As White Nationalist in Charlottesville Fired, Police ‘Never Moved’
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — As demonstrators clashed near a downtown park here two weeks ago, a white nationalist protester in a bulletproof vest turned, pointed a pistol toward the crowd and fired a single shot at the ground, in the direction of a black man wielding an improvised torch.
To make his escape, a video recording shows, the armed protester strolled past a line of about a dozen state police troopers who were safely positioned about 10 feet away behind two metal barricades. None of them budged.
“We all heard it and ran — I know damn well they heard it,” said Rosia Parker, a community activist in Charlottesville. “They never moved.”
Police had a suspect in the shooting in custody on Saturday morning, according to an official familiar with the investigation, who requested anonymity to provide information not yet public. But residents are still demanding to know why officers did not act in real time as heavily armed people fought and a car sped toward a crowd, killing a woman. So stark was the police failure to intervene, many participants in the protest and counterprotests believe it was by design.
Now, as white-power organizations declare their intentions to rally in cities around the country, police departments are looking to Charlottesville for hints on how to keep the peace — and what mistakes to avoid. Charlottesville, too, is seeking answers. The city announced on Friday that it had hired a former United States attorney to evaluate the planning and response to three white supremacist events in the city this year. The final rally, a show of power by white supremacist groups, was ostensibly held to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general.
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Officials have insisted that no “stand down” order was issued, and a state police spokeswoman said troopers did not hear the shot. But many people suspect the inaction was deliberate, because just a month earlier, the police were heavily criticized for responding harshly at a Ku Klux Klan rally where anti-Klan protesters were sprayed with tear gas and arrested.
On the day of the “Unite the Right” rally, Aug. 12, only eight arrests were made, even with 125 local officers, hundreds of National Guard troops, the state police and neighboring police agencies present. Those arrested included James A. Fields, the driver who has been charged with murder in the death of Heather D. Heyer.
Investigators are also close to making arrests in the case of DeAndre Harris, 20, a local teacher’s aide and African-American who was beaten with a metal pipe and slabs of wood in a parking garage just a few yards from Police Headquarters, the city manager, Maurice Jones, said.
The police chief and mayor declined requests to be interviewed.
Mr. Jones said the police had developed two “tactical mobile force contingency plans” that were to be used as “quick responders” to skirmishes and fights that were popping up throughout downtown. The officers were instructed to “respond to fights directly” and to make arrests in teams and squads, he said.
“We saw plenty of video of officers stepping in to de-escalate situations,” Mr. Jones said.
He stressed that the city had tried to prevent the rally, but that a federal judge had ordered the city to grant the permit. But even a member of the City Council asked the city manager and the police chief why there was an “apparent unwillingness of officers to directly intervene during overt assaults.”
The city did not use a number of security measures recommended by the state police, said Brian Moran, Virginia’s secretary of public safety and homeland security, including a ban on weapons and sticks of all kinds. The state also proposed designating parking areas, busing protesters and cutting off traffic for at least 10 blocks. None of that happened, he said. Mr. Jones said city laws had prevented officials from enacting some of the restrictions that the state suggested.
Mr. Moran said there may have been a 15-minute gap when skirmishes took place and troopers did not respond, because it took some time for them to suit up in riot gear.
Even so, he declined to criticize the response.
“If you stop the clock at 1:30, there were 13 minor injuries, no property damage and no one killed by a firearm,” Mr. Moran said, citing the time just before Ms. Heyer’s death.
But organizers, participants and counterprotesters said they had felt abandoned.
A 25-year-old woman named Kendall, who asked that her last name not be used because she did not want to be targeted, said she had been chanting at the white-power protesters when one of them punched her, bloodying her nose.
“I moved quickly to the police and said: ‘A man attacked me! Please help me! I need your help. He’s right there!’” she said. “They didn’t move a muscle. Only a few of them had the courage to make eye contact with me.”
Ézé Amos, a photographer from Nigeria who lives in Charlottesville, had a similar experience, he said, when he moved in for a close-up of a man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Adolf Hitler’s face. The man punched the camera, hitting Mr. Amos’s face, he said.
“This happened right in front of the cops,” Mr. Amos said. “I said, ‘Hey, this man just assaulted me!’ The officer said, ‘Well I didn’t see it.’ I told him, ‘Everybody just saw it!’”
The officer took down Mr. Amos’s name.
“I am a black man photographing this. I kept telling myself, ‘If it gets out of hand, the cops will jump in and save me,’” he said. “I saw a white woman get hit, and they did not do anything. That’s when I actually got really scared of the whole thing.”
It was clear the police were acting with specific instructions, he said.
“Somebody is not telling us what happened,” Mr. Amos said. “Those cops did not just decide to fold their arms and watch this happen.”
The organizers of the rally said the police had unilaterally changed details that they spent weeks negotiating, such as how they would safely enter and exit the park.
“They didn’t follow through on any part of their plan,” said one of the coordinators, who goes by the name Eli Mosley. “They threw the whole thing away without telling us.” The changes involved every aspect of logistics, he said, including where counterprotesters would be, which streets would be blocked and how V.I.P.s would enter.
Mr. Mosely, an event coordinator for Identity Evropa, a white separatist group, said he believed that the city strategy was an attempt to stifle the rise of what has been called the “alt-right.”
“Looking back, we think it was nefarious,” he said. “The local government is very left wing, and they didn’t want anyone protesting the statue coming down.
“I believe this was somewhat of a trap in some ways,” he added. “We went there peacefully and were attacked, because we were forced to get past that gauntlet of counterprotesters.”
City officials have repeatedly said it was the protesters who did not honor the advance arrangements, which made it difficult to keep the two sides apart.
Richard B. Spencer, one of the headliners who was scheduled to speak at the event, went so far as to blame the city for Ms. Heyer’s death.
“The City of Charlottesville could have prevented that death if they had done their job, and that is to police the streets,” he said.
The city will not release a copy of the action plan devised to manage the demonstration because it contains “tactical and operational plans that could be used again,” said Miriam Dickler, the city spokeswoman.
The city has hired Timothy J. Heaphy, the former United States attorney for the Western District of Virginia, to conduct an independent review of three white supremacist events, including the “Unite the Right” rally and the Klan rally. Officials urged residents to come forward with firsthand accounts of crimes that went ignored.
At least one account — the video of the man firing the gunshot with troopers nearby — was shot by someone at the rally and submitted to law enforcement agencies, including the F.B.I.
Corinne Geller, a spokeswoman for the state police, said in an email that the troopers had not heard the shot because it had been “muffled by the loud volume of the crowd yelling and chanting, drums and music.” Another video shows that the gunshot was clearly audible even from inside the park, where dozens more state police troopers were posted.
“Had any one of our troopers witnessed that incident,” Ms. Geller said, “they would have immediately acted just as they did for the other four arrests made during the weekend.”
S. Lee Merritt, an attorney for Mr. Harris, the man who was beaten in the parking garage, said he was surprised to hear the city manager say arrests would be made soon. “I define soon as two weeks ago,” Mr. Merritt said.
On Wednesday, Chris Cantwell, a white supremacist who was featured in a Vice documentary about the “Unite the Right” rally, turned himself in for three felony charges resulting from a pepper-spray attack. Witnesses said it had taken place in front of police officers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/25/us/charlottesville-protest-police.html
