news-record.com

GREENSBORO — Police are citing careful planning, reliable intelligence and a bit of secrecy as reasons why a gathering of a neo-Nazi group came and went Saturday without incident.

“We had good intelligence information and a good cooperative response internally and externally. We were able to monitor the event effectively to allocate resources,” Assistant Police Chief Dwight Crotts said. “Things went extremely well.”

Officers in uniforms and plain clothes guarded a meeting of 50 to 70 people with the National Socialist Movement at the La Quinta Inn off West Wendover Avenue for much of the afternoon.

Meanwhile, other officers kept close tabs on about 200 people taking part in a 3 p.m. counterprotest at McGee and South Elm streets downtown.

Crotts wouldn’t give the number of personnel police assigned to the meeting and the counterprotest.

Staffing officers to provide security at both events ended up costing the city $44,400, according to police.

Between the two events, only one incident occurred.

When two men wearing Nazi garb rolled past the downtown protest in their car, the men got in a heated back-and-forth with protesters.

One protester put a dent in their car. A complaint was filed with police, but no arrests were made.

Police believe that keeping the location secret helped avoid potentially violent confrontations.

Crotts said that, from a planning standpoint, it would have been easier to deploy resources to one location instead of sending them to two locations.

But from a public safety standpoint, revealing the NSM meeting location “could invite trouble, where it might not be there,” he said.

One point of concern residents had was that the NSM meeting in the city brought back memories of the Nov. 3, 1979, shootout, in which five people were killed and 10 were wounded.

Members of the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party shot marchers with the Communist Workers Party holding a “Death to the Klan” march at Morningside Homes.

The police and the city were criticized about the response to the incident.

Crotts said officers took what happened that day into consideration, but he said the two events were completely different from a planning standpoint.

“In 1979, you were inviting a group into a public display, (whereas) here you had a private meeting not in public with no invitation to challenge (one another),” Crotts said.

“It’s really an apples and oranges comparison.”

Contact Ryan Seals at 373-7077 or ryan.seals@news-record.com