Sheriff criticized
“Sheriff’s Department Lets Armed Boogaloos Waltz Onto School Grounds,” according to an article in the Daily Beast, which added: “Residents of the Virginia town want to know why no one was arrested over the alarming stunt.” (The men’s leader that night was a self-professed Virginia leader in the “Boogaloo Boys,” a rightwing militia group).
“How were these people not arrested?” a woman asked on the Gloucester County Sheriff ’s Office Facebook page, with another man calling the sheriff the men’s “accomplice.”
Another man, Caleb Merendino, contended in an email to the Daily Press that the response was “negligent” and “wholly inadequate.”
“The failure to take immediate and decisive action against the armed extremist group sends a distressing message that such actions are tolerated and not met with the swift enforcement they merit,” he wrote, asserting that the men’s actions violated state and federal law.
But the Gloucester Sheriff ’s Office garnered plenty of support on its Facebook page for seemingly ignoring the men, causing the protest to fizzle out without incident. It was over in less than two hours, with few people showing up. No one was hurt.
“It was awesome that those people had no audience and so they were acting all macho out there alone,” one person wrote to the sheriff on Facebook. “They tried to bait you but you didn’t fall for it! Darrell Warren is the best!”
“You gave them no attention and they got bored and went home, and no one got hurt!!!” said another.
Chris McVey, a Newport News resident who makes it his mission to monitor and agitate the police, attended as a bystander. He hurled various insults at the gun rights activists through a loud speaker from about 100 feet away.
“There were definitely no officers in uniform visible anywhere,” McVey said. About the only people who showed up, he said, were he, his wife, some TV reporters, a man with a grill in his pickup who wanted to cook steaks for the deputies, and a Catholic man in camouflage saying a rosary.
At one point, McVey said, an armed man in camouflage lie in the mulch, pointing his rifle outward as he looked through his gun sight. But the weapon was facing away from bystanders. Another armed man on one knee faced the bystanders, with his gun pointing toward the ground.
“I am absolutely surprised that no deputies were there,” McVey said. “That’s what I was there for, the confrontation between the police and the Boogaloo Boys” that never happened.