Charlottesville Insists It Did Provide Police Protection To Synagogue
Image by Getty Images/Google Maps
(JTA) — Local officials said police provided protection to a synagogue during a far-right gathering last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., refuting a claim by a Jewish community leader that the it had refused to do so.
On Friday, Charlottesville City Manager Maurice Jones said it “is simply not the case that Congregation Beth Israel was left unguarded” during Saturday’s event, when neo-Nazis and white supremacists gathered in the Virginia city.
“Police stationed an officer on the corner of the block where the synagogue is located plus another 32 officers about one block away in the other direction. In addition we had snipers on a rooftop in close proximity whose primary responsibility was to monitor a two block radius which included Beth Israel,” Jones said in a statement to JTA.
The synagogue’s president, Alan Zimmerman, had written in a blog post earlier this week that “[t]he police department refused to provide us with an officer during morning services.”
Rabbi Tom Gutherz said he and Zimmerman had met with the police on Wednesday and “officials reviewed with us the security provisions…. The steps they took were carefully considered to protect us and were effective.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
