Police Stood By As Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville - ProPublica
Author: A.C. Thompson, Robert Faturechi
Description: State police and National Guardsmen watched passively for hours as self-proclaimed Nazis engaged in street battles with counter-protesters. ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson was on the scene and reports that the authorities turned the streets of the city over to groups of militiamen armed with assau
Date: 2017-08-12T23:00:18-0500

Documenting Hate

# Documenting Hate

Hate crimes and bias incidents are a national problem, but there’s no reliable data on the nature or prevalence of the violence. We’re collecting and verifying reports to create a national database for use by journalists, researchers and civil-rights organizations.

### Latest Stories in this Project

- A New Generation of White Supremacists Emerges in Charlottesville
- Sikhs in America: A History of Hate
- Confusion, Fear, Cynicism: Why People Don’t Report Hate Incidents
- Amid the Blaring Headlines, Routine Reports of Hate-Fueled Violence
- What We Know — And Don’t Know — About Hate Crimes in America

Full Coverage

Twitter
Tweet
Facebook
Comment
Email

# Share via email

# Police Stood By As Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville

State police and National Guardsmen watched passively for hours as self-proclaimed Nazis engaged in street battles with counter-protesters. ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson was on the scene and reports that the authorities turned the streets of the city over to groups of militiamen armed with assau

# Police Stood By As Mayhem Mounted in Charlottesville

State police and National Guardsmen watched passively for hours as self-proclaimed Nazis engaged in street battles with counter-protesters. ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson was on the scene and reports that the authorities turned the streets of the city over to groups of militiamen armed with assault rifles.

by A.C. Thompson and Robert Faturechi, ProPublica, and Karim Hajj, special to ProPublica, Aug. 12, 2017, 11 p.m.

Print Print
This is part of an ongoing investigation

# Documenting Hate

Hate crimes and bias incidents are a national problem, but there’s no reliable data on the nature or prevalence of the violence. We’re collecting and verifying reports to create a national database for use by journalists, researchers and civil-rights organizations.

### Latest Stories in this Project

- A New Generation of White Supremacists Emerges in Charlottesville
- Sikhs in America: A History of Hate
- Confusion, Fear, Cynicism: Why People Don’t Report Hate Incidents
- Amid the Blaring Headlines, Routine Reports of Hate-Fueled Violence
- What We Know — And Don’t Know — About Hate Crimes in America

# search Follow ProPublica

Twitter Twitter Facebook Facebook volumelow Podcast RSS RSS

# Email Updates by email

optional

# Our Hottest Stories

- Most Read

People fly into the air as a vehicle drives into a group of activists protesting against a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Ryan M. Kelly/The Daily Progress via AP)

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — There was nothing haphazard about the violence that erupted today in this bucolic town in Virginia’s heartland. At about 10 a.m. today, at one of countless such confrontations, an angry mob of white supremacists formed a battle line across from a group of counter-protesters, many of them older and gray-haired, who had gathered near a church parking lot. On command from their leader, the young men charged and pummeled their ideological foes with abandon. One woman was hurled to the pavement, and the blood from her bruised head was instantly visible.

A.C. Thompson is covering the rise in hate crimes in America as part of our Documenting Hate project. If you've witnessed or been the victim of a hate crime or bias incident — in Charlottesville or elsewhere — tell us your story.

Standing nearby, an assortment of Virginia State Police troopers and Charlottesville police wearing protective gear watched silently from behind an array of metal barricades — and did nothing.

It was a scene that played out over and over in Charlottesville as law enforcement confronted the largest public gathering of white supremacists in decades. We walked the streets beginning in the early morning hours and repeatedly witnessed instances in which authorities took a largely laissez faire approach, allowing white supremacists and counter-protesters to physically battle.

Officials in Charlottesville had publicly promised to maintain control of the “Unite the Right” rally, which is the latest in a series of chaotic and bloody racist rallies that have roiled this college town, a place deeply proud of its links to Thomas Jefferson and the origins of American Democracy.

But the white supremacists who flooded into the city’s Emancipation Park — a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee sits in the center of the park — had spent months openly planning for war. The Daily Stormer, a popular neo-Nazi website, encouraged rally attendees to bring shields, pepper spray, and fascist flags and flagpoles. A prominent racist podcast told its listeners to come carrying guns. “Bring whatever you need, that you feel you need for your self defense. Do what you need to do for security of your own person,” said Mike “Enoch” Peinovich on The Right Stuff podcast.

