Some gymnastics programs let little kids wear shorts and T-shirts. Others want girls in leotards. (Stock Photo)
Julia Lapan’s 3-year-old daughter was excited to take her first gymnastics class at Classics Gymnastics. “She ran onto the floor,”—only to be sent back because she was wearing a T-shirt and shorts.
“I bristled at that because she was wearing what the boys were,” says Lapan, who asked that her daughter’s name not be used. “The coaches gave me quite a bit of pushback.”
At another class, the little girl, now 4, was wearing a leotard with shorts when the coach sent her back off the floor because the shorts weren’t approved, says Lapan. “This time she was crying.”
The mother says she’s frustrated and finds the dress code sexist, especially for kids whose young whose bodies look pretty much the same.
Spencer Watkins, the owner of Classics Gymnastics, says there are good reasons for the attire policy, which mandates leotards with footless tights or bike tights for girls and T-shirts with gym shorts for boys.
“The biggest issue is accidental nudity,” he says. “They spend a lot of time upside down.”
The other is that with coaches catching kids, there can be a lot of hands-on. Coaches don’t want to touch kids “in places where they’d be uncomfortable,” says Watkins. “That’s something we don’t want.”
He also notes that competitive teams compete in leotards.
Other programs for kids offer more leeway in attire. The Little Gym, for instance, is a noncompetitive facility, and children can wear shorts or leotards, says owner Sarah Oliva. “The only thing we require is that kids go barefoot.”
At the Ballet School of Charlottesville, Atsuko Nakamoto says students wear different colored leotards so she can tell which class she’s teaching. Are there exceptions? “Naturally,” she answers.
Students can wear shorts or a scarf so they can be more comfortable, she says. “I ask them to wear fitted clothes so I can see the body line so I can correct it,” she says. “If a kid wants to wear shorts, I’m fine with it as long as there are no pockets, because they want to put their hands in them.”
Lapan says Watkins has offered to give her a refund, but except for the dress code, she likes the gym.
“I see how society treats girls and boys differently,” she says. “I just want them to play by the same rules. Girls feel like they can’t speak up.”
The worst, she says, is “for toddlers to be subjected to different dress codes and for them to be humiliated and sent off the floor.” And she worries about children who are gender nonconforming.
During the era of #MeToo and the USA Gymnastics sexual abuse scandal, Lapan says, “It’s time to shine a spotlight on sexist policies that create false dichotomies between boys and girls, not to mention being totally tone deaf to the needs of trans and gender-nonconforming children.”
A petition to close Fourth Street to vehicle traffic prompted immediate protest
from downtown business owners,
who started a counter-petition to keep the mall’s crossings open. (Staff Photo)
The woman collecting signatures to close the Fourth Street Downtown Mall crossing has withdrawn her petition and deleted her Twitter account. “There was so much outcry, so much hatred,” says petitioner Aileen Bartels.
Safety was her primary concern, and she wanted people to be able to visit the mall without worrying about cars. Although her petition never made it to City Council, the issue was a hot topic among those making public comments at the August 19 meeting, many of them mall business owners, all of them opposed to closing Fourth Street.
Hedge owner Karen Walker says her business doubled when she moved from the mall to the cross street, and she hired two more employees.
Derriere de Soie owner Megan Giltner moved her business to Fourth Street for the access, and says her customers can often park across the street from her store. “My concern [is] if they close it, people will keep driving around the mall.”
The Downtown Mall opened as a pedestrian-only space in 1976. There was resistance to the first mall crossing, which came in 1995. Developer Lee Danielson built the then-Regal Cinema only on the condition the city would open Second Street to cross traffic. Danielson, who also built the ice rink, is credited with revitalizing the mall, which was often dark and deserted after 5pm.
In 2005, mall merchants asked City Council to consider a second permanent crossing on the east end of the mall because construction of the Pavilion and transit center had closed Sixth and Seventh streets to traffic.
“We lobbied for three years to get Fourth Street open,” says Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville chair Joan Fenton, citing the need for deliveries, trash pick up, and disabled parking and drop off.
The DBA started their own petition to keep Fourth Street open, which had 352 signatures online as of August 23 (Fenton says there are hundreds more on paper petitions). She says every successful pedestrian mall has cross streets, which makes them more visible and vibrant. “We’ve learned they’re essential.”
Fourth Street will always be a tragic memorial of August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville. That’s what City Councilor Wes Bellamy noted at the August 19 meeting. “For many people, the big issue is Heather Heyer was killed on that street,” he said. “It’s a commemorative space honoring someone who lost her life and [the] dozens [who] were injured.”
But business owners say that doesn’t mean the street needs to be closed to traffic. Blair Williamson told council, “Closing this street would be the nuclear option, like Trump’s wall.” And Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, has said she didn’t think the street should be closed.
As far as general safety is concerned, in the past five years, there have been a total of 10 crashes on both Fourth and Second streets, says Charlottesville police spokesman Tyler Hawn. Six of those were non-reportable, which means no one was injured and the damage was less than $1,500. None occurred on the mall itself, and none involved pedestrians, except for that glaring August 12 exception, when the street was supposed to be closed.
