PAMELA STARSIA ATTORNEY AT LAW

969 2nd STREET SE CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA, 22902 (434) 260-0603 [email protected]

June 23, 2017 Chief Al S. Thomas Jr. Charlottesville Police Department 606 E. Market Street Charlottesville, VA 22902

RE: CPD home visits/inquiries to anti-racist activists related to July 8 KKK rally Dear Chief Thomas: On June 7, 2017, the Rutherford Institute, an influential local civil liberties organization, issued an open letter to CPD advising caution during this summer's planned white supremacist/neoNazi rallies on July 8 and August 12, urging you and CPD not to escalate police measures against local activists in this time of heated political struggle. Rutherford warned CPD “that the use of aggressive tactics by police officers establishes a confrontational relationship between law enforcement and those they are charged with protecting and serving,” and urged you “to take steps now to reduce the aggression used by officers in order to foster greater trust and cooperation with the community.” This letter was written in response to CPD’s use of excessive force and intimidation to arrest two well-known anti-racist/leftist activists on questionable minor misdemeanor charges on June 1 and June 2. This week I have been exceptionally concerned to see that, rather than heed Rutherford’s warning, CPD has continued to escalate of tensions between law enforcement and leftist activists, with CPD making ham-fisted efforts to “gather information”, direct, and curtail anticipated leftist speech in response to the upcoming July 8 KKK rally. As an attorney representing a number of anti-racist activists and organizations in Charlottesville, I received a phone call from one activist client, a woman of color, shortly before 3:00pm on Tuesday, June 20. She notified me that a CPD officer, Sergeant Via, had just shown up at her home unannounced. Via had asked her a number of questions about what plans leftist activists were making for July 8, asked for the names of other activists, and offered to “help” with any plans activists might be making. She denied him entry to her home and declined to answer any questions. I immediately called Captain Wendy Lewis and left a voicemail, advising her that the activists I represented found the prospect of these home visits unnerving, and would view these inquiries as an intimidation tactic by CPD designed to curtail and chill the exercise of activists’ First Amendment rights on July 8 and beyond. In my voicemail, I requested that CPD immediately desist from making these inquiries to leftist activists, and specifically advised that CPD should not visit the home of another activist client—Veronica Fitzhugh, a Black woman who was arrested with excessive police force and intimidation on June 1. Despite this express request on June 20, Sergeant Via made an unannounced visit to Ms. Fitzhugh’s house on the morning of June 21, making similar inquiries. Various CPD officers— including Detective Oberholzer and Officer Lucas—have also made numerous phone calls and email inquiries to various leftist activists (myself included) and organizations, and have made at least two unannounced visits to activists at their places of employment. It is noteworthy that the

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only two activists who have reported unannounced home inquiries are activists of color, while white activists primarily report receiving emails or phone calls. I received a return phone call from Captain Lewis in the afternoon on June 21, who advised me that she had not listened to my voicemail before the home inquiry was made to Ms. Fitzhugh. While Captain Lewis agreed to call off any further home inquiries, numerous activists are still reporting receiving phone, email, and workplace inquiries from CPD at a seemingly increasing pace. At least three of the people who have received inquiries from CPD (including one of the workplace inquiries) appear to have been targeted for “information gathering” based on comments they have made on Facebook—a disturbing and aggressive tactic that will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on speech made by members of our community on social media. In notable contrast to the invasive inquiries received by leftist activists this week, the City has chosen to showcase the Charlottesville Clergy Collective—a “respectable”-seeming organization that has intentionally distanced itself from leftist anti-racist protests—as a leader in the City’s effort to project a “unified” response to the July 8 KKK rally. City council members, City staff, and law enforcement officials have regularly attended and spoken at meetings of the Clergy Collective, who in turn were rewarded with a speaking role at a City press conference on June 20. Ironically, at the very time when the invited representative of the Clergy Collective spoke at this press conference with City officials and law enforcement, a leftist activist of color was receiving an unannounced, unwelcome home inquiry from Sergeant Via. This contrast leaves little doubt about the City’s attitude towards visible, vocal anti-racist activists. For many activists, particularly activists of color, these badgering inquiries hearken back to the 1960s, when police harassed and intensely surveilled Black activists and organizations such as Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Ella Baker and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, and Huey Newton and the Black Panthers. In 2017, it is outrageous that the police would go to such extreme lengths to inquire about (and, by implication, attempt to direct or curtail) activists’ plans to exercise their First Amendment rights—the very principle which the City relies on to justify its rubber-stamp approval of the permit for the KKK's abhorrent rally. Furthermore, it strains credulity to ask that anti-racist activists infer good or “neutral” intentions in these inquiries, when CPD refuses to acknowledge or apologize for the current context of heightened tensions and mistrust between leftist activists and CPD. The context which CPD pretends to be unaware of as it makes these inquiries and offers of “help” includes the environment fostered by the following incidents, all of which have occurred within just the past three months: 

The arrests using excessive force and intimidation of activist Veronica Fitzhugh, on June 1, and activist/attorney Jeff Fogel, on June 2, for absurdly questionable minor misdemeanor charges, and the subsequent service at home of an additional warrant on Ms. Fitzhugh on June 6 for an equally questionable minor charge—this despite the fact that warrants for such minor charges are typically served by letter and summons. All three of these charges were initiated by known white supremacist/neo-Confederate extremists. In the case of Ms. Fitzhugh, within an hour after her arrest, known white supremacist extremist Jason Kessler posted a Facebook Live video saying that he was “working with the police” to arrest leftist activists who had been protesting his gatherings. The timing of his video suggests that someone from CPD was working closely enough with Kessler to notify him immediately that Ms. Fitzhugh had been arrested, despite the late hour of her arrest. CPD has not acknowledged or apologized for the

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inappropriateness of these arrest tactics, or answered questions about why such extreme measures were used and who ordered them. 

