1/ Will the enforcers who trampled our rights in 2020 ever face consequences?
Today, the NC legislature nearly unanimously voted to promote one of the police chiefs behind the shutdown of the 1st Reopen NC event and arrest of a citizen for "non-essential" protesting
🧵🧵🧵
2/ Bodycam video and court documents show then-Chief of the State Capitol Police R. E. "Chip" Hawley played a major role in the repression of the protest
Hawley was nominated as SBI Director by Cooper last year, but the confirmation was delayed till today
thisweekinthetriangle.com/p/coopers-pick…
3/ April 14, 2020
Two weeks after Gov. Cooper unilaterally issued a stay-at-home order telling us not to leave our homes except for "essential activities", demonstrators (including myself) gathered in a parking lot near his mansion to protest
4/ Many if not most of the protesters were social distancing by household, but we were nonetheless ordered to disperse under the very order we were out to demonstrate against, with the Raleigh Police infamously declaring to the public that "Protesting is a non-essential activity"
5/ In leaked body camera footage from the Raleigh Police staging area, Captain Dedric Bond references a call with Hawley, the Legislative Police Chief, and Wake County DA Lorrin Freeman approving the dispersal: "We got the blessing from everybody"
6/ Hawley's involvement was not merely limited to the planning stage
The video also shows him in a white shirt and tie accompanying the RPD officers as they scour the parking lot and decide to "make an example" of the last protester to leave, Monica Ussery
7/ Although it was RPD who surrounded and cuffed Ussery, she was officially arrested by Hawley's subordinates in the State Capitol Police and loaded into their vehicle with Hawley presiding
8/ Hawley is also as a witness in the incident report filed by his agency, stating "that he heard the defendant state that she was not leaving and it was her constitutional right to be in the parking lot with everyone else."
thisweekinthetriangle.com/p/coopers-pick…
9/ Hawley has been named as a defendant in the civil rights lawsuits in both state and federal courts by Ussery, alleging that her arrest was "retaliatory prosecution"
thisweekinthetriangle.com/p/cooper-named…
(The federal case, filed last year, has been dismissed: thisweekinthetriangle.com/p/federal-judg…)
10/ Although Hawley was nominated in as SBI Director in 2023, the legislature declined to take a vote on confirmation at the time and allowed the current director to remain in office past the end of his term while they investigated his allegations of improper influence by the governor's office
newsobserver.com/news/politics-…
11/ Despite Ussery and her supporters attempting to make legislators aware of these facts, the only NO vote in either chamber on Hawley's confirmation vote held yesterday and today was from @RepKidwell
ncleg.gov/BillLookUp/202…
12/ If you've found this thread useful or informative, please make sure to like and share the top tweet:
13/ If you are a local in the Greater Triangle area and appreciate stories like this, make sure to sign up over on S_bstack where I publish original articles and weekly editorial roundups of the local news I find important:
thisweekinthetriangle.com/subscribe
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.