A number of articles in the last two weeks raise important questions about the role of the police/government, in generating the Charlottesville tragedy. In presenting some of them below, I’m keeping my tone as neutral as I can.
Aug. 25 from the New York Times, “As White Nationalist in Charlottesville Fired, Police ‘Never Moved’”.
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.”
And so on. They got the shooter later, yay! But why only later? What were the police doing, on-scene? Nothing.
Note: That does not necessarily mean the police were wrong; it could be, rather, that a higher authority gave them bad orders. You will see this become a theme. As NYT puts it, “So stark was the police failure to intervene, many participants in the protest and counterprotests believe it was by design.”
Next, the finger-pointing between local police, Virginia state police, and various politicians (including Gov. Terry McAuliffe – D). From the above NYT article:
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…
The organizers of the rally said the [local] 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…“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.
More from Breitbart:
- Aug 16, an article about how McAuliffe claimed a threat from right-wingers’ weapons caches around the city, only to be contradicted by State police who say no such caches ever existed. (If such caches had existed, perhaps they could justify McAuliffe’s order that shut down the Charlottesville protest in an early, confusing and unlawful way.)
- Aug 26, an article about bickering among Charlottesville politicians over who is to blame for the city’s confusing mistakes.
From The Washington Free Beacon on Aug. 14, more on the finger-pointing between the Virginia State Police and Gov. McAuliffe: [Read more…]