Police prepare for far-right rallies

Officials trying to avoid repeat of Charlottesville

SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. — Snipers perched on rooftops.

Police helicopters and drones hovered overhead.

Officers in riot gear lined the streets.

White nationalists and counterprotesters screamed at each other from fenced-off pens, but the tactics employed by law enforcement at the “White Lives Matter” rally last month in Tennessee might have prevented the kind of mayhem that had erupted at earlier rallies in other states.

Several weeks earlier, police in Richmond, Virginia, banned bats, bricks, flag poles and any other items that potentially could be used as weapons at a rally held by a Confederate heritage group.

Police in Berkeley, California, employed similar tactics this year after a hands-off approach failed to prevent a series of violent clashes.

At the heart of the changes is a determination to prevent a repeat of the bloodshed resulting from a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, when a woman was struck and killed by a car that plowed into a group of counterprotesters.

Since then, law enforcement agencies around the country are honing their responses to an increasing number of rallies held by far-right groups, trying to balance free-speech rights with public safety and comparing notes to see which tactics work best.

Preparing for a speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer on its campus last month, the University of Florida sent a contingent of police officers to Berkeley to learn from the city’s experiences.

“We have to be the mediator

(for) people’s ability to have free speech. But … what we took away from Berkeley was to act quickly if something violent arose,” University of Florida police Chief Linda Stump-kurnick.

Josh Bronson, training director for the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, began developing a new training program for campus police within days of the Charlottesville violence.

One of Bronson’s primary messages is that meeting with group leaders on opposing sides of the barricades, before the rallies even begin, can help police avoid violence.

“The more communication that occurs, the more positive the outcome,” he said.

At the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, white nationalists and counterprotesters converged at an intersection that remained unblocked by barriers or police tape.

Officers largely stood and watched as people threw punches, beat each other with clubs, set off smoke bombs and unleashed chemical spray.