Confrontation over monument got tense, but stayed calm

He said he grew up in Alamance County and attended Cummings High School, though he does not live here now. People on both sides of the street had their phones out calling people and shooting video. “This crowd gets larger, then that crowd gets larger, and they’re all live-streaming each other,” Chuck Talley, owner of several buildings and businesses on Court Square and North Main Street, said around 10 p.m. “I don’t think anything will happen tonight.” There were complaints about behavior. Jennifer Talley, wife of Chuck Talley, said someone was shouting “black power” at people coming out of the 9 p.m. show at the Graham Cinema, and Volk said some of the people on the northeast corner had been obnoxious to passers-by and people, including her, who went over to talk. “This is not a peaceful protest,” she said. A lot of people on the northwest corner said the other crowd was made up of out-of-towners, though local faces were joining in as the crowd grew, including John Thorpe, a candidate for Burlington’s City Council who was also broadcasting on Facebook Live and advising people in the crowd how to avoid arrest. People did cross North Main Street in ones and twos from both sides without incident for much of the night. Knox and an unidentified man from the other side of the street, openly carrying a firearm, got into an intense, though not heated, conversation about why the two groups were there. Sheriff Terry Johnson joined the conversation to ask the man to put his weapon in his car, which he declined to do. “This is an open-carry state,” Knox told the people around him wondering why the sheriff hadn’t arrested the man with the gun. “This is not about the firearm.” JOHNSON AND GRAHAM Police Chief Jeff Pritchard were on the scene by 10 p.m., and there were about eight marked and unmarked cars on either side of the monument from different agencies. East Elm Street off Court Square was lined with Highway Patrol cars and at least two from the Mebane Police Department. Cars from the ACSO and Graham police were diverting traffic from the square. Johnson told the Times-News and two TV camera crews that officers didn’t intend to arrest anyone, but had a zero tolerance policy for any criminal activity. When a man on the east side of North Main Street shouted an obscenity, Graham police immediately went after him, chasing him down an alley, where he managed to escape into the neighborhood. Law enforcement wasn’t treating it as a protest, so permits weren’t an issue. People in the crowds also were policing themselves. Although loud and at times confrontational, Knox — a self-described gang banger wearing a red bandana — helped maintain calm on the northeast side. On the northwest side, a man who refused to give his name and advised people not to talk to the media also kept the crowd from jeering when police went after a man on the other side of the street. He also advised people to go home and let the growing number of law enforcement officers protect the monument before something ugly ended up as a viral video, and even cleaned up trash after the crowd dispersed. By that time the crowds had reached their peak sizes. Barrett Brown, president of Alamance NAACP, arrived and started negotiating with Knox and Johnson to get the crowds dispersed. Negotiations took a while. Each crowd wanted the other to disperse first. The crowd on the northwest side backed away from the corner gradually, and the northeast crowd moved north on Main Street. A 22-year-old man on the northwest corner was arrested for disorderly conduct, according to Graham police, for shouting obscenities when asked to leave. The crowds were basically dispersed by about 12:30 a.m., and all but a few sheriffs’ deputies left the scene. “Y’all did a good job,” Knox called out to Johnson and Prichard as he and his friends left. Reporter Isaac Groves can be reached at igroves@thetimesnews.com or ... (Burlington Times News)