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On 15 August 2017, the disreputable web site YourNewsWire posted a story purporting to quote an anonymous police officer saying that law enforcement in Charlottesville, Virginia had been instructed not only to stand down during a violent white supremacist rally, but to instigate violence by purposely bringing rival groups together in order to start a race war. YourNewsWire dives deep into conspiracy territory, claiming the chaos at the weekend rally was instigated by the deep state, as well as former President Barack Obama and former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton: The web site quotes a supposed anonymous police officer as saying: We found no evidence the supposed quote being shared on the Internet and featured by YourNewsWire is authentic, and because it's not only unattributed but vague, we have no way of tracing it. However it only appears on YourNewsWire and other junk sites that cite YourNewsWire, a web site that regularly posts unfounded conspiracy theories. Violence did plague the city of Charlottesville through the weekend of 11 August 2017, as protests, general unrest, and street brawls broke out surrounding the Unite the Right white supremacist rally. One woman was killed when a rally attendee reportedly purposely rammed his car into a crowd of counter-demonstrators, and two state police officers lost their lives when the helicopter they were flying to monitor the unrest crashed. However we were able to confirm via a Freedom of Information Act request that no official stand down order was given. The rumor seems to have its roots in a 12 August 2017 tweet posted by the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which cited an unnamed police officer saying law enforcement would wait for a command before intervening in street clashes: The same day, investigative news outlet ProPublica published a story reporting police inaction in the face of violence: On 14 August 2017, Fox News reporter Doug McKelway claimed to have a specific police source that told him officers were ordered not to engage. He said: Despite the critique by some that police didn't do enough to quell violence, both police Chief Al Thomas and city spokeswoman Miriam Dickler said no such order was issued. We filed a FOIA seeking any records documenting such an order by either the city, or by any agency outside the city to Charlottesville police and received this response: Dickler explained to us why the claim that the mayor issued a stand-down order which police were required to obey is not possible: The city operates under a council-manager form of municipal government, meaning the city manager functions as the executive. Under this system, the mayor is selected by the City Council, not voters. The role rotates and is mostly ceremonial in its duties. Thus, Charlottesville Mayor Michael Signer would not have had the authority to issue a stand-down order to the police. In the months following the deadly weekend, the city commissioned an independent review of the response to the white supremacist rally by the law firm Hunton & Williams, lead by former U.S. Attorney Timothy Heaphy. The scathing report released 1 December 2017 is heavily critical of the city's response and faults police for failing to prevent much of the violence with flawed planning and coordination that produced disastrous results. The report found that the failure of police to quell violence and block traffic while pedestrians fought and marched allowed for tragedy to strike: The report further alleges Charlottesville police command staff deleted text messages relevant to the review and two people -- a police captain and the chief's personal assistant -- told investigators that Thomas said that allowing people to fight in the streets would facilitate the declaration of an unlawful assembly, which would make it a crime for anyone to remain in the area: Thomas's attorney Kevin Martingayle said the chief does not recall making that statement. The report doesn't find evidence that a stand down order was explicitly given -- but it does say that the city and authorities failed to keep the peace and protect the safety of the community despite having a visibly large police presence:
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