importantly, the cleanups are part of a broader outreach program by the city, nonprofits and other partners to lift up those stuck in persistent poverty. Since September, 971 people have been placed in homes through the Dallas Real Time Rapid Rehousing Initiative.

In this case, there were no immediate plans by the city to shut down the camp, according to city officials. City Hall’s overarching strategy involves proactively helping the people at the encampments with housing and resources and eventually removing the camps.

The most vulnerable in our city deserve more than a patch of dirt under a bridge. It’s inhumane to allow the encampments to continue indefinitely, and we are glad our city wants to address this problem in a productive way.

It’s intolerable for citizens to respond to policy decisions they don’t like by bringing rifles to a protest, which hints at the possibility of violence, and physically blocking government workers from doing their jobs.

Unfortunately, this kind of intimidation is aided by our state’s misguided open-carry law. Openly carrying long guns at protests and rallies is unnecessarily provocative and compromises public safety.

This is not how we make our voices heard or how we get problems fixed in this country.