A.C. Thompson is a staff reporter with ProPublica. His stories, which often examine the criminal justice system, have helped lead to the exoneration of two innocent San Francisco men sentenced to life in prison and the prosecution of seven New Orleans police officers. In addition to working as a print and web journalist, Thompson has reported extensively for television, serving as a producer and correspondent for the PBS documentary series Frontline. His life was fictionalized on the HBO show “Treme.”
The authorities said they arrested a Washington, D.C., man who had hailed the suspect and might have known more about the attack. The man and his brother had talked of wanting to kill Jews and blacks, prosecutors said.
The charges against members of the Rise Above Movement come weeks after four other members or associates of the group were indicted on riot charges in Virginia.
The CEO of Northrop Grumman told employees he was saddened by ProPublica and Frontline’s report concerning Michael Miselis, an aerospace engineer who took part in the violence in Charlottesville last year.
Vasillios Pistolis had bragged online about his affiliations and his role in the violence in Charlottesville last year. He is now likely to be forced from the Marine Corps.
A former Marine says he alerted the Corps to a white supremacist in its ranks last October. Six months later, he wonders how seriously the Corps is investigating.
A Marine took part in the violent assaults in Charlottesville last summer and later bragged about it online with other members of Atomwaffen, an extremist group preparing for a race war. The involvement of current or former service members — often with sophisticated weapons training — in white supremacist groups has long been a concern.
Three technology companies have banned the neo-Nazi group from using their online services after reporting by ProPublica. Atomwaffen’s t-shirt retailer is out, as well.
ProPublica obtained the chat logs of Atomwaffen, a notorious white supremacist group. When Samuel Woodward was charged with killing 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein last month in California, other Atomwaffen members cheered the death, concerned only that the group’s cover might have been blown.
The 20-year-old man charged in Orange County with killing a gay Jewish college student earlier this month is said to have belonged to Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group.
Only a fraction of bias crimes ever get reported. Fewer still get successfully prosecuted. Perhaps the widespread lack of training for frontline officers has something to do with that.
The Air Force’s apparent failure to send the criminal records of the airman behind Sunday’s mass killings to civilian authorities allowed him to obtain guns. Such reporting failings are widespread and longstanding.
A group that included many people who were college-educated or ex-military displayed effective planning. “White people are pretty good at getting organized,” said one.
State police and National Guardsmen watched passively for hours as self-proclaimed Nazis engaged in street battles with counter-protesters. ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson was on the scene and reports that the authorities turned the streets of the city over to groups of militiamen armed with assault rifles.
Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:
You have to credit us. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, ProPublica.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact our Vice President of Business Development, Celeste LeCompte.)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica and ProPublica Illinois on both Twitter (@ProPublica and @ProPublicaIL) and Facebook.
Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:
