Trump's Charlottesville Reaction Emboldens the Far-Right - The Atlantic

Trump's Charlottesville Reaction Emboldens the Far-Right - The Atlantic
*** Clare Foran (: What did you think about the criticism that there wasn’t an adequate police response to the violence in Charlottesville?

Michael German: Well, what I believe we’ve seen over the past several months, and what we saw take place in Charlottesville, too, is that police are not aggressively policing these protests to prevent violence. In April, nearly a dozen people were injured in Berkeley when self-styled alt-right activists promoted and engaged in acts of violence and militia members showed up to tell reporters they would “enjoy” attacking counter-protesters. Violence broke out at a pro-Trump rally in Huntington Beach, California, in March. And in Portland, at an alt-right rally in June, a militia member reportedly aided the Department of Homeland Security in making an arrest.
These militia groups show up saying that they are there to serve as security at these protests, and we saw that in Charlottesville, too, but even in an open-carry state you can’t set yourself up as a security force or a security guard without a license to do so. That’s not legal, and it’s not legitimate. So why is the state allowing them to serve as security at these protests?

It’s also clearly very different than the way we’ve seen police react to nonviolent protests like the Occupy Movement, or the protests at Standing Rock, where we saw an extremely aggressive policing take place. We did not see that kind of a police response in Charlottesville***