Columbia police were ‘under-prepared’ for May protests, according to internal report
The Columbia Police Department admits it underestimated the anger and dismay felt in the community ahead of May protests for racial justice that turned violent, and that it was unprepared for the speed at which a May 30 protest went from being peaceful to unruly.
Those are just a pair of takeaways from a sprawling, 92-page internal review the city’s police department has put together in regard to the protests that took place in Columbia May 30 and 31. Those protests came shortly after Black citizen George Floyd died in police custody in Minnesota after an officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes in an incident that was captured on video and sent shock waves across the nation and world.
Hundreds of protesters gathered May 30 on the north lawn of the South Carolina State House for a peaceful demonstration, with many later marching to the Columbia Police headquarters on Washington Street. What was initially a peaceful gathering turned violent later on that hot Saturday afternoon and into the evening, with police cars set ablaze, windows smashed in nearby businesses and scores of protesters eventually arrested on a litany of charges.
While there was significant unrest at the initial protests that final weekend in May, the more than four dozen protests that subsequently took place in Columbia throughout the summer were peaceful.
Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook, who commissioned a 12-person committee to conduct and create the review, said he felt it was necessary to take an internal assessment of how the city department handled the events of May 30 and 31.
“This was an historic and unprecedented critical event for our city and our department,” the sixth-year chief told The State. “We are used to taking critical looks at ourselves. But this, to me, had far-reaching ramifications. We obviously know there were criticisms in how we handled it from a lot of our social justice activists. From the very beginning we said we would look at what we did and share the results.”
In its internal review, CPD said a unique set of circumstances came together to create a stew that eventually boiled over. Those circumstances included, the department said, despair over the COVID-19 pandemic, stress associated with highly polarized political campaigns in an election year, and anger about a number incidents involving police and Black citizens across the nation. Incidents cited included the Floyd death in Minnesota and the killing of Breonna Taylor during a police raid in Louisville, Kentucky. The combination of those circumstances, police said in the review, “created an environment that was prone to engender chaos, fear, and disorder.”
But the Columbia department also concedes some local incidents likely helped exacerbate the mood during the protests. CPD specifically cites the April police shooting death of Black teenager Joshua Ruffin in North Columbia, as well as the still unsolved April shooting death of Knowledge Sims, a 7-year-old Black male in Columbia, as factors that likely contributed to the anger protesters felt May 30.
“The police-involved shooting of Joshua Ruffin and the unsolved death of Knowledge Sims undoubtedly contributed to some local mistrust of the police, which was ignited by the police-involved death of George Floyd in Minneapolis,” the internal review reads.
No charges were filed against Columbia Police Officer Kevin Davis, a white man, after he shot and killed Ruffin during an April foot chase. Police and prosecutors have said Ruffin pulled a gun before being shot by Davis. Activists have since called for a federal probe into the matter. As for the Sims case, police continue to seek substantive leads as to who killed the 7-year-old.
Holbrook said he feels certain that dismay in the community over Ruffin’s death at the hands of police, and the fact that Sims’ case remains unsolved, contributed to the emotion felt by protesters on May 30.
“I think all of those (national and local cases) factored into folks feeling upset with law enforcement, disenfranchised, and heightened mistrust,” Holbrook said. “It quickly ended up being front and center. And I mean that figuratively and literally. It was front and center with folks on the front steps of the police department, expressing their anger toward law enforcement, in general.”
‘Did not anticipate violence’
Also in the internal review, CPD said it didn’t receive notice of the May 30 protest until May 29, leading to what it calls an “abridged” planning timeline for how it would police the event. The report says protests in Columbia have normally been peaceful, but this time police “underestimated the level of feeling within the community.” Subsequently, the department admits it “did not anticipate violence and was not prepared for the degree or speed at which the violence escalated.”
Specifically, CPD acknowledges its MFF, or mobile field force, teams — police units that specialize in crowd control and crowd dispersal in situations of unrest — were “under-prepared” for the protest.
