Report Highlights ‘Serious Deficiencies’ in UNC Police Handling of Protest that Toppled ‘Silent Sam’

CHAPEL HILL – After persistent protests, spearheaded by professional activists on the Left and fueled by the ‘woke’ social justice culture that tends to permeate college campuses, the ‘Silent Same’ Confederate statue was torn down by a mob of protesters last August. Many wondered why, after weeks of standing guard to prevent vandalism and violence, the UNC police were overcome by a mob of college co-eds?

Well, a new post-mortem of sorts focusing on the police response to those protests that culminated in the tearing down of the statue was released on Friday, and it points to “serious deficiencies” by UNC law enforcement.

From Carolina Journal:

“Lawyers from Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP and law enforcement management consultants from Hillard Heintze LLC wrote the after-action assessment and report. They interviewed dozens of members from the UNC-CH police department, UNC-CH administrators, UNC-CH Board of Trustees, and witnesses.

“We found that while there were serious deficiencies in the way the Aug. 20, 2018, event was handled, there is no evidence of a conspiracy between UNC-CH and any protesters or any other individuals to remove Silent Sam,” the report reads.[…]

“Miscommunication between the University Police and UNC-CH senior leadership combined with inefficient and inadequate information-gathering, insufficient staffing, and outdated crowd control training made preventing what happened on Aug. 20 difficult if not impossible to achieve,” the report states. […]”

It was not hard to see that the ‘Silent Sam’ protesters were becoming more and more bold in their agitation in the weeks leading up to its destruction. Nor was it difficult to gather that the tendency the university had to appease the groups, rather than enforce strict law and order and accountability, only served to encourage more violent behavior.

The report essentially points this out, saying, “enough red flags existed prior to Aug. 20 to suggest that Silent Sam would be forcibly removed.

Ya think?

Read all about the report at the Carolina Journal here.

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