The arrests using excessive force, aggressive treatment and over-charging of two leftist activists on May 14, after a leftist candlelight vigil in then-named Lee Park, called to counter the torchlight KKK-style rally held by white supremacists in the park the night before. Both leftist activists were arrested aggressively and thrown violently to the ground, one hitting his head quite hard. One of these leftists was arrested and without bail until late the following afternoon, on a charge of assault on a law enforcement officer—this trumped up charge stemming from the activist having flipped a cell phone that ricocheted off a lamppost, accidentally hitting an officer at the scene. The other activist was arrested violently after he allegedly spit in the direction of Jason Kessler. By contrast, Jason Kessler was the only person arrested that night who was treated respectfully by CPD, and who CPD managed not to throw to the ground. Kessler was the sole instigator of the tense situation that led to arrests in the park that night. He barged into the park during the vigil with a bullhorn (escorted by CPD officers ensuring him calm passage through the leftist crowd) and proceeded to shove anti-racist activists out of his way, in full view of CPD, to rip down a “Black Lives Matter” banner that activists had temporarily hung in the park for the vigil. Though Kessler was eventually arrested that evening (after nearly an hour of antagonizing leftists with a bullhorn), he was arrested without excessive force or being thrown to the ground, and received only a watered down disorderly conduct charge. This was despite the fact that a CPD officer definitively told a woman of color (one of the same women who received a home visit from Sergeant Via) that Kessler would be charged with assault after that officer had observed Kessler shoving the woman hard with two hands to the ground. Since that night, Kessler has made numerous public statements that CPD told him he was only arrested “for his own safety”. Whether or not this was actually said, Kessler’s making such public statements without denial from CPD contributes to the sense that CPD is working closely and cooperatively with white supremacists to protect them from the community’s response to their reprehensible ideology.

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A prior charge pending against another anti-racist activist for another questionable minor misdemeanor, filed by a known white supremacist extremist who punched the activist in the face (on video) during the incident for which she was charged. Notably, the warrant for this charge was served on the activist in April by letter and summons. The disparity between the service of this summons in April and the aggressive arrests of Fitzhugh and Fogel in June represents a marked and demonstrable escalation of tactics against leftist activists in just two short months.

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Statements made by Jason Kessler on video, during a June 1 leftist protest of a white supremacist meeting (convened by Kessler), where Kessler is overheard telling a CPD officer several times that he was “working with” Lieutenant Mooney of CPD to identify and charge numerous additional leftist activists for similarly absurd minor charges.

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Disproportionately heavy police presence and heightened police response to leftist protests of white supremacist gatherings on the Downtown Mall on at least three recent occasions, including a protest that involved a group of leftists singing “This Little Light of Mine” on the Mall outside Miller’s on the evening of June 7. After the leftists departed Miller’s that night, the police also departed, and the white supremacists walked to Rapture, where they proceeded to stand outside the restaurant and loudly harass the Rapture staff by yelling racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic slurs for over two hours. (This incident was documented by a police report filed by one of the Rapture

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staff the same night.) Despite the vulgar scene, and in contrast to the heavy police presence during the leftist singing earlier the same night, no police at all arrived to “monitor” the white supremacists as they hurled verbal abuse at the Rapture staff. 

Witness by at least a half-dozen leftist activists on June 17 of a CPD officer chatting and shaking hands in the Market Street parking garage with Jason Kessler and known members of the Virginia Proud Boys (a white supremacist gang that openly threatens violence against leftist activists), who had posted on social media that they were visiting Charlottesville that evening for the express purpose of inciting violence against leftists.

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The observation that at least two of the officers who have been making inquiries to leftist activists (Det. Oberholzer and Ofc. Lucas) have public Facebook profiles featuring “Blue Lives Matter” cover photos—the “Blue Lives Matter” movement arose and positions itself in direct opposition and antagonism to the Black Lives Matter movement’s protests of police violence against unarmed Black people. At least one of the officers involved in these inquiries (Det. Oberholzer) is also currently involved in litigation for excessive force and extreme violence against an unarmed Black community member.

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Extraordinarily heavy and aggressive police presence, and disproportionately physical police response to a brief, unpermitted leftist street march on June 3, during which police shoved, grabbed, yelled at, and threatened leftist activists with arrest, and detained several activists in police vehicles for nearly an hour, despite the fact that they were issued mere traffic citations, and despite the fact that disruptions to traffic flow from the march were minor and brief, given the availability of numerous alternate routes.

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Continued failure of CPD to acknowledge or respond to community heartbreak and outrage over CPD’s mishandling of the investigation to find Sage Smith, a young Black transgender woman who has been missing from Charlottesville since 2012, whose case continues to be central to the work of local anti-racist activists and organizers.

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Continued refusal of CPD to acknowledge and take serious steps to address the extreme racial disparities in police stops and arrests, and the aggressive, heavily-armed over-policing in our communities of color, the threat of which is central to the work of local anti-racist activists and organizers.

In this context, it is disingenuous, at best, to ask leftist activists to presume good intentions from CPD showing up at their homes or places of employment unannounced, or to expect us to interpret these aggressive inquiries as anything other than an intimidation tactic intended to curtail leftist speech and expressive conduct. Captain Lewis was unable to answer my question about who directed these inquiries, so I pose the question to you: did you, Chief Thomas, sanction these home visits, workplace visits, and other inquiries? Was this tactic conducted with the knowledge of, or in coordination with, the Mayor's office? Have your officers made similar unannounced home visits to members of the Clergy Collective? Or are such visits reserved for leftist activists of color who apparently do not meet with the City’s approval?

With great concern,

Pamela Starsia, Esq.