“A group of officers underwent initial MFF training for the department to compose a couple of MFF teams approximately 3-4 years ago and, while there was some additional training since then, only new officers have received basic MFF training as they joined the department,” the report reads.
Holbrook noted the city initially ramped up a mobile field force team after a 2015 clash over the Confederate flag between the Ku Klux Klan and the New Black Panther Party took place on the State House grounds. The chief said field force teams were ready to go by 2016, but training trailed off in the years since.
“We stood up a field force team in 2016, and then we kind of put it on the shelf,” Holbrook told The State. “That was where we erred. Staffing, attrition, new hires, people leaving, in my opinion where we failed to maintain is, as we lost people, we failed to replenish the staff for the field force and maintain the regular training. We did some sporadic training.”
In some cases during the weekend of protests, mobile field force officers didn’t have gear that fit properly and were slowed in responding, the review said.
And the report outlines specific ways the police department will improve the mobile field force and its ability to respond to protests, including getting new gas masks, fitted gear and training officers on how to launch tear gas.
The mobile field force will train twice a year in different weather conditions, and more officers will be part of the mobile force, the review noted. Part of their training will include when to use weapons such as less-than-lethal bean bag rounds. Holbrook said the field force training will be mandatory.
“It’s not an optional or ‘when available’ (training),” the chief said. “There will be, at the minimum, (twice yearly) contact training for the mobile field force.”
The review — which also includes an exhaustive timeline of the protests on May 30 and 31 — notes that CPD command staff and supervisors also need to have more training on planning for and managing “critical incidents,” such as large protests.
A deeper assessment
Police also acknowledge that an action plan — distributed the night before the May 30 protest — was too broad and “did not adequately address objectives and work assignments” for the protest. In the future, the police department plans to work with the city’s office of emergency management to better cultivate action plans.
Throughout the report, the department says it needs to be proactive, rather than reactive, in regard to protests. To make this a reality, the department is proposing to create a more robust intelligence gathering unit. The unit will look to find out information ahead of protests, such as dates, times and organizers, so that police can be in the right areas at the right times. The department will assess threats and hazards before a protest, the report noted.
The department wants to create a better staffed unit to identify what’s going on during a protest through cameras and other technology to better deploy officers, according to the report. That unit is already in the works.
Amid the May protests, people threw bricks and bottles at officers stationed at the department’s headquarters, police cars were burned and at least eight city officers suffered heat strokes or were “injured by their gear,” the report claims. Solutions in the report to help prevent those types of hazards during protests include putting up fencing around the department’s headquarters, better placement and protection of police vehicles, and encouraging officers to continue emphasizing physical fitness.
The internal review — which was put together by a committee of 10 CPD officers, as well as members of the city’s emergency management and safety and risk management staffs — offered some areas where the department showed what it believes are some positive trends.
One of the key initiatives it points to is the move CPD made in June, roughly two weeks after the late May protests, to adjust its use of force policy to expressly ban chokeholds around a suspect’s neck unless it’s a situation where deadly force is authorized. The department also has made clear to officers that they should intervene to prevent fellow officers from using excessive or unnecessary force.
CPD also has updated its policy to “clearly reflect” that “no-knock” warrants are not allowed. The department also touts the use of new “situational awareness” technology that will help improve procedures and methods it uses during protests.
Third-term Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin told The State he has read CPD’s internal review “from end-to-end” and called it an “introspective” document.
“The things that you want from a 21st century policing agency include accountability, people who are dedicated to justice, and you want transparency,” Benjamin said. “I see the report as being a frank summary of successes and failures on the days of May 30 and 31. ... We were and are dealing with unprecedented times. It’s a measure of an organization to recognize when you’ve got to improve in some areas. That’s what I see. Crises make leaders.”
Holbrook said he is hopeful that making the internal review public will demonstrate “the courage to make course corrections” when shortcomings happen, and that CPD “acknowledges mistakes and always will acknowledge mistakes.”
This story was originally published December 3, 2020 at 9:00 AM.
