SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Snipers perched on rooftops. Police helicopters and drones hovered overhead. Officers in riot gear lined the streets. White nationalists and counterprotesters screamed at each other from fenced-off pens, but the tactics employed by law enforcement at the “White Lives Matter” rally last month in Tennessee might have prevented the kind of mayhem that had erupted at earlier rallies in other states.
Several weeks earlier, police in Richmond, Virginia, banned bats, bricks, flag poles and any other items that potentially could be used as weapons at a rally held by a Confederate heritage group. Police in Berkeley, California, employed similar tactics this year after a hands-off approach failed to prevent a series of violent clashes.
At the heart of the changes is a determination to prevent a repeat of the bloodshed resulting from a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, when a woman was struck and killed by a car that plowed into a group of counterprotesters.
Since then, law enforcement agencies around the country are honing their responses to an increasing number of rallies held by far-right groups, trying to balance free-speech rights with public safety and comparing notes to see which tactics work best.
Preparing for a speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer on its campus last month, the University of Florida sent a contingent of police officers to Berkeley to learn from the city’s experiences.