An unflinching report on the failure of police to control ‘antifascist’ protesters.

HOLMAN JENKINS:

How Free Speech Lost in Charlottesville: An unflinching report on the failure of police to control ‘antifascist’ protesters.

To avoid giving left-wing counterprotesters the impression the police were ready for a fight, officers were denied permission to don riot gear. A proposal that local militants be asked to sign statements forswearing violence was rejected. A proposal to close the whole of downtown to vehicle traffic was rejected. A petition from local businesses to cancel the event was rejected. A single officer was assigned to the intersection where Heather Heyer would later be killed in a vehicular homicide—a lightly-equipped “school resource officer” who would be withdrawn when events, as expected, “went south.”

Instead—and this is a bit hard to believe—the local police chief’s plan was to let the violence at the Aug. 12 event get out of hand and then declare an unlawful assembly to justify unleashing a Virginia State Police riot force to disperse the crowd.

A name familiar to readers of this column will be Pam Starsia, a left-wing leader in Charlottesville who consistently resisted police efforts to protect peace and property as a manifestation of “white supremacy.” . . .

As the report details, the armed militias that featured so heavily in press coverage at the time, and were wrongly assumed to be aligned with the white nationalists, closed in to give the officer cover while he intervened and generally acted to protect members of the public regardless of affiliation.

Two officers were recorded discussing the incident on their body-cam mikes: “I like those militia guys,” said one. His colleague replied, “Yeah, they’re doing a good job.”

When the militia groups are outperforming the police, there’s a problem.

50Posted at 12:20 pm by Glenn Reynolds