A.G. Gancarski
With white nationalist “identitarian” Richard Spencer and his adherents now safely out of Alachua County. Gov. Rick Scott lifted a state of emergency Friday.
Scott thanked law enforcement, which included state and local reinforcements from nearby counties, saying he was “grateful that their unified efforts, in coordination with leadership at the University of Florida, kept all involved in yesterday’s rallies safe.”
“Florida is a state that respects the First Amendment,” Scott said, “but we do not tolerate violence of any kind.”
Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell asserted that a “successful, coordinated response from public safety to this event was vastly due to the unprecedented capacity to mobilize well-trained, well-equipped, agile personnel, and the immense preparation and lessons learned from similar incidents in the nation.”
Indeed, though the feared Charlottesville-style violence did not manifest on the U.F. campus, there was a shot fired by a trio of male white supremacists at a group of people off campus.
Time reports that after the Spencer speech at UF Thursday afternoon, those white supremacists taunted a group of people at a bus stop, yelling “Heil Hitler” and the like. This led to an escalated confrontation, followed by a gun shot from one of the racialists.
All three men are in custody, having been arrested by an off-duty Alachua Sheriff’s officer just hours later.
