Report: Ill preparation led to Confederate statue’s toppling

RALEIGH, N.C. — Police and administrators at North Carolina’s flagship public university were unprepared for demonstrators who tore down a campus Confederate memorial last summer, but likely didn’t conspire to allow the statue’s sudden removal, a report released Friday found. “Enough red flags existed prior to August 20 to suggest that Silent Sam would be forcibly removed,” said the report from lawyers hired by the statewide university system’s governors. Chancellor Carol Folt’s office expressed misgivings about putting up barricades on the first weekend of the academic year, but said the decision was ultimately up to police, the report said. Still, Derek Kemp, the associate vice chancellor for campus safety, told the police chief that Folt “did not want barricades to be used on August 20, 2018 because of what it would look like to students and their parents,” the report said.