Tag: Ku Klux Klan

Categories
News

In brief: Get off the tracks, a Klansman’s plea and and a misidentified racist

Photo: Skycladap.com

See tracks? Think train

That’s advice from Dave Dixon, the safety and compliance supervisor of the Buckingham Branch Railroad, who notes the national increase of railroad crossing fatalities this year.

One of them happened here. An Amtrak carrying GOP congressmen smashed into a garbage truck on Crozet
train tracks in January, killing 28-year-old truck passenger Christopher Foley.

In an increased effort to educate drivers, Dixon offers advice for what to do if your car gets stuck on the crossing:

1. Evacuate the car and get away from the tracks.

2. Call the number on the blue sign at the crossing, not 911.

3. If a train approaches, run toward the train at a 45-degree angle and away from the track.

4. Don’t run down track, where the train could knock the vehicle into you.

Other tips:

  • Don’t drive around the gates.
  • Never try to “beat a train.”
  • At private crossings without gates, stop, look and listen before crossing.
  • Before crossing, be sure there’s enough room on the other side to safely clear the tracks.
  • If the gates are down while you’re on the crossing, drive through the gate. It’s designed to break away.
  • Report any malfunctioning gates, lights or other problems to the number on the blue sign.

Preston pleads

Courtesy of an ACLU video

An imperial wizard of Baltimore’s Confederate White Knights of the KKK, who was charged with firing a gun within 1,000 feet of a school at the Unite the Right rally, pleaded no contest May 5, just one day before his trial was scheduled to begin. Richard Preston was aiming his gun at Corey Long, who pointed a homemade flamethrower at the Klansman in a photo that went viral.

High-paying jobs

Ralph Northam

Governor Ralph Northam was in town May 2 to tout CoConstruct, a web-based company in Albemarle that helps custom homebuilders and remodelers manage their projects, and its plans to expand its IT ops and hire 69 new employees, some of whom will earn over $100,000. Secretary of Commerce and Trade Brian Ball called Charlottesville the “Camelot of Virginia.”

Northam noncommittal on Soering

In his second visit to Albemarle County in five days, Northam was at the Virginia Humanities’ folklife showcase when WVTF’s Sandy Hausman asked him about the pardon petition for Jens Soering amid increased calls from law enforcement supporting Soering’s innocence. Northam said he will stand by the decision of the parole board, which has denied parole 13 times.

Sage Smith episode

DaShad “Sage” Smith

Charlottesville police are still looking for leads in the homicide of Smith, who was last seen November 20, 2012. The disappearance is the subject of an episode on the Investigation Discovery channel show “Disappeared.” “Born this Way” airs at 7pm May 9. Police also seek information on the whereabouts of Erik McFadden, who was supposed to meet Smith the day of her disappearance.

Greene official charged

Larry Snow, Greene County commissioner of revenue, was charged with four felonies for use of trickery to obtain information stemming from a DMV investigation, according to the Greene County Record. Snow, 69, was first elected in 1987. In 2010, he was convicted of practicing law without a license, a misdemeanor.

Bad babysitter

Yowell-Rohm

Kathy Yowell-Rohm pleaded guilty to felony cruelty or injury to a child and operating a home daycare without a license after police found 16 children—most with seriously dirty diapers—from a few months old to age 4 in her home last December. She also pleaded guilty to assaulting an EMT in a parking lot at the November 24 UVA-Virginia Tech football game.

Terrys end treestand-off

Mother Red Terry, 61, and daughter Minor Terry, 30, came down May 5 from the trees on their property near Roanoke where they’d been camped since April 2 to protest the Mountain Valley Pipeline after a federal judge found them in contempt and said she’d start fining the Terrys for every day they defied her order.

Quote of the Week

“Out in the fresh air and sunshine, he could just have walked away.” —Judge Rick Moore at the trial of Alex Michael Ramos, who was convicted of the malicious wounding of DeAndre Harris.

Misidentified racist

Don Blankenship, Larry Sabato and MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell

It’s always best if the offended has a sense of humor.

A Huffington Post Instagram account called @huffpostasianvoices posted a photo of UVA’s Larry Sabato along with a story called, “GOP Senate Candidate: ‘Chinaperson’ Isn’t Racist,” referring to Don Blankenship, the West Virginian who recently used the racial slur, and who CNN editor Chris Cillizza has called “the worst candidate in America.”

Sabato did appear in an interview for the story, and on Twitter, he said, “After a loyal former student alerted me to the photo mix up, we reported it and it was quickly corrected.”

