Report: Cops Told To Stand Down In Charlottesville and Coverup Followed

By Tim Brown, Freedom Outpost | 

A new report that was commissioned and conducted by the city of Charlottesville on the events surrounding the protests and subsequent violence that took the national stage in Charlottesville, Virginia back in August, and the findings indicate that not only were police told to stand down in the matter, which became deadly, but there was an attempt to cover it up.

One of the posts abandoned by officers was the very place that led to the death of Heather Heyer, who was killed after a white supremacist drove his car through a crowd of people and slammed into several other cars before backing up, hitting other demonstrators.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

A police officer radioed for help as angry protesters swarmed around her: “They are pushing the crowd my way and I have nobody here to help me.”

Tammy Shiflett, who had just returned to active duty as an elementary school resource officer after two months recovering from a shoulder surgery, was the only person assigned to block traffic at the intersection where a deadly car attack began in Charlottesville on Aug. 12.

Instead of sending reinforcements, a superior instructed her to abandon her post and move the car that had been positioned in the intersection, leaving a wooden sawhorse as the only barrier keeping vehicles out of the area.

Roughly an hour and a half later, a white nationalist drove his car down that very street, striking a crowd of counterprotesters and killing 32-year-old activist Heather Heyer.

Officer Shiflett was not the only officer told to stand down that day.

According to the report, “Supervisors devised a poorly-conceived plan that under-equipped and misaligned hundreds of officers.  Execution of that plan elevated officer safety over public safety.”

So, instead of doing their jobs, police were told to stand down for their own safety, and not enforce the law.

In fact, it was to the point that one of the protesters fired a shot from his gun into the crowd while police watched and did nothing.

ACLU of Virginia
WATCH: Man fired at another person in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. We handed  to LE agencies. The man has been arrested & charged w a crime.

3:28 PM – Aug 26, 2017

 The Richmond Times-Dispatch added additional findings in the report:

The review, led by Tim Heaphy, a former federal prosecutor who now works for Hunton & Williams, also found:

• Despite repeated public statements by state and local officials that officers were not instructed to “stand down,” police had in fact been instructed only to intervene in conflicts between white nationalists and counterprotesters in the event of serious injury.

• A Virginia State Police commander made an “off-plan” decision to keep state officers behind barricades instead of sending them into the streets to break up fights and make arrests.

• After clashes began, Police Chief Al Thomas was heard by several people in the command center saying to “let them fight, it will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly” and shut down the rally.

• Thomas attempted to obstruct the city’s investigation, deleting relevant text messages, attempting to hide his use of a personal email account to conduct some official police business, and creating planning checklists that were not actually used to plan for the rallies.

The 220-page document is based on hundreds of thousands of documents, video and audio recordings, photos and interviews. It represents the most comprehensive account yet of how public officials handled the “Unite the Right” rally.

Now, consider that the media said that when many outlets were reporting that police were told to stand down, those were just “conspiracy theorists.”  Anyone thinking it was a just a theory now?  Nope, it was clearly a conspiracy and the report is clear that it was a conspiracy to protect cops but not the people they were entrusted to protect.

Once again, it’s those in the alternative media who have been vindicated while mainstream media continues to put out fake news for their corporate bosses.

The post Report: Cops Told To Stand Down In Charlottesville and Coverup Followed appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

America, Charlottesville Shows We Are Being Led Into a Civil War, Do Not Follow

With quotes by Adolf Hitler emblazoned on tee shirts, remnants of Nazi regalia, chants of “Jew will not replace us,” and Confederate flags held aloft throughout the crowd in Charlottesville, Virginia, demonstrations by white nationalists against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee coldly conjured the apparition of the Jim Crow-era American South — and then events turned deadly.

A 32-year-old woman lost her life and 26 others suffered injuries, some grievous, when a car allegedly driven by James Alex Fields, 20, sped purposefully into a crowd of protesters at a high rate of speed on Saturday — literally knocking people out of their shoes and sending them airborne — in what vocal critics, alluding to previous attacks in Europe, termed an act of terrorism.

To reiterate, an (alleged) white nationalist targeted and ran over protesters, killing one of them — after Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a sweeping state of emergency, and after, according to the state’s ACLU chapter, police were told to stand down and wait for commands to intervene — providing the both the perfect storm and the perfect excuse to clear the permitted protesters and others from the area.

