Author: graelynbrashear

Lena Seville first came to Charlottesville more than a decade ago when she transferred to UVA from Virginia Tech to study environmental science and the application of environmental thinking to planning and design. She said she grew to love the community and stayed, and for the last several years, she’s been a full-time activist and volunteer. Now, she wants to apply that experience and ethos as a member of City Council.

Seville, 46, became the third candidate to enter the Democratic primary race last weekend, and can point to her involvement in a broad range of civic issues. She is vice-president of the Belmont-Carlton Neighborhood Association. She’s president of the Transit Riders of Charlottesville and vice-chair of the Charlottesville Area Transit advisory board. She serves on the Belmont Bridge Steering Committee, the city’s Tree Commission and on the Task Force on Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Juvenile Justice System, which was set up to examine racial disparities in how children are affected by police interaction.

Her service has reinforced her understanding that getting people involved in local government is important to the health of the community, she said.

“What really matters to me is citizen participation and transparent government,” Seville said. “There are other things that are important to me, but I think all of them are affected by whether the citizens are helping to make the decisions. We have lots of great, smart, creative people here. We need to use that and take advantage of it.”

She said she saw the importance of resident input while observing the drawn-out process of designing the structure to replace the Belmont Bridge. “There were things that were missing because the design was too far removed from the people who were using it,” she said.

Seville said that if elected, she’d work to make it easier for local residents to get involved. “There are people who want to help, but sometimes there are a lot of barriers to participation,” she said. “People have jobs, they have lives, they have children, elderly parents, hobbies, vacations. I think there’s a lot of ways people could be brought in to help work on projects that they’re interested in.”

She also wants to see better communication between city staff and the public—something she’s highlighted as one of many neighborhood association heads who publicly slammed the city’s Department of Neighborhood Development Services last month in a letter to City Council claiming the department was “out of touch” with residents. Opportunities for public participation need to be better advertised, said Seville.

“It makes it hard for people to participate if they can’t even observe the process,” she said.

Seville also cites social justice issues as important to her platform. She said she’s encouraged to see a focus on relational policing anchoring the ongoing conversation about public safety in Charlottesville, but she wants to see more focus on documenting how officers interact with residents on a day-to-day basis.

“We have the data about formal interactions, but a lot of times, the problems we see…start out as informal interactions,” she said. “That’s exactly the kind of thing that can create a good or bad relationship. Collecting that data is important.”

On that and other issues, Seville said she can’t claim she has the answer now. But by serving on Council, she hopes to tap into the city’s collective expertise to find solutions. It’s an extension of what she already does as a volunteer, she said: “I’m doing what I love and I’m helping people.”

“We have lots of great, smart, creative people here,” said Lena Seville. “We need to use that and take advantage of it.”

As Charlottesville grapples with its proposed 2016 budget, one line item has garnered much of the attention: A proposal to increase the city’s meals tax from 4 to 5 percent. The penny-on-the-dollar hike is actually a 25 percent increase in the rate, and would generate an estimated $2.1 million in new revenue for the city’s general fund.

The tax increase was one of several short-term solutions to closing the city’s persistent school funding gap proposed by the Blue Ribbon Commission on Sustainable School Funding, a 13-member panel that presented its findings to the city in January 2014. City staff and some on Council say the increase will fund school and police budgets in a way that shifts part of the burden onto visitors, who according to a tourism analysis are responsible for 40 percent of current meals tax revenues.

“People in this community really want quality services,” said City Councilor Kristin Szakos. “And yet we’re reaching the point at which we can’t pay for these things.”

Restaurateurs last fought a proposed increase to the meals tax rate in 2012, and many are angry that it’s being revisited. Several said the market is so packed with eateries that the industry can’t afford to ask customers to pay more, and Charlottesville is risking killing a cash cow; the meals tax is expected to bring in $8.1 million this year, making it the fourth-biggest source of revenue in the city budget.

“Once we raise this tax, it will remain raised, and they will raise it again next time there’s a need,” said Peter Castiglione, co-owner of Maya. “And what happens if nobody goes out to eat? Now the schools don’t get their money, and we’re still penalized.”

As the debate heats up, we’re taking a look at the claims on both sides.

Is it a progressive tax?

No. But that’s not stopping the debate over this question.

In economic terms, a tax is progressive if the rate increases as a payer’s ability to pay goes up—as with the federal income tax. It’s regressive if those with lower income end up paying more of their income on the tax than people with higher income.

Flat-rate transactional taxes are pretty much universally understood to be regressive, said Mildred Robinson, a professor at UVA’s School of Law and a federal and state tax expert. A sales tax is a prime example, she said, “and a meals tax is another species of retail sales tax, just a special one.”