Blankenship isn’t his only doppelgänger. Two years ago, reporter Megyn Kelly noted that Sabato looks strikingly similar to the MyPillow infomercial salesman.

Tweeted the founder and director of the university’s Center for Politics, “After all, Don Blankenship, MyPillow guy and I all have a mustache, and everyone knows all mustachioed men look alike.”

Categories
News

Guilty: First August 12 parking garage beater convicted

Jacob Goodwin, one of four men charged in the beating of DeAndre Harris August 12, was found guilty of malicious wounding. Charlottesville police

 

A Charlottesville jury decided May 1 that a man from Ward, Arkansas, who took part in a brutal beatdown of a local black man in the Market Street Parking Garage on August 12, was guilty of malicious wounding, potentially setting the bar for three other assailants accused of the same crime in the same incident, and who are set to go on trial in the very near future.

In videos from the Unite the Right rally that have since been viewed tens of thousands of times, Jacob Goodwin can be seen wearing all black tactical gear, a helmet, goggles, and two pins—one that said “88,” or code for “Heil Hitler,” and one with the logo of the Traditionalist Worker Party—and carrying a shield when kicking DeAndre Harris multiple times among a gaggle of other white supremacists.

Jurors were visibly disturbed while watching.

“He has yet to express any regret for his actions that day,” said Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania, when asking the jury to consider a jail sentence recommendation. “And I would submit he has none.”

The man identified as a self-described white rights activist in an NBC documentary sat in court wearing a suit and tie and with a long, brown braided ponytail. During his testimony, he said he thought he was being attacked by Harris, and he was using his feet to defend himself.

“To be honest, I was terrified,” he said, adding that he thought he’d be sent to the hospital “terribly hurt,” or that he might even “perish.”

The jury of nine women and three men didn’t buy it, and they recommended giving Goodwin a 10-year sentence with perhaps some time suspended, a $25,000 fine and empathy training. Judge Rick Moore set an official sentencing for August 23.

Goodwin’s mother had her head in her hands when defense attorney Elmer Woodard wrapped up his closing argument, in which he insisted that Goodwin was legally allowed to defend himself from a perceived threat, which protects the Arkansas man from being convicted of malicious wounding. For that specific charge, a prosecutor must show an attempt to kill, maim or disable, or evidence of ill will or spite, according to the attorneys.

“They want you to convict this man because he’s a white man and DeAndre’s a black man,” Woodard said to the jury. The white man’s parents and a handful of other supporters, including Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler, were present for the two-day trial.

So were community members who have aggressively praised Harris for his fight against white supremacy that day in August, and who demanded that Platania drop a malicious wounding charge that Harris was initially given from the event, when he allegedly bashed a man in the head with a Maglite moments before he was beaten to the ground.

Harris’ charge was amended to assault and he was acquitted in Charlottesville General District Court in March.

Woodard argued that while his client was wearing armor, the Maglite and towel Harris carried were the real weapons, and that the man beaten by white supremacists was the true aggressor.

“Body armor’s a defensive thing,” said Woodard. “Nobody ever got beaten to death with body armor.”

And while the defense attorney argued several times that Harris’ most significant injuries, such as the head laceration that required eight stitches, were a result of the other men involved and not Goodwin, Nina-Alice Antony, an assistant commonwealth’s attorney, said they were acting in concert.

“Each person is responsible, not just for his specific action, but the action of the group,” she said, adding that concert of action can happen in an instant, even between people who are unknown to each other. “You don’t have to have a handshake agreement before that.”

The three other men charged with malicious wounding in the parking garage beatdown are Alex Ramos, Daniel Borden and Tyler Watkins Davis. Ramos goes on trial today.

Woodardisms

Attorney Elmer Woodard. Photo Natalie Jacobsen

This Blairs, Virginia, attorney was largely unknown in the Charlottesville area until he began representing a bevy of white supremacists with Unite the Right-related charges, including Jacob Goodwin, “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell and Richard Preston, the KKK leader charged with firing his gun on August 12. Now he’s one of the most talked about defenders in town. Here’s what he had to say at Goodwin’s May 1 trial:

”Gravity applies to DeAndre just like it applies to you and me.”

—on why Harris didn’t fall back down, but rather stood up after the prosecutor argued that Goodwin kicked him so hard that he lifted off the ground

“Why DeAndre, you have upset me.”

—on what Goodwin would have said if he truly felt anger, and was acting out of malice

“Is it concert of action to stand in the Hardee’s line together?”

—on how people who don’t know each other can act together and share similar views

”If it’s raining, you put on a raincoat. If there’s fighting, you put on a helmet.”

