UNC officially released an after-action report on the toppling of the “Silent Sam” Confederate monument Friday, a week after the UNC Board of Governors voted on its release.
The report (which can be read in full here) found “serious deficiencies” in the way the evening of August 20, 2018 was handled, there was “no evidence of a conspiracy between UNC-CH and protesters or any other individuals to remove Silent Sam.”
The report does include a controversial and unattributed assertion that protesters threw frozen bottles of water and eggs at the police officers who feared for their safety and that of others.
That is a detail disputed by protesters and reporters on the ground during the statue’s toppling.
The report has five key findings:
1) Insufficient reporting structures led to miscommunication between campus administration and the UNC-CH police. The report recommends direct communication between the chancellor and police chief and training on police procedures for senior leaders at the school.
2) Information gathering duties were left mostly to one officers and should instead be shared by multiple, dedicated officers.
3) Information gathering was insufficient before the August 20 rally, with police missing “red flags” that should have indicated to them that an attempt would be made to topple the statue.
4) Officers were insufficiently trained in crowd control procedures, given what they were facing. More comprehensive training is recommended in the report.
The report also suggests the creation of a system-wide police academy that could employ students to be trained as police cadets/officers during their junior and senior years.
5) The University police force was inadequately staffed for the rally that led to the statue’s toppling. The report makes reference to a controversial plan – first floated last year – to create a “Special Operations Team” and a system wide mobile police force to deal with protests at UNC schools.
The recommendation echoes the controversial idea, floated last year, of a “mobile force platoon” costing $2 million a year and $500,000 a year in equipment.
Chancellor Carol Folt abruptly stepped down from her position last month after tensions with the board of governors over her response to the statue’s toppling and plans for its future.
In a response to the report, Folt wrote that the campus agrees with and will implement the recommendations but has concerns with the initial draft of the report, including “factual issues.”
It is not clear to which sections of the report Folt was referring or if changes to those sections were made before the public release of the report.
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