Local Kevin Cox calls the cross streets the safest pedestrian crossings in Charlottesville. His concern is the perplexed tourists who drive onto the mall itself. “It happens all the time,” he told City Council. Cox would like to see bollards at the crossings to deter wrong turns. “I think this is a terrible oversight,” he said.
Bartels had gathered 365 signatures on her petition, which disappeared when she tried to make it inactive. She says she got the message from many: “I want to drive my car where I want.”
Says Bartels, “I don’t want to engage with this community.”
John Smith documented the Monacan capital Rassawek at the confluence of the
James and Rivanna rivers in 1612.
Library of Congress
In John Smith’s 1612 map of Virginia, at the point where the Rivanna River meets the James, he marked Rassawek, the capital of the Monacan Indians. Jump forward 400 years and the site is on another map, this one targeting it as a pump station to quench Zion Crossroads’ thirst.
Louisa and Fluvanna counties joined forces in 2009 to form the James River Water Authority to pump water from the James for a long-term water supply for growth-booming Zion Crossroads, which depends on wells for its water, says AquaLaw attorney Justin Curtis, who represents the water authority.
“There is a real and immediate need for water in the area,” says Curtis. “This is not a problem that’s getting better. It will only get worse.”
The water authority applied to the Army Corps of Engineers for a water intake and pump station permit at Point of Fork, the modern-day designation for Rassawek. That triggered Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires the Corps to consider adverse effects to the Monacan site and “avoid, minimize, or mitigate,” says Marion Werkheiser with Cultural Heritage Partners, which represents the Monacans.
The James River Water Authority knew the land was a significant historic site, says Werkheiser. “They ignored it and bought it anyway” in July 2016. “They didn’t reach out to the tribe until May 2017.”
Rassawek today is called Point of Fork. Carrie Pruitt
The Monacan Indian Nation received federal recognition in January 2018. “Archaeological testing shows artifacts that go back 200 generations,” says Werkheiser.
“Rassawek was the capital of the Monacan confederacy, and several other towns paid tribute to Rassawek,” says Monacan Chief Kenneth Branham. “It is where we conducted ceremonies, lived, and died, for thousands of years.” To build the pump station, a four-acre site will be excavated, says Werkheiser. “That is not acceptable to the Monacans,” who want the Army Corps of Engineers to deny the permit, and also want Virginia’s Department of Historic Resources to deny a permit for anticipatory burial, in the event human remains are found.
Curtis acknowledges that possibility is a “sensitive” issue. “We’re all hoping no human remains will be disturbed,” he says. “Historically people haven’t buried their dead at the confluence of two rivers. We’ve already done a number of archaeological digs and haven’t found any.”
If the project is approved, archaeologists will go into the site first “to learn as much as they can about the people who were there first,” says Curtis. Artifacts will be turned over to the Monacans, and the James River Water Authority has pledged $125,000 to the Monacan Ancestral Museum, he says.
The Monacan Nation has been asked to provide its protocol if remains are found, says Curtis. “They will be treated respectfully,” and the Monacans can re-inter them in Amherst, where many live in the 21st century.
“We have been through reburials before, and it is a traumatic experience for all involved,” says Branham. ”I can’t ask our tribal members to go through that again for a pump station that could be built elsewhere.”
He asks the Army Corps and Governor Ralph Northam “to respect our tribe and to work with the water authority to find a location for their project that does not disturb our ancestors.”
There’s always the possibility construction could disturb burial sites, whether African Americans or colonists, Curtis says.
In fact, the U.S. 29 Western Bypass was kiboshed in 2013 when a historic African American cemetery was discovered in its path.
Curtis says there are historically significant sites all along the James River. Point of Fork has been “occupied for thousands of years for the same reasons we need to be there now: It’s a source of water.” He adds, “No one disputes it’s a very important site.”
If the Rassawek site is not used, what would be a nearly mile-long pipeline would grow to 5 or 10 miles, says Curtis.
Not only does Louisa have a connection pipe waiting, it’s also built the Ferncliff water treatment plant, which has no water to treat at this point, says Curtis.
And that points to Louisa’s biggest problem: development without the water to support it.
Rae Ely has her own beef with Louisa County’s handling of water resources. “There is no groundwater at Zion Crossroads. They’ve tested and tested. That didn’t stop them and they did all that building.”
Ely lives in Louisa’s historic Green Springs district. In 2006, the county built a three-mile pipeline to Green Springs, and said, according to Ely, “We’ll pump out their groundwater.”
Green Springs residents have been tracking the depletion of their groundwater for 13 years, she says. “It’s dropping like a rock.”
She alleges that “the powers that be have been lying and claiming the James River water will be here any day now, while failing to say the Monacans opposed it.”
