A report prepared by Timothy Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia whose law firm, Hunton & Williams, was hired by Charlottesville to assess the city’s response to Unite the Right rally held to oppose the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from Emancipation Park, concluded that the Charlottesville Police Department was “ill-prepared, lacked proper training and devised a flawed plan for responding to the rally in August. These factors lead to “disastrous results,” including the death of a counterprotester and many injuries. The report also criticized actions by the Charlottesville City Council, attorneys from the city and state, the University of Virginia and the Virginia State Police.
While this level of incompetence is something most Virginians are familiar with, on this day, almost everything that could have been mishandled was, the report concluded.
According to the text, Charlottesville City Council totally failed when it attempted to have the rally moved, even as the city’s lawyers told the council that the move would not survive a court challenge. This forced police to plan for rallies at two locations. “Their decision to take this important and difficult decision away from the arms of city government most equipped to evaluate and manage this event was a dangerous overreach with lasting consequences,” the report stated.
Other breakdowns, according to the report, included a failure by the city to keep the public informed and a misjudgment by city planners that they could not prohibit the carrying of sticks, shields and clubs by marchers and counterprotesters. It also pointed to a failure by law enforcement to ensure separation between protesters and counterprotesters, and a reluctance by police to intervene in violent incidents.
“People were injured in violent confrontations that could have been but were not prevented by police,” the report stated. “Some of the individuals who committed those violent acts escaped detection due to police inability or unwillingness to pursue them.”
Worse, the Charlottesville police and the Virginia State Police were not operating under a unified command and not using the same radio channel.
The report notes that police did nothing to stop or break up fights. Rally participants, including Kessler, a Charlottesville resident who organized the event, say they should have been protected by police to be able to exercise their First Amendment rights to speak at the park. After violence broke out, rallygoers, counterprotesters and observers all said the police stood by and watched while brawls took place in front of them.
“Early on Aug. 12, [Charlottesville police] had placed a school resource officer alone at the intersection of Fourth Street NE and Market Street,” the report states. “This officer feared for her safety as groups of angry alt-right protesters and counterprotesters streamed by her as they left Emancipation Park. The officer called for assistance and was relieved of her post. Unfortunately, [Charlottesville police] commanders did not replace her or make other arrangements to prevent traffic from traveling across the Downtown Mall on Fourth Street.”
The report also criticized U-Va., where a torchlight march through campus the night before the Unite the Right rally ended in violence, with the marchers encircling a small group of students who had formed a ring around a statue of Thomas Jefferson.
The independent review confirmed those observations.
The passive police stance, the report said, “represents a tremendous tactical failure that has real and lasting consequences.”
Heaphy also noted that officers in the police command center that day said Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas Jr. told officers, “Let them fight for a little. It will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.” The report alleged that Thomas and others in the command staff “deleted text messages that were relevant to our review.” However, Thomas’ attorney denies those claims.
Charlottesville Police Chief Alfred Thomas resigned Monday, 17 days after the release of the report.
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The police chief’s statement “Let them fight a little. It will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly.” Shows his level of contempt for the constitutional right of the demonstrators to demonstrate. His resignation is a good first step. SInce he appears to have been working closely with the Mayor and maybe the governor, they should step down too. The correct response for the police and the politicians should have been – protect the demonstrators; separate the demonstrators from the antifa counter-demonstrators and ensure peace in the community. “Let them fight a little” shows how small this PC’s commitment to constitutional rights was.
Dear Wayne,
As I said at Christmas, there were too many “open-carry” guns at the August 12, 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. I write to inform you that a Klansman was convicted of discharging his gun at that “rally”, please see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ku-klux-klan-leader-found-guilty-for-firing-gun-at-charlottesville-rally/2018/05/08/d4229ec6-522b-11e8-9c91-7dab596e8252_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b6ca9c3f17fb
Perhaps we should be less critical of the government, police, city council, etc. and more critical of the vigilantes that are highly armed.
John
Molon Labe…
Molon Labe –Latin for Come and take them. Tom Arnold, I am convinced that THAT is exactly what the pro-gun crowd expects. And unfortunately, may get. Am I the only one who recognizes the hypocrisy of the NRA NOT allowing open carry or conceal carry or any weapon allowed inside the meeting last weekend. Could it be that the NRA leaders realized that guns can be dangerous in the hands of the un-trustworthy? Isn’t that the point of gun regulation in the first place? And if the NRA is expecting compliance from its members, what will they expect from the general public at large?