—on why Goodwin was wearing tactical gear and a helmet

 

Categories
News

Still here: White supremacy strikes again

North Downtown residents found fliers proclaiming that "it's okay to be white" on their front lawns this morning. Photo courtesy of Gail South

“It’s okay to be white.”

The sentence that first started popping up on high school and university campuses in November is the same one that was plastered onto dozens of fliers, folded into a neat square, stuffed into a sandwich bag with a rock in it and tossed on the lawns of North Downtown residents last night.

Neighbors on Cargil Lane, Marshall and Hazel streets and Locust and Watson avenues were some of many who awoke to find such a message on April 18.

“I think it’s supposed to be intimidating,” says Gail South, whose husband found their note around 7am. “Why on earth would someone do this?”

But Reverend Phil Woodson says it came as no surprise, because there have been almost 40 overt actions or events involving white supremacists in town since August of last year.

“One of the narratives that people like to think is that on August 12, we were invaded, that people came from somewhere else,” he says. “But the reality is that there’s still a large number of white supremacists who live in and around Charlottesville.”

He points to local cars that have since been spray painted with racial slurs, white supremacists who have interrupted City Council meetings and an enormous Confederate flag recently raised on the side of Interstate 64 in Louisa.

Charlottesville has been the target of racist fliers before, and the Winchester Star reports the KKK distributed 22 similar fliers-in-a-baggie in Frederick County April 8.

Flyering is activity that only takes one person, says Carla Hill at the Center for Extremism.

On Monday morning, Reverend Woodson arrived at the First United Methodist Church to find its nearby telephone poles stapled with similar fliers, and with one caught in the netting of the church’s scaffolding.

This flier was a Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson quote that read, “The time for war has not yet come, but it will come, and that soon; and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.”

Quotes on fliers stapled to nearby telephone poles were attributed to Charlottesville’s beloved Thomas Jefferson, though Monticello’s website says Plato, Felix Frankfurter and Anton Menger have been credited with the same quote: “There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal men.”

Though members of the First United Methodist Church have been very vocal in their opposition to white supremacy, Woodson says he doesn’t believe the messages were directed toward them.

“I really think it was due to the high traffic that would have been downtown for the Tom Tom Festival,” he says. “Any time there’s going to be a large gathering of people, it presents an opportunity for these white supremacists to spread their discord and hatred.”

He adds that local residents should be aware of what’s happening, and that white supremacy doesn’t always look like a man marching down Market Street with a swastika flag in tow.

“We can’t seem to get the vast majority of the community to understand that this is still happening and it’s going to take every single person to get involved in order to make a difference,” the reverend says.

Woodson nods to the Concert for Charlottesville, the free night of “music and unity” that drew Dave Matthews, Justin Timberlake, Ariana Grande and other stars to town in the wake of August 12.

“How many thousands of people showed up to a Dave Matthews Band concert at the UVA football stadium, and how many of those people are actually engaged in confronting white supremacy?”

Categories
News

Steven Meeks has left the building

Steven Meeks' abrupt resignation from the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society comes at a time the city is questioning the organization's subsidized rent in the McIntire Buidling. Photo Eze Amos

The controversial president of the Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society abruptly resigned February 11 after cleaning out his office in the city-owned McIntire Building.

In a “hastily written note,” says Will Lyster, a historical society director, Steven G. Meeks resigned from the organization he’s headed for about a decade. The board asked Lyster to step in as interim president February 14.

“We realized that in the past couple of months, Steven had done nothing,” says Lyster, including the “10 easy things the city wanted done to renew the lease.” And Meeks’ departure comes at a time when the city is reconsidering its lease for the historical society, whose membership has dropped by half during his tenure.

Meeks drew scrutiny last summer when the historical society stalled a UVA professor’s access to its collection of Ku Klux Klan robes. At a September City Council meeting, planning commissioner Genevieve Keller said the society’s leadership had been “antagonistic” toward the Jefferson School African American Center, and Councilor Kathy Galvin called the nonprofit “an absolute mess.”

“We have a lot of housekeeping,” says Lyster, who is working on the city’s demands, including a more diverse board and inventory of the society’s assets.

Meeks did not return phone calls from C-VILLE.

Categories
News

Guilty plea, dropped charges for another KKK rally protester Copy

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

A woman arrested on three charges, including felony assault of a law enforcement officer at the July 8 KKK rally, has pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor.

Jordan Romeo was protesting the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Justice Park when she allegedly assaulted a city cop and City Council critic John Heyden.

She was also charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, to which the 28-year-old Roanoke resident pleaded guilty in Charlottesville General District Court on January 19.

