Daily Progress, May 30, Letter  to Editor, Heaphy, Virginia State Police
Opinion/Letter: Criticism of Heaphy report disputed.  
The Daily Progress’ May 23 story “Judge orders state police to release redacted Aug. 12 plans” reports that, in the latest hearing in a case filed by two journalists who are seeking access to the Virginia State Police operational plan for the Unite the Right rally, Assistant Attorney General Victoria Pearson argued to the court that “not all of what was revealed [in the Heaphy report] was necessary accurate.”  
I write today to take issue with the assertion that the independent review I conducted for the City of Charlottesville somehow mischaracterized the VSP operational plan.    

As outlined in our report (page 16), we were able to obtain the VSP operational plan for the Unite the Right rally. We described the operational plan in detail, including the number of troopers deployed for the event, the utilization of VSP units, and a summary of information provided to VSP personnel (pages 103-104). We obtained helicopter footage of the protest events taken from VSP helicopters and radio transmissions between VSP troopers during those events page 16. We also interviewed the VSP superintendent, Col. Steven Flaherty, who was personally present in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017 (page 16 of the report). We reviewed all this information carefully and used it to draw conclusions about the VSP actions during the Unite the Right rally.

Nothing in our report inaccurately characterizes the VSP operational plan or the actions of that agency during the Unite the Right events. To the contrary, our report meticulously and correctly detailed VSP’s specific activities during the Unite the Right rally. We described how the troopers and specialized units were stationed and deployed on Aug. 12. We also detailed how VSP did not follow its own operational plan on that day but rather went “off plan” by “not … send[ing] arrest teams into the street” (page 121). We reported that VSP did not share its operational plan with CPD at any time (page 103) and did not engage in joint briefings or training with CPD or other law enforcement agencies (page 154). These were stunning operational mistakes that contributed to an overall failure to protect public safety on Aug. 12.