Has it not occurred to anyone, that the NRA can and may well be used as a tool to remove guns from the general public? Think it couldn’t happen? Seem illogical to you? Think about this.
What better organization to ask of the gun owners to do their bidding? An insipid and under the radar self-regulation within the bounds of the organization itself would do the trick. Quietly asking its members to register their guns and general information within the membership could possibly be one their methods. While those outside the norms of the NRA go about their daily business, unknowing/uncaring what the NRA are up to. By the time this has gone full cycle, it’s too late. Then Congress and the Supreme Court start punching holes in the Second Amendment, the rest of the gun owners, either outside the law or unconfined within the parameters of the NRA find themselves on shifting ground. Think about it. By that time, the laws are such any final resistance is way too late and it’s just a matter of time before ALL ownership is outlawed. Come and take them, they just did. Without firing a shot.
Whomever is left holding onto their second amendment rights would be considered a criminal and subject to confiscation, fines, and/or jail. Nearly five million members will have already given up their information just by being members of an organization they trusted to have their backs. Believe me, when the profitability of selling guns falls below the stability of the state and its survivability, then change WILL come.
Of course, the other scenario is even less cheery. Civil war with gun owners going up against the state. Deer rifles against military issued assault rifles. Twelve gauge shot-guns against Abrams tanks. Semi-automatic weapons with less than thirty rounds in the clip against fifty caliber Humvee mounted machine guns. Loosely armed and organized ordinary citizens with little to no military training and tactics, against the greatest armed and trained professional soldier since the Roman times. How’s that Latin feel now? Don’t be a fool. Molon Labe…really? Explain that to your family members. Is it worth burning down your world to be able to hunt in the fall?
My advice. Step away from the machinations of the NRA. Think for yourself. Agree to disarm the mentally ill. Agree to the CDC doing research on mental illness and its connection to gun violence. Agree to a national data base of ALL registered guns. Agree to harsher sentences for non-registered and illegally begotten weapons. Agree to a one and done life sentence for a murder committed with a weapon. The NRA is lying through its teeth. It is a lobby for the profitability of selling guns. Simple as that. The moment that profitability falls and the government starts looking at lost votes, the Second Amendment is done. Then, they WILL come and take them.
My God, you are a Liberal-Loon…You may want to look to gun free Chicago where the Nigly Bears are just waking up from a long winters hibernation and boy are they hungry. The murder rate increases as does the temperature. Those Nigly Bears are killing people for their picnic baskets. Now that is a fact, not a liberal wet dream like the one you described in your diatribe above. May the Foolishness be with you, you liberal loon.
The NRA is an organization of ‘members’. You act as though it could survive without them. It can not. The NRA is the least of your problems. You really think the military or police could stomach killing Americans, day in and day out, when they come hope with PTSD from killing Muslims??? You are crazy?
LOL!
Chas,
The Secret Service requires a certain level of control when their charges are appearing.
For your edification, concealed carry was allowed at the convention.
As for your thoughts on one and done? Shucks, just look at Chicago or my state of NJ……..the leftists in charge don’t even prosecute gun offenders under the current laws.
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
― Samuel Adams
“
Deer rifles would win, Chas Cornweller, hand’s down.
It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, it is the size of the fight in the dog that matters.
And let me say how nice it is to see you posting.
You always bring valuable perspectives to these discussions in my opinion, anyway.
One of the valuable perspectives you have brought in here with your above post is how little you understand the common person in this country if you think some organization like the NRA, which you give far more power to than what it actually has, taking a molehill and turning it into a mountain, has any real influence over people in this country.
Who listens to the NRA and takes their guidance on life from them?
Not anybody I know.
Do you listen to them, dear friend Chas Cornweller?
Are you putty in their hands?
If not, then why do you think other people in America are?
“Am I the only one who recognizes the hypocrisy of the NRA NOT allowing open carry or conceal carry or any weapon allowed inside the meeting last weekend.”
Yes, yes you are –
The NRA did not ban the carrying of guns at their convention. The rumor stemmed from a misunderstanding of varying rules governing conventions, local regulations and existing laws.
The NRA convention is a very large event, with expected attendance in the range of 70,000 to 80,000 persons, and sprawls over multiple venues. At the primary venue, Music City Center, gun owners with proper carry permits could indeed bring their guns with them during the association’s convention.
However, one of the auxiliary venues, the Bridgestone Arena is a private venue that prohibits the possession of firearms and attendees are bound to follow its regulations when they are in that particular arena.
