Richmond Police Finally Admit to Tear-Gassing Peaceful Protest, Hope No One Notices.

ob Karp/ZUMA Press Wire

Facts matter: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter. Support our nonprofit reporting. Subscribe to our print magazine.On Friday, the Richmond, Virginia, police department sent out an important clarification: Contrary to what it had previously insisted, the protesters they tear-gassed at a Confederate monument in June of 2020 were entirely peaceful.

Below is a retraction the City agreed to publish as a result of tear gas being dispersed in response to public safety threats regarding the J.E.B. Stuart Monument in June 2020.1 of 6
— Richmond Police (@RichmondPolice) July 1, 2022

You may be thinking: Okay, but it is July of 2022, why are they saying all of this now?
The answer, of course, is that the police department was required to issue this incredibly passive-voiced mea culpa under the terms of a settlement arising from a federal lawsuit. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, in addition to retracting the claim that officers had only fired tear gas into the crowd because “they were cut off by violent protesters”—the protestors, it turns out, were not violent at all—the city also has to provide video and paper records of the event to the state library:
Once provided by the city and made accessible by the library, the public will be able to watch body-worn footage, hear police radio traffic and read narratives of the officers who were in and around the Lee and J.E.B. Stuart monuments that evening when, unprovoked and without warning, they unleashed chemical irritants on thousands of demonstrators kneeling at the base of Lee with their hands up 20 minutes ahead of an 8 p.m. curfew.
The statues of the two Confederate generals, both of which have been taken down, were located one block apart on the city’s Monument Avenue.
This admission is both a welcome development and a depressingly revealing one. Why should it take two years and a legal settlement to tell the truth to the people you gassed? If there had been no lawsuit, would they have ever retracted the false claim?
In coming clean about an untrue thing it had not acknowledged for two years, the police department also committed a cardinal sin of social-media posting: They sent out a correction just before 5 pm on the Friday of a holiday weekend: the exact time when most people aren’t paying attention to Twitter. How embarrassing! It’s very silly of them to make that mistake, but to help them out, we’re reposting the full thread, to ensure as many people are able to see it as they so clearly intended:

At that time, there were multiple demonstrations in progress, not all of which were peaceful; however, as a result of some confusion, amongst the various on-going demonstrations at multiple locations in the City involving multiple monuments, all at the same time, 2/6
— Richmond Police (@RichmondPolice) July 1, 2022

it does appear, at the time tear gas was initially dispersed at the Lee Monument, that the crowd was peaceful. As such, the City has willingly agreed to the following retraction:3/6
— Richmond Police (@RichmondPolice) July 1, 2022

In a social media post on June 1, 2020, using the account @RichmondPolice, the City of Richmond Police stated “To our peaceful protestors: We are sorry we had to deploy gas near the Lee Monument…4/6
— Richmond Police (@RichmondPolice) July 1, 2022

“…Some RPD officers in that area were cut off by violent protestors. The gas was necessary to get them to safety.” To our peaceful protestors we apologize: this statement was false and is retracted.5/6
— Richmond Police (@RichmondPolice) July 1, 2022

There were no RPD officers cut off by violent protesters at the Lee Monument. There was no need for gas at Lee Monument to get RPD officers to safety.6/6
— Richmond Police (@RichmondPolice) July 1, 2022