“Despite the commonwealth’s expected evidence in this case, the arresting officer that was assaulted agreed with a sentence involving an alternative to incarceration,” said a press release from Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania released that day.

Prosecutor Nina-Alice Antony said in court that the officer agreed to nolle
prosequi the felony assault charge in exchange for Romeo’s guilty plea of disorderly conduct. At the request of Heyden, who “would like to put the matter behind him,” the misdemeanor assault charge was also dismissed.

Romeo was sentenced to 105 days in jail, with all suspended on the condition that she complete 80 hours of community service and stay on good behavior for two years.

“Allegations of assaultive behavior directed towards law enforcement officers engaged in the lawful performance of their duties are extremely significant events and will be investigated and prosecuted as the serious offenses that they are,” said Platania in the statement.

[/vc_column_text][rev_slider alias=”photography1″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Categories
News

Guilty plea, dropped charges for another KKK rally protester

Jordan Romeo. Courtesy of the Charlottesville Police Department

A woman arrested on three charges, including felony assault of a law enforcement officer at the July 8 KKK rally, has pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor.

Jordan Romeo was protesting the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Justice Park when she allegedly assaulted a city cop and City Council critic John Heyden.

She was also charged with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, to which the 28-year-old Roanoke resident pleaded guilty in Charlottesville General District Court on January 19.

“Despite the commonwealth’s expected evidence in this case, the arresting officer that was assaulted agreed with a sentence involving an alternative to incarceration,” said a press release from Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania released that day.

Prosecutor Nina-Alice Antony said in court that the officer agreed to nolle
prosequi the felony assault charge in exchange for Romeo’s guilty plea of disorderly conduct. At the request of Heyden, who “would like to put the matter behind him,” the misdemeanor assault charge was also dismissed.

Romeo was sentenced to 105 days in jail, with all suspended on the condition that she complete 80 hours of community service and stay on good behavior for two years.

“Allegations of assaultive behavior directed towards law enforcement officers engaged in the lawful performance of their duties are extremely significant events and will be investigated and prosecuted as the serious offenses that they are,” said Platania in the statement.

Categories
News

‘How dare you:’ Tensions boil during Heaphy presentation

Community members sat shoulder-to-shoulder in City Council Chambers at the December 4 meeting, where people also spilled into at least two remote viewing locations within City Hall. Protest signs called for Mayor Mike Signer’s resignation, and the abolition of police. Photo by Eze Amos

Emotions ran high at the December 4 City Council meeting that began at 7pm when Councilor Kristin Szakos placed two paper plates piled with homemade cookies at the podium and ended at midnight.

Mayor Mike Signer opened the meeting, during which former federal prosecutor Tim Heaphy presented his $350,000 independent review of the summer’s white supremacist rallies, with a plea for civility.

But anyone who’s been following council meetings since August 12, knows that Signer would have needed a Christmas miracle for that wish to come true. And he didn’t get it.

Tim Heaphy. Photo by Eze Amos

Heaphy and the councilors were continually criticized, heckled and shouted over, but the first roar of laughter from the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd came when Heaphy announced that members of the Charlottesville Police Department told him and his Hunton & Williams legal team that they felt prepared for August 12 because they had worked the annual Wertland Street block party and dignitary visits, like when the Dalai Lama came to town in October 2012.

They hadn’t, however, coordinated with Virginia State Police, and most of them had never used riot gear or had relevant training, Heaphy said.

And though Heaphy detailed several instances of a lack of police intervention on August 12—and an apparent order for police not to act “unless someone’s getting killed”—the crowd erupted in caustic applause when he showed a still taken from a police body camera of an officer coming between a white supremacist and an anti-racist activist.

“Y’all fed us to those wolves,” interjected someone from the crowd when the attorney discussed police behavior.

As Heaphy wrapped up his presentation, which lasted an hour longer than scheduled, members of the crowd—some identifying with activist group SolidarityCville—began raising protest signs. The largest one read, “Blood on your hands,” with “Abolish the police” and “Resign Signer” also making an appearance.

Photo by Eze Amos

Vice-mayor Wes Bellamy, whom some blame for summoning the neo-Nazis with his initial call in March 2016 to remove the General Robert E. Lee monument from then-Lee Park, began his comments with an apology.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “We let you all down. I think it’s important we acknowledge that.”

And trying to speed the meeting along, he said, “For $350,000, I got two questions: One, how do we stop the Nazis from coming back. And secondly, how do we protect our citizens?”