So why did the Blue Ribbon Commission call the meals tax “one of the more progressive taxes available” in its report?

“I think the sense was that eating out is a discretionary expense, and the most regressive taxes are the ones people don’t have any choice about at all,” said former Charlottesville Mayor and Commission member Bitsy Waters.

As Szakos put it, the meals tax “is not a tax on necessities, it’s a luxury tax.”

“But it’s not a luxury—that’s the thing,” said Robinson. “People eat out for recreational reasons and non-recreational reasons.” And the fact that the thing you’re taxing could be considered a discretionary expense doesn’t make a tax progressive, she said, “it simply means it may make it bite less than it would otherwise.”

How does Charlottesville’s meals tax stack up?

Supporters of the increase say the city’s meals tax rate is one of the lowest in the state, but according to UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center’s most recent summary of local taxes in the Commonwealth, the median meals tax levied by Virginia localities is 4 percent, which means Charlottesville is smack in the middle.

Narrow the focus to the state’s 39 independent cities, though, and Charlottesville is tied with five others for the lowest meals tax; the average rate in the group is 6 percent.

Will raising the tax rate discourage people from dining out?

Depends on who you ask.

Charlottesville Mayor Satyendra Huja, who has said he supports the rate increase, said he doesn’t think it will affect diners’ decisions. “How many times do you look at the meals tax?” he said.

Other municipalities have been here. Roanoke raised its meals tax rate from 5 to 7 percent in 2010 to fund schools, but brought the rate back down after two years. According to a Roanoke Times analysis, restaurants’ pre-tax revenues went up 13 percent over the two years the increased rate was in place.

But another Virginia case study draws a different conclusion. The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington compared revenues at a chain with restaurants in Fairfax and Arlington counties after Arlington instituted a meals tax in 1991. They found the chain’s Arlington restaurant grew much more slowly than its Fairfax neighbor over the next 20 years, and wait staff there earned 20 percent less.

Rapture owner Mike Rodi said he believes the hike will affect customer perception. “They’re more hesitant to go out, and they tip less, so people who make their living in restaurants will start earning less,” Rodi said. And he said there’s no question his bottom line will suffer. One example: Rodi said he’ll have to shell out more to credit card companies, which charge a transaction fee that’s a percentage of the total sale. “The taxes are not exempted from that transaction fee,” he said.

Why aren’t councilors considering other measures?

They have, and they are.

The Blue Ribbon Commission recommended other measures to raise revenue, including increasing property and lodging tax rates. Several members said their role was merely to lay out those options, not recommend one over the other.

During early budget discussions, Szakos initially pushed for a real estate tax hike as well, a more diverse approach to raising revenue that she emphasized during her last campaign.

It would have been the first property tax rate increase in the city in 20 years. It didn’t happen.

At least one Councilor has said she’d like to consider dividing the burden of raising another $2.1 million between smaller hikes to the meals and lodging tax rates.

“I just want to make sure we have investigated all other remaining options to close this gap while there is still time to do so,” said Kathy Galvin. She may end up a swing vote on the issue; while Szakos and Huja support the one-penny meals tax increase, Dede Smith has been cool on the hike, and Bob Fenwick is adamantly opposed.

Last week, C-VILLE revisited the case of Robert Davis, who after five hours of interrogation by Albemarle County detectives in 2003 admitted to killing Crozet mom Nola Charles and her toddler son. He has since maintained his innocence, and the two siblings who initially told police Davis was involved have now sworn under oath that he wasn’t. Some believe Davis’ case is a textbook example of a false confession, but that’s still up for debate; his clemency plea is currently being investigated by Governor Terry McAuliffe’s parole board.

But our story left a key question unanswered: What are police doing to prevent eliciting confessions that could be flawed or false?

The lay of the land

UVA law professor Brandon Garrett literally wrote the book on wrongful convictions. In Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong, he examined early cases of DNA exonerations, when indisputable forensic evidence cleared people who had previously been found guilty. In many of those cases, suspects had confessed under pressure to crimes they never committed.

Garrett has since worked with the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services and others to develop best practices for investigators. Last year, he turned his attention to interrogations. He surveyed 180 agencies in the state about their policies, and found a widespread lack of guidance. Only nine required recording interrogations in their entirety, a practice widely understood to help prevent false confessions, Garrett said. More than half made it an option, but didn’t go further than that.

When it came to specifics on how to conduct interrogations, there was even less information on the books. Only a handful gave direction on proper procedure, including cautioning against feeding suspects facts through leading questions, which experts say can be a recipe for eliciting a detailed false confession from a vulnerable person.

