The New York Times has released a video showing a white nationalist supporter opening fire near a crowd of counterprotesters during an Aug. 12 rally in Charlottesville, Va., while law enforcement officers on the scene made no movement to stop him. The rally generated international headlines when counterprotester Heather Heyer died after being run down by an automobile, but the video is the first depiction of gunfire at the event. The violence documented in the New York Times is consistent with Michael Nigro’s firsthand eyewitness account for Truthdig:

“The police are going to incite a race riot,” Hawk Newsome, president of Black Lives Matter New York, told me in the middle of an early afternoon skirmish. And he was right; their inaction helped create conditions for the violence that ensued.

At one point, fights broke out in front of the Charlottesville police station, where at least a dozen officers stood by the entrance doing nothing but watching like hockey referees during a brawl.

Metal poles were used to beat protesters, and the police stood by. Alt-right members deployed pepper spray, and the police stood by. Blood poured from injured people’s large gashes, and the police did nothing.

In the video below, in the words of the Times article, “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.” The man with the pistol yelled a racial slur before firing, and walked calmly away afterward—right past a line of about a dozen police troopers.

Witnesses told the Times that nearby police officers heard the shot but did nothing to intervene:

“We all heard it and ran — I know damn well they heard it,” said Rosia Parker, a community activist in Charlottesville. “They never moved.”

Police had a suspect in the shooting in custody on Saturday morning, according to an official familiar with the investigation, who requested anonymity to provide information not yet public. But residents are still demanding to know why officers did not act in real time as heavily armed people fought and a car sped toward a crowd, killing a woman. So stark was the police failure to intervene, many participants in the protest and counterprotests believe it was by design. …

Officials have insisted that no “stand down” order was issued, and a state police spokeswoman said troopers did not hear the shot. But many people suspect the inaction was deliberate, because just a month earlier, the police were heavily criticized for responding harshly at a Ku Klux Klan rally where anti-Klan protesters were sprayed with tear gas and arrested.

This is not the first time counterprotesters have blamed law enforcement for failing to stop violence at the rally. Only after Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe called a state of emergency and the rally was declared to be an “unlawful assembly” did police break up the gathering.

Charlottesville Police Chief Al Thomas claimed his officers intervened when it was deemed necessary:

“Throughout the entire weekend, Virginia state police, Charlottesville Police Department intervened to break up fights and altercations among those in attendance at the rally site,” Thomas said at a press conference. “This began on Friday night and continued through Sunday.”

He said police “had a very large footprint during this entire endeavor.”

Thomas denied an interview request from the Times, but Brian Moran, Virginia’s secretary of public safety, said the city of Charlottesville did not use a number of security measures recommended by the state police, including a ban on weapons and sticks of all kinds at the gathering. The Times interviewed several counterdemonstrators who felt abandoned, not protected, by the police:

A 25-year-old woman named Kendall, who asked that her last name not be used because she did not want to be targeted, said she had been chanting at the white-power protesters when one of them punched her, bloodying her nose.

“I moved quickly to the police and said: ‘A man attacked me! Please help me! I need your help. He’s right there!’” she said. “They didn’t move a muscle. Only a few of them had the courage to make eye contact with me.”

Ézé Amos, a photographer from Nigeria who lives in Charlottesville, had a similar experience, he said, when he moved in for a close-up of a man wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Adolf Hitler’s face. The man punched the camera, hitting Mr. Amos’s face, he said.

“This happened right in front of the cops,” Mr. Amos said. “I said, ‘Hey, this man just assaulted me!’ The officer said, ‘Well I didn’t see it.’ I told him, ‘Everybody just saw it!’”

The officer took down Mr. Amos’s name.

“I am a black man photographing this. I kept telling myself, ‘If it gets out of hand, the cops will jump in and save me,’” he said. “I saw a white woman get hit, and they did not do anything. That’s when I actually got really scared of the whole thing.”

 Wait, before you go…

If you're reading this, you probably already know that non-profit, independent journalism is under threat worldwide. Independent news sites are overshadowed by larger heavily funded mainstream media that inundate us with hype and noise that barely scratch the surface.  We believe that our readers deserve to know the full story. Truthdig writers bravely dig beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that tells you what’s really happening and who’s rolling up their sleeves to do something about it.

Like you, we believe a well-informed public that doesn’t have blind faith in the status quo can help change the world. Your contribution of as little as $5 monthly or $35 annually will make you a groundbreaking member and lays the foundation of our work.

Support Truthdig
In this Article:
#charlottesville#donald trump#heather heyer#michael nigro#new york times#politics#trump administration#white supremacy