When attendees were at any other convention locale, such as the main exhibit hall, they were free to carry firearms in a manner consistent with state law.
Moreover, the NRA did not mandate that any firearms displayed on the convention floor have their firing pins removed, nor that guns purchased at the convention be picked up elsewhere.
Now you know why we don’t trust gun control advocates when they say they just want common sense gun control.
They are ignorant or they lie. In either case they hope to inflame the general public against the law abiding members of the NRA.
Not working BTW, membership is way up, thank you. :-0
Coming from a man that allows others to call him ‘Chas’…..sounds ‘sweet’ to me, kind of like a little sugar may be in his tank.
Teasing out the Nazi and Klan posturing in this conversation – dear wannabe strongmen with fire power, you sure sound like angry little b*tches.
And you sound like an angry person in search of reparations….or maybe a Bear fresh from hibernation looking for picnic baskets?
HUH?
Libian, dude, have you perhaps gone off your meds, if you can recall, or is it possible you have just been put on something that is doing something to the wiring in your brain?
You seem to be hallucinating spectres and fantasms here with your hue and cry about “Teasing out the Nazi and Klan posturing in this conversation.”
If you have “teased” Nazi or Klan posturing in this conversation out of anywhere, it is from the fertile fabric of your own hyperactive imagination.
This is a site for intellectuals versed in the nuances of American political philosophy to have intelligent discussions on matters of importance in our times.
In that, yes, Libian, it can be as you say, especially when our dear friend Chas Cornweller enters the fray, at times very reminiscent of the Forum of Rome in the time of Titus Annius Milo Papianus, the Roman political agitator, son of Gaius Papius Celsus, who in 52 BC was vying for political power in Rome, but such is American politics, Libian, and would you have it be some other way?
Consider the language of Connecticut governor Samuel Huntington in the Speeches in the Connecticut Convention on January 09, 1788 which we have adopted as our guide to political decorum in here, to wit:
The Convention got through with debating upon the constitution by sections.
It was canvassed critically and fully.
Every objection was raised against it, which the ingenuity and invention of its opposers could devise.
end quotes
That, of course, is necessary background, and in that, you can clearly see the vital role our dear friend and fervent American patriot Chas Cornweller plays in here.
Getting back to the speeches:
Upon the general discussion of the subject, His Excellency Gov. Huntington, expressed himself nearly as follows:
Mr. President, I do not rise to detain this convention for any length of time.
I have heard, and attended with pleasure to what has been said upon this subject.
It does not give me pain, but pleasure, to hear the sentiments of those gentlemen who differ from me.
It is not to be expected from human nature, that we should all have the same opinion.
The best way to learn the nature and effects of different systems of government, is not from theoretical dissertations, but from experience, from what has actually taken place among mankind.
end quotes
As it was with him, Libian, so too does not it give us not pain, but pleasure, to hear the sentiments of those gentlemen like Chas Cornweller who differ from ours, and you should give serious consideration as to adopting that philosophy for yourself, as it is not to be expected from human nature, Libian, that we should all have the same opinion, and indeed, as my dear friend Chas Cornweller himself would say, the best way to learn the nature and effects of different systems of government, is not from theoretical dissertations, but from experience, from what has actually taken place among mankind, which is exactly what we are doing in here.
And with your “dear wannabe strongmen with fire power, you sure sound like angry little b*tches,” which repeated over and over would actually make a top-selling RAP/HIP-HOP record, with a likely appearance on Saturday Night Live, Libian, you sound very modern chic and hip, so coming into a sort of time machine like this is, and being propelled back into a far different time in America than you can conceive of, I can see how you could get disoriented, as if suffering from vertigo, but let me assure you, everything is really copacetic in here.
As to people who sound like angry little b*tches,” Libian, if you are looking for them, Democratic Underground https://www.facebook.com/democraticunderground/ is the place to find them.
The place is said to be swarming with them, so there is the place to go to find them, where they congregate, which certainly is not here.
And thanks for sharing that little ditty of yours about “dear wannabe strongmen with fire power, you sure sound like angry little b*tches.”
It’s got a catchey rhythm like Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Achey Breaky Heart,” and a beat you could dance to, maybe the Electric Slide, when you think about it, and I’m thinking with the right orchestration, you know, peddle steel, a mandolin, a dobro, some guitars and a banjo, it just might make a good country cross-over song for somebody hip like Taylor Swift to sing, and I bet if that were to happen, it would go platinum, and to think, Libian, she would owe it all to you!
So thanks for sharing.