Heaphy replied he didn’t have the answers, and the crowd erupted again, asking the attorney what he was paid almost half a million dollars for. Heaphy reminded attendees several times that his job was to review what went right and wrong during the summer of hate.

About 40 members of the public spoke at the meeting, with Dave Ghamandi firing up the crowd as he roasted the police, Chief Al Thomas, City Manager Maurice Jones, Heaphy and Signer.

Dave Ghamandi. Photo by Eze Amos

“You and Signer are two crony gangsters spit out by UVA law school,” he said to Heaphy, also calling him a “glorified ambulance chaser” who “profited off tragedy and death.” Ghamandi said Jones is afraid to fire Thomas because he’ll drag Jones down, too.

Councilor-elect Nikuyah Walker also took the podium to address centuries of racism, systemic oppression and public chatter that Jones and Thomas could be held accountable for the failure of the rallies and lose their jobs.

Nikuyah Walker. Photo by Eze Amos

“There should not be rumors that the two people who are going to be asked to leave potentially are two black men,” she said. “That should be unacceptable.”

But perhaps tensions were at their highest boiling point at the conclusion of Heaphy’s presentation, when he said, “Things could have been worse.” Without missing a beat, someone in the crowd fired back, “How dare you?”

Categories
News

In brief: Beary confused visitor, the kost of the KKK, gross algae and more

Photo courtesy @hometowntouristcville

Was the four-legged visitor weeks early for its move-in date? Community members took to social media to share photos of a black bear flouncing around UVA Grounds August 1. A state wildlife biologist tranquilized it outside the Children’s Hospital, loaded it into a truck, and, after the drug wore off overnight, dropped it off on national forest property west of Harrisonburg

It gets worse

Rick Wellbeloved-Stone. Courtesy CPD
Rick Wellbeloved-Stone. Courtesy Charlottesville Police Department

CHS teacher Rick Wellbeloved-Stone, who was charged with one count of child porn possession July 27, was charged with 19 counts of child porn production and one count of aggravated sexual battery August 4. He was placed on leave and remains in Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

Daycare distress

Classroom ratios and failure to supervise children are noted issues at Kiddie Academy, an Albemarle daycare that has racked up more than 40 violations since January 2016. It was placed on a provisional license last month and the state Department of Social Services says it has until January to prove it can comply with regulations, or it could lose its license, according to the Newsplex.

Motorcycle fatality

Twenty-two-year old Jordan Marcale Cassell died traveling west on Garth Road August 5 when his Honda bike struck a 2013 Honda Fit driven by an 87-year-old turning left onto Garth from Free Union Road, closing down both roads for three and a half hours. Cassell, a grad of Staunton’s Robert E. Lee High, is the 10th fatality in Albemarle this year. Police say no charges are pending.

Algae yucks up lake

The Virginia Department of Health continues to advise people and their pets to steer clear of Chris Greene Lake because of a harmful blue-green algae bloom that may cause rashes and other illnesses.

Teresa Sullivan. Photo: Ashley Twiggs
Teresa Sullivan. Photo: Ashley Twiggs

Quote of the week: “There is a credible risk of violence at this event, and your safety is my foremost concern. Moreover, to approach the rally and confront the activists would only satisfy their craving for spectacle. “—UVA President Teresa Sullivan on the August 12 Unite the Right rally.

The cost of a KKK visit

The July 8 Loyal White Knights of the KKK demonstration racked up a hefty bill for the city, with neighboring
Albemarle police chipping in 52 officers at a cost of $14,045. Here’s a breakdown of some of the city’s $32,835 in expenses, which don’t include the Albemarle County Sheriff’s Office bill for $2,467.

The Virginia State Police won’t provide its manpower costs unless we cough up $300, and it won’t release the number
of officers it sent due to tactical and safety reasons. Its
spokeswoman does say that many state police were scheduled in advance of the Klan fest as part of their 40-hour week to minimize overtime. She says the helicopter that buzzed over Justice Park costs $615 an hour to operate and ran for 3.6 hours for a total of $2,214.

So far, it all adds up to more than $51,565.

At a price

City salaries $23,352

Includes city police, fire, deputies and ECC, with CPD racking up $16,299 in overtime.

Incidentals

Flex cuffs $660

Cutters for flex cuffs $40

Trailer hitch to pull riot gear $731

Gatorade $90

Lunches $2,423

More Gatorade, water, protein bars, sunscreen $466

Gas masks $277

Taser battery packs $45

Non-lethal equipment $2,237

 

Rally together

Follow C-VILLE Weekly on Facebook and @cvillenews_desk on Twitter for August 12 rally coverage.