Police should have known better, done more to keep Weatherford Confederate protest safe

Whether the two sides in the messy July 25 Weatherford protests knew it or not, they held up a mirror to the rest of the nation.

The reflection was a stark vision of what could happen if cooler heads don’t prevail and leaders don’t work to defuse our toxic tensions over race, history and politics. Add in the fear brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, the deep recession and the coming election, and the nation could potentially face months of such clashes.

Protesters from a Fort Worth group called Enough is Enough, formed after the George Floyd killing to protest racism, went to Weatherford to demonstrate against a large Confederate monument at the historic Parker County courthouse. A counter-protest group was ready.

Local police, however, were not. Officers were not in position to keep the groups separate. The police chief, alerted in advance to the demonstration and then to the presence of armed counter-protesters, was mainly concerned with keeping streets open, text messages show.

Authorities were ill-prepared to keep the groups separate, and eventually, a counter-demonstrator punched a Black protester who apparently hit him with an umbrella.

The clash could have been much worse. Enough is Enough members were greeted with Confederate flags and said they heard racial slurs and threats that they would be shot yelled at them. Some Parker County residents may have mistakenly believed that the Fort Worth group was coming to tear down the statue.

Mercifully, no shots were fired, no one was seriously hurt. Consider it a disaster dodged. But will Weatherford — or for that matter Fort Worth or anywhere else in the nation — be so lucky next time?

Not if leaders don’t step up.

Beyond the obvious need for a better approach to security than what we saw in Weatherford, civic leaders also need to step up and help calm tensions. A robust commitment to free speech on all sides would be a good start. Leaders at all levels should celebrate loudly that Americans have a right to protest, even if they’re from a neighboring county.

And they must recognize that passions are running high. So when a big counter-protest group turns out, authorities must ensure all sides can exercise their rights of expression without ensuing violence.

Around the nation, our usual political divisions are somehow heightened even further. Texas hasn’t seen the types of ongoing mass protests as in cities such as Portland or, thankfully, the property destruction that has accompanied so many. The unyielding battles stemming from the pandemic — over masks, schools, even how real the risk is — add to a sense of unraveling.

And we’re not even to the real heat of the presidential campaign yet. The challenger fails to address the excesses of his party’s extremes. Meanwhile, the incumbent eggs his own extremists on, even raising the specter of trying to delay the election — an outrageous proposition even for such a practiced provocateur.

So, if leadership isn’t forthcoming from the top, it must come from elsewhere. Governors, mayors, county commissioners must reaffirm the principles of free speech, respect for your neighbors, open debate and, if reconciliation isn’t possible, avoiding the worst elements of confrontation. Everyone, from organizers to pastors to talk-show hosts, has a responsibility to encourage persuasion, not intimidation.

After all, many of these debates aren’t going away soon. In Weatherford, county commissioners voted unanimously Thursday to keep the Confederate monument in place. They were reflecting the will of Parker County residents, they argued.

If the statue isn’t going away, neither are the protests. If the next round isn’t handled a lot better, the result could be one we all regret.