Seething hatred and vitriol from both sides — white nationalists and neo-Nazis affronted by perceived slights of the system, and their strident anti-racist opposition — fomented into a lethal mixture, the result of which veritably cements yet further losses of freedom for all.

The prospect of lost liberties aside, Charlottesville — in mere hours — exposed the nastiest iterations of racism minorities have opined for decades without recourse, rebranded again, but no different in substance, than a legion of hard-right socialist malefactors unworthy of mention, but whose insignia donned the sleeves of attendees, unabashed.

Any harbored illusions of unity in the United States undoubtedly fell away Saturday — and with all signs blaring the warning another civil war could break out, it’s imperative to examine how this division hurts every side of this fracas — to the perpetual benefit of the kakistocracy masquerading as our government.

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A procession of politicians, including President Trump, all condemned the targeted attack and called for a return to peace and rationality at the ordinarily quiet home to the University of Virginia. Yet, none have stepped forward to call the homicide by vehicle — so reminiscent of attacks by the Islamic State in Paris and Berlin — as a terrorist act.

Considering the pandemonium resulting from the planned demonstration and opposition, the events at Charlottesville — which would otherwise go down in the annals of history as fatal, inexcusable mismanagement by officials — provide the ideal political climate for the dextrous application of dissent-quashing domestic policy.

More government surveillance, further restrictions against free assembly and demonstration, toughening of restrictions on firearms, and increased scrutiny and censorship of social media, among other nefarious actions, seem inevitably bound to surface in the halls of Congress.

Politicians — too detached from constituents and slavish to fundraising, when they do work, to find a legislative spine before Charlottesville — suddenly rush to castigate the supposed white nationalist attacker as an anomalous lone wolf, ignoring the climate fostering such malice and the vociferous counter-protest warning of it for the past year or more.

Indeed, a fastidiously-maintained blind spot ensures the State can not only continue governing despite vituperative quarreling among the people, but flourish. What law enforcement or spy agency doesn’t drool at the prospect one group of people will demand censure, restriction, and opprobrious labeling of another as a threat — since, ultimately, a program officially enacted bears the same authority of force over them both, no matter which ruler tightens the reins.

If policy even finds paper in time.

That racism finally stripped itself of pretense in Charlottesville and brutalized its opponents into the hospital and grave before law enforcement would stir itself into enforcing the law — as well as the flaccid response from Trump, the non-branding of terrorism, and jaw-dropping disparities in policing versus during predominantly Black protests — should not have come as a shock.

Black Americans have made plain for decades the extent and influence racism still exerts over the system of governance in this country, mostly to deaf and dismissive ears — perhaps, until this weekend — while a parallel resurgence of white nationalism crept in obtrusively under the monikered guise of the Alt Right.

This isn’t to farcically pin systemic racism exclusively on the backs of attendees of the largest white nationalist rally in more than a decade; nor is it to say these beliefs are held by every person of either race — but things are getting hairy. Quickly.

Much blame has been assigned over Charlottesville, but none so detrimental as the fingers pointed beforehand by everyone at everyone else, other than the government — which bears the brunt of culpability in stoking the racial divide through partisan politics and baiting the general public into believing the lie that changes would be made to benefit all.

Consider, for a moment, that the truest source of oppression — the perpetrator of stratification and breeder of strife — has a vested interest in our waging war against one another.

“When a citizenry no longer feels that it can find justice through the organs of power,” writes Chris Hedges in Wages of Rebellion, “when it feels that the organs of power are the enemies of freedom and economic advancement, it makes war on those organs … The longer citizens are locked out of and abused by systems of power the more these systems become targets.”

Civil war, to the establishment, means no possibility of a revolutionary one.

Without debate, racism should never find comfort among a people considering themselves advanced; but if the pitchforks and fury are solely directed at the racists — whose behavior, in fact, amounts to a mere symptom of a morally reprehensible system based on force — they will never extricate the bigoted root.

We’re one sour word away from an avoidable civil conflict — but it requires we cease validating malicious and bad ideas. Rationalizing brought us unchecked bigotry and a reality show host as president, as well as rumors of civil war.

Had the masses remained oblivious before Saturday to depth and scope of pain this nation still endures, the last words of the victim, now identified as Heather Heyer, citing an activist axiom in a post to social media, should leave no doubt:

“If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.”

Are you paying attention?

Heather"s last post on Facebook reads: "If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention." https://t.co/Sn2YSy9XAU

— Dell Cameron (@dellcam) August 13, 2017