Rally response slammed
Police accused of standing by in confrontation — mourners nationwide honor Virginia victims
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Charlottesville was on edge Sunday as police and residents tried to piece together how a white nationalist rally turned deadly when a man rammed his car into counterdemonstrators in an act described by a member of the Trump administration as terrorism.
Makeshift memorials dotted downtown streets where bloody brawls took place the day before. Police in riot gear stood at the ready in case of more clashes as antiracist activists gathered near City Hall, holding signs that said, “No Trump, no KKK, no racist USA.”
Antiracism activists questioned why Charlottesville police, who had several weeks to prepare for the permitted rally, seemed caught off guard by events. Video clips shared on social media showed police standing by in some cases as brawls broke out in the morning before the rally was officially set to begin.
“It’s a joke,” said Larry Engel, a local business owner, who faulted police for not separating white supremacists and anti-racist groups that repeatedly clashed before the car
attack. “There was no buffer zone” between opposing groups that gathered on downtown streets and in a city park that has become an ideological battleground because of the presence of a Confederate statue.
Alex Vitale, a sociology professor at Brooklyn College who studies policing and protests, said the strategies used by law enforcement in Charlottesville played a role in how quickly tensions escalated.
Vitale said it looked as if large numbers of police were assigned to guard fixed barriers in heavy riot gear, which may have prevented them from moving quickly into the street and making arrests.
“They assumed that the crowds would just have their rallies and keep separate,” Vitale said.
Others defended the efforts of law enforcement. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, referring to the man accused of driving his car into the protesters, said, “You can’t stop some crazy guy who came here from Ohio and used his car as a weapon. He is a terrorist.”
Rallies were taking place around the country, from Los Angeles to Miami, in support of the dozens injured in Charlottesville and the three who died, including two state police officers whose helicopter crashed Saturday.
“To the white supremacists and the neo-Nazis who came to our state yesterday, there is no place for you here,” McAuliffe said, drawing an implicit contrast with President Trump’s refusal to single out the same groups for blame.
On Sunday afternoon, angry protesters chased down one of the rally’s main organizers as he attempted to address a throng of reporters outside Charlottesville City Hall.
Members of the crowd shouted “murderer” and “shame” at Jason Kessler, a blogger based in Charlottesville, as a police sniper watched from a nearby rooftop. One man spat on Kessler before he darted away with the help of a police escort.
Clashes broke out in the city Saturday between antiracism activists and far-right protesters, many of whom carried shields, weapons and Nazi and Confederate battle flags. One woman was killed when a driver plowed a sports car into a crowd of counterdemonstrators.
On Sunday, city officials identified the woman as Heather Heyer, 32, of Charlottesville. A memorial vigil for her was planned for Sunday evening before it was postponed because of safety concerns. Flowers, cards and a photo of Heyer were spread on the street where she was struck along with a sign that read, “No place for hate!”
The driver — identified as James Alex Fields Jr., 20, from Ohio — was arrested and charged with second-degree murder, malicious wounding and failure to stop at the scene of an accident that ended in death.
The suspect’s mother, Samantha Bloom, who lives in Toledo, Ohio, said she didn’t know that her son was attending a white supremacist rally.
“I thought it had something to do with Trump,” she told the Toledo Blade, saying she avoided getting “too involved” in her son’s political views.
Derek Weimer, who was Fields’ high school history teacher when he grew up in northern Kentucky, told WCPOTV in Cincinnati that Fields had been “infatuated with Nazis” and had “radical ideas on race.”
Photos circulating on social media appeared to show Fields posing with members of Vanguard America, a white nationalist group, on the day of the rally. Fields held a black-and-white shield with the organization’s insignia. The group said Fields was not a member and that shields were distributed widely.
More details also emerged about the two state troopers killed when a State Police helicopter crashed near the city after monitoring the chaos.
H. Jay Cullen, 48, was a veteran of the force who spent years flying the governor around the state. Berke M.M. Bates, 40 — he would have celebrated his 41st birthday Sunday — was just beginning a career as a helicopter pilot that he had dreamed about for decades.
Dozens of others were injured Saturday, including 19 people hospitalized after the car attack. Ten of those people were listed in “good condition” Sunday at the University of Virginia Medical Center, and nine had been discharged.
At the church service Sunday, McAuliffe praised police for preventing more deadly violence the previous day, saying he was told that 80 percent of the white nationalist protesters were armed.
“What I’m asking you to do today is put aside the anger, as I did when I got up today,” McAuliffe said. “Let us show these people that we are bigger than they are, we are stronger than they are.
“You can’t stop some crazy guy who came here from Ohio and used his car as a weapon. He is a terrorist,” McAuliffe said.
Others, however, were quick to cast blame, including on Trump — who many demonstrators said ran a campaign that emboldened white supremacists — as well as on police.
Michael Signer, the city’s Democratic mayor, accused Trump in television interviews of taking part in “intentional courting” of white supremacists.
In a statement, Kessler, the rally organizer, deflected blame and pinned responsibility on city officials. He said the violence was “primarily the result of the Charlottesville government officials and the law enforcement officers which failed to maintain law and order by protecting the First Amendment rights of the participants of the ‘Unite the Right’ rally.”
Kessler, who organized the demonstration in response to the city’s efforts to take down a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in a park, also accused police of not doing enough to keep the two sides apart.