Review faults police in Charlottesville protests

City, state agencies failed to deploy forces amid clashes.

The police badly mishan- dled white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, by failing to coordinate among agencies, give officers the gear they needed or keep protesters and counterprotesters separate, a former federal prose- cutor reported Friday.

In a report more than 200 pages long, Timothy J. Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney hired by the city to investigate the episode, found fault with elected city lead- ers and University of Virginia officials, but directed the sharpest criticism at the Charlottesville Police Department, or CPD, and the Virginia State Police, or VSP. He said police remained passive even as bloody clashes raged around them.

“VSP directed its officers to remain behind bar- ricades rather than risk injury responding to conflicts” on Aug. 12, he wrote. “CPD commanders simi- larly instructed their offi- cers not to intervene in all but the most serious phys- ical confrontations.”

Both agencies failed to deploy additional forces that were available to respond to the clashes, he added, and in fact, “when violence was most prevalent, CPD commanders pulled officers back to a protected area of the park, where they remained for over an hour as people in the large crowd fought on Market Street.”

What the report calls “the most tragic manifestation of the failure to protect public safety” was the death of Heather D. Heyer, a coun- terprotester who the police say was killed by a white supremacist who drove past a barrier and into 4th Street, which was thick with pedes- trians.

A single Charlottesville officer, normally assigned to schools, had been posted at an intersection where 4th Street was blocked off to vehicles, but grew afraid for her safety. “The officer called for her assistance,” but instead of receiving backup, “she was relieved of her post” and no one was sent to take her place.