And the white supremacists who showed up in Charlottesville did indeed come prepared for violence. Many wore helmets and carried clubs, medieval-looking round wooden shields, and rectangular plexiglass shields, similar to those used by riot police.

Clad in a black, Nazi-style helmet, Matthew Heimbach told ProPublica, “We’re defending our heritage.” Heimbach, who heads the Traditionalist Workers Party, a self-declared fascist group, said he was willing to die for his cause and would do whatever it took to defend himself. He was surrounded by a brigade of white supremacists, including members of the League of the South and the National Socialist Movement.

By the time Heimbach and his contingent arrived in downtown Charlottesville shortly before 11 a.m., what had started hours earlier with some shoving and a few punches had evolved into a series of wild melees as people attacked one another with fists, feet, and the improvised weapons they’d brought with them to the park. White supremacists and anti-racists began blasting each other with thick orange streams of pepper spray.

The police did little to stop the bloodshed. Several times, a group of assault-rifle-toting militia members from New York State, wearing body armor and desert camo, played a more active role in breaking up fights.

Shortly before noon, authorities shut down the rally and the related demonstrations and marched the white supremacists out of the park and into the streets.

White supremacists and counter-protesters clash at Emancipation Park on Aug. 12. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Charlottesville Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy defended the police tactics. “I’m not in the business of throwing our police department under the bus, because they’re doing the best job they can, “ said Bellamy. “I don’t think the police officers were just twiddling their thumbs.”

The skirmishes culminated in what appears to have been an act of domestic terrorism, with a driver ramming his car into a crowd of anti-racist activists on a busy downtown street, killing one and injuring 19 according to the latest information from city officials. Charlottesville authorities tonight reported that a 20-year-old Ohio man had been arrested and had been charged with murder.

Two state police officers also died in a helicopter crash.

At a brief press conference this evening, Virginia officials declined to answer questions about the police response, but said they were not taken surprise by the violence or the number of protesters. “This could have been a much worse day,” said Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, “We planned for a long time for today’s incidents.”

Charlottesville police Chief Al Thomas said at least 35 people had been injured — many of them from violent encounters between white supremacists and the counter-protesters. He said nobody had been wounded due to confrontations between police and the public.

In the weeks leading up to the protest, city and state officials put together a detailed plan for the rally, mobilizing 1,000 first responders, including 300 state police troopers and members of the National Guard. Judging from how events unfolded today, it appears that the strategy was to avoid direct confrontations with the protesters.

Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor who has worked on police reform efforts in Los Angeles, said it was too early to assess the law enforcement response in Charlottesville.

But she said a strategy of disengagement generally works to embolden unruly crowds.

“If things start to escalate and there’s no response, it can very quickly get out of control,” she said. "Individuals can and will get hurt.”

But an overly forceful response, she said, can also make the situation worse. Krinsky said attempts to seize weapons might have led to more clashes between police and protesters. “Trying to take things away from people is unlikely to be a calming influence,” she told ProPublica.

A good strategy, she said, is to make clashes less likely by separating the two sides physically, with officers forming a barrier between them. “Create a human barrier so the flash points are reduced as quickly as possible,” she said.

A.C. Thompson and Karim Hajj reported from Charlottesville, Va. Robert Faturechi reported from New York.

Like this story? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get more of our best work.

# A.C. Thompson

A.C. Thompson covers criminal justice issues for ProPublica.

# Robert Faturechi

Robert Faturechi covers campaign finance for ProPublica.

Follow @RobertFaturechi
blog comments powered by Disqus

## Don't Miss Our Latest Stories

Misdemeanor Defendants Facing Jail Time Not Told They Have a Right to Counsel, Bar Association Finds

Meet ProPublica’s Latest Emerging Reporters

A New Generation of White Supremacists Emerges in Charlottesville

Senator Demands Answers From Case Farms

# Like ProPublica on Facebook

## For investigations, news, data, discussions and more

Don’t show again

# Multimedia

## Republish This Story for Free

###

Thank you for your interest in republishing the story. You are are free republish it so long as you do the following:

1. You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, "yesterday" can be changed to "last week," and "Portland, Ore." to "Portland" or "here.")
2. If you’re republishing online, you have to link to us and to include all of the links from our story, as well as our PixelPing tag.
3. You can’t sell our material separately.
4. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
5. You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
6. You cannot republish our photographs without specific permission (ask our Public Relations Director Minhee Cho if you’d like to).
7. You have to credit us – ideally in the byline. We prefer “Author Name, ProPublica.”