Charlottesville Police Inaction: Part of a Nationwide Development

The post Charlottesville Police Inaction: Part of a Nationwide Development appeared first on WhoWhatWhy.

In the major moral crisis growing out of Charlottesville, a lot of attention has been paid to Trump’s lack of leadership.

But the whole nation has a stake in a related matter, the inaction of the local police.

The Charlottesville Police Department was not caught unawares. It had anticipated a crowd of from 2,000 to 6,000 people, and had promised a presence with assistance from the Virginia State Police.

Yet when violence and bloodshed broke out at Emancipation Park, witnesses complained to the New York Times that “There was no police presence…. We were watching people punch each other; people were bleeding all the while police were inside of barricades at the park, watching.”

A.C. Thompson, a reporter for ProPublica, saw repeated instances of this police inertia:

At about 10 a.m. [August 12], 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.   

Read more https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/08/14/charlottesville-police-inaction-part-nationwide-development/