“Most agencies have no guidance whatsoever on how you interrogate juveniles,” Garrett said. “No agencies have a policy on how you interrogate someone who is mentally ill or intellectually disabled.”

Dozens had no policy on interrogations at all.

Local rules

Both the Albemarle County Police Department and the Charlottesville Police Department have written policies that specifically address recording interrogations, though the language differs.

Albemarle’s rulebook states that officers “are encouraged to use this Department’s audio and videotaping capabilities for purposes of recording statements and confessions in an overt or covert manner consistent with state law,” and goes on to say that “The lead investigative officer may decide when audio and/or videotaping may be used.”

The city goes further: “It is the policy of the Charlottesville Police Department to video record all statements taken from persons from whom custodial and non-custodial interviews are conducted when circumstances permit for such recording.”

Leadership from both departments stressed that they see recording as an important tool, but said a blanket policy mandating it in all cases is a bad idea.

Albemarle Detective Sergeant Darrell Byers said recording interrogations is “the norm” for serious cases there, but it can’t be mandated. “Researchers sometimes overlook the reality of the job,” he said. “It’s not uncommon for somebody to spontaneously blurt out a confession without a police officer even asking a question,” sometimes during transport from a scene to the police station. Saying a video recording is required for each and every confession could jeopardize the use of those spontaneous admissions, said police. Put another way: “The only reason it’s not mandated for each and every instance is it’s absolutely impossible to do in every case,” Byers said.

Captain Gary Pleasants of the Charlottesville Police Department agreed.

“You never know what might occur when,” he said. He recalls a situation that occurred years ago when he was face to face with a suspect in a serious crime. “He was sitting in a jail cell, and he said, ‘I’ll talk right now, but this is all I’ll do,’” said Pleasants. There was no recording of that confession. “We’ll try our best to record them,” he said, “but that’s why it’s not an absolute.”

Neither department’s policy specifically addresses interrogation techniques, though representatives from both departments said investigators receive extensive training on best practices, including what Albemarle Police Chief Steve Sellers called “confession reliability”—making sure that an interrogation suspect isn’t just telling detectives what they want to hear. Sellers and Pleasants also said interrogations of serious crime suspects are typically team affairs, with multiple officers watching and discussing the reliability of the information gathered.

So why aren’t all those best practices and techniques learned in training written into their policies?

Not all worthwhile police tactics can become policy right away, said Sellers. The department rulebook is huge, and covers a lot of ground. “To incorporate different skills and techniques each and every time we learn something new is really impractical,” he said. “Over time it could become sort of a standard practice, and if it’s supported by model policies, then it’s time to go in and make an adjustment.”

Pleasants said departments should commit to following best practices, and then police themselves. “If you put too much into policy, you can confine yourself,” he said.

The next steps

Albemarle County Sheriff Chip Harding wants to see more policy guidance on the state level. A veteran of the Charlottesville Police Department, Harding has become something of an evangelist on the issue of wrongful convictions since he was elected sheriff in 2007. Last year, he ramped up his advocacy of the creation of a state justice commission—a panel of experts, including police leadership, who could examine policy around the Commonwealth and encourage agencies to adopt best practices.

Training on proper interrogation techniques has definitely improved in recent decades, Harding said. When he was a young officer, threats, cursing and intimidation of suspects was the norm, something Pleasants and Sellers echoed. Now, they said, there’s widespread understanding that a respectful approach is more effective.

But Harding believes there’s a long way to go—even in departments like Albemarle and Charlottesville. “The standards aren’t as high as they should be,” he said.

He thinks recording should be employed for far more than interrogations. It should be used to document police lineups, and document all interviews with witnesses and “non-custodial” suspects, he said—people who haven’t been arrested. And, unlike the law enforcement officers C-VILLE spoke to locally, he thinks policy should reflect training and practice when it comes to interrogation technique.

Garrett agrees. “We need a model policy on how to do interrogations right.”

That may prove to be a very big ask. Both men acknowledged that there’s a lot of resistance from agencies across the state to rules that dictate how police should do their jobs. Some still don’t believe false confessions exist, Harding said. Garrett pointed out that a bill that would have written into state law a policy similar to Charlottesville’s when it comes to recording interrogations—tape it when possible —died in the House of Delegates earlier this month.

Harding said he has reason to hope that his plans for a justice commission will make progress in the next few months, and he hopes its creation will help bring law enforcement officers into the conversation and make them more willing to consider reforms. “But,” he conceded, “there’s going to be pushback.”

Albemarle County Sheriff Chip Harding is a vocal advocate for establishing model law enforcement policies designed to prevent wrongful convictions—including interrogation techniques that won’t elicit false confessions from suspects.