Governor’s Task Force Releases State Review of Unite the Right

The state review of Unite the Right is out.

Unlike Tim Heaphy’s independent review, this report focuses more on future events and doesn’t provide much insight into what happened in Charlottesville on August 12th. It does, however, confirm what we already knew which is that the Charlottesville Police Department and Virginia State Police developed separate plans for Unite the Right and failed to coordinate their response:

“CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) – A task force created by Governor Terry McAuliffe to review Virginia’s response to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville has released its final report and recommendations [PDF].

The Governor’s Task Force on Public Safety Preparedness and Response to Civil Unrest met a total of four times since September. Its report includes an after-action review with some findings similar to the Charlottesville-commissioned independent review done by former U.S. Attorney Tim Heaphy and his team.

Gov. McAuliffe is reviewing the final report, and legislators have said they would also like Heaphy to present his team’s review.

The task force’s review points out problems with Virginia State Police and Charlottesville police developing separate plans for the controversial rally. It finds those plans unclear on who was in charge. …”

As far as I can tell, the state review of Unite the Right doesn’t address the controversial actions of the Virginia State Police on August 12th:

1.) First, the Virginia State Police went “off plan” and put up barricades and stood behind those barricades while the violence unfolded in front of them on Market Street.

2.) Second, it was the Virginia State Police which pushed the Unite the Right demonstrators into the crowd of Antifa on Market Street. Why would they do this except to provoke violence?

3.) Third, Terry McAuliffe had the “state of emergency” ready to go before any of the violence even broke out in Charlottesville. The time stamps of his tweets show the plan all along was to shut it down. That’s why the Virginia State Police stood behind the barricades and watched.

The acts and rhetoric in #Charlottesville over past 24 hours are unacceptable & must stop. A right to speech is not a right to violence.

— Terry McAuliffe (@GovernorVA) August 12, 2017

Governor McAuliffe has declared a state of emergency to aid state response to violence at Alt-Right rally in Charlottesville

— Terry McAuliffe (@GovernorVA) August 12, 2017

Below is the Governor’s statement regarding the emergency declaration he authorized this morning: pic.twitter.com/yS1E9mispG

— Terry McAuliffe (@GovernorVA) August 12, 2017

4.) Fourth, the Virginia State Police didn’t even try to quell the violence in the streets or separate the two sides. Instead, it stood guard in front of businesses on the downtown mall. This shows how it was more interested in potential property damage than public safety.

Contrast what happened in Charlottesville, VA to the police response in Pikeville, KY or Shelbyville, TN. In both Pikeville and Shelbyville, the police kept both sides separated and enforced a neutral barrier. They had clear routes of ingress and egress for demonstrators and counterdemonstrators. The Kentucky and Tennessee police weren’t focused on protecting their own safety or private businesses. The governors of Kentucky and Tennessee weren’t preparing to shut the event down before event it got started either. The Nationalist Front rallies in Kentucky and Tennessee went off without incident.

The Alt-Right, too, has held several events in Washington, DC this year. There was the protest over the Syria strike, the flash rallies at the Jefferson Memorial and outside the White House, the #KatesWall rally last weekend which was also outside the White House and the free speech rally at the Lincoln Memorial on June 25th. Why are the same people holding rallies in Washington, DC without causing any of the violence in Charlottesville? The media isn’t interested in that question.

There is only violence at these events when state and local officials fail to do their jobs. Otherwise, the Antifa are separated and they are uneventful.