Ely, who has been an attorney for more than 30 years, says, “I know federal law favors the Monacans. They’re going to win. That’s a nonstarter.” And her neighbors are prepared to seek an injunction to stop Louisa from pumping out Green Springs’ groundwater, she says
“Louisa County got out over its skis and built all this commercial development,” says Ely.And it has 2,000 homes and apartments ready to be approved, “all looking for water and it’s not there,” she says.
Ely compares the development going on in Louisa, based on water from the James that isn’t coming any time soon, to a gold rush. She offers a one-word piece of advice to the county: “Moratorium.”
John Clark says he had a beer dumped on his head over the weekend.
staff photo
John Clark is a regular on the Downtown Mall, sitting in a beach chair with a tube-feeding machine. He has stomach cancer and says he hates to ask for money, but needs help paying for the medical supplies he needs as a result of having to get all of his nutrition through a tube. Clark’s condition worsened over the weekend, he says, when a guy in a green shirt dumped a beer on his head Saturday.
That would be Kyle Alexander Luptak, who was charged with misdemeanor assault and was still on the Downtown Mall Monday in Clark’s usual spot across from Splendora and C-Ville Weekly’s office.
“It was a stupid decision,” he says. Luptak says he woke up and Clark had insulted his friend, so he responded with the beer dumping.
Clark denies any name calling, and says he isn’t going to be intimidated by Luptak and his friends, as he sat about 30 feet away.
Maryland native Luptak is in town with several travelers and says he’s headed to a music festival. He had a court appearance this morning and is scheduled to be back before a judge September 23.
“If you write anything about this,” he says, “please say I feel bad, I feel stupid for it.”
Kyle Luptak in the green t-shirt says the beer dumping was not a good decision. staff photo
Whole families and homes were swept away in Davis Creek, the hardest hit community in Nelson County.
Nelson County Historical Society
Fifty years ago, man first walked on the moon and a music festival in Woodstock, New York, signaled a generational shift. As iconic as those events are, that’s not what Nelson County remembers about 1969, when the remnants of Hurricane Camille latched onto the mountains the evening of August 19 and dumped around three feet of rain. By morning, 124 people were dead, some of whom were never found.
Warren Raines was 14 years old when the water from the Tye River started rising and seeping into his house in Massies Mill.
His most vivid memory of Camille 50 years later? The funeral of his family about a week after the storm. “I’d never seen anything like it. To have four caskets lined up there. My little sister hadn’t been found then or it would have been five.”
That night, Raines “became an orphan and lost my childhood,” he says. He doesn’t enjoy talking about it—“I get more emotional than before.” But he does talk about it, which some people still can’t do even now. “If you don’t tell people what happened, they don’t know,” he says. “They don’t know about the rainfall.”
Raines compares Camille to July’s Hurricane Barry, which dropped 20 inches of rain in Louisiana over three days. “We got as many as 32 inches in eight hours,” he says. Many have described Camille’s precipitation as raining so hard that you had to cup your hand over your nose to be able to breathe.
Nelson County is remembering Hurricane Camille as the anniversary of “the 19th,” as it’s called there, approaches. The Nelson County Historical Society has offered programs that look at the local response to the flood, meteorological factors, and the pilots who flew in to find those swept away, as well as a concert headlined by former Statler Brother Jimmy Fortune with Bennie Dodd and Joey Davis, all Camille survivors.
Woody Greenberg, who’s on the historical society board, assesses the impact of Hurricane Camille on Nelson 50 years later: “Definitely it’s a psychological scar that’s not going away for the people who lived through it,” he says. “Some people will talk about it who wouldn’t before, and we’re trying to preserve their stories.”
This small rural county of around 11,000 people lost 1 percent of its population, and survivors say most knew at least one person who died—in some cases, many more.
Even to those who were there, the scope of the devastation wasn’t immediately apparent. The four-lane U.S. 29 bypass had just opened, but debris at Woods Mill made the highway impassable to the north. Flooded waterways in the south end of the county also impeded travel. With telephone lines downed, it took the outside world several days to learn that an unprecedented disaster had taken place in Nelson.
“More water than I’d ever seen”
Bar Delk was 22 years old, a VMI grad who was headed to Fort Benning in January and then to Vietnam. He’d been in Charlottesville the evening of August 19 and was driving home. “The farther we came, the harder it was raining,” he says. “When I got to Woods Mill, there was water coming across the road. Five tractor trailers were parked there and weren’t crossing.”
Those five tractor trailers washed away, he adds. “We found two of them. Three tractor trailers were never found.”
A river runs through it: U.S. 29 bypass at Woods Mill. Nelson County Historical Society
A few years earlier, Delk had a summer job working on the highway, and with a local’s confidence, felt he could get across. He concedes, “That was more water than I’d ever seen.”
He made it to Lovingston, where water was pushing into the IGA. “We cleaned it up a couple of times before the wall caved in,” he says. A trailer was on fire, but no one could get out of town because the entrances were blocked, he says. “We realized something was going on.”
In the western part of the county, by 2am, the Raines family decided to relocate to higher ground. Their neighbors, the Woods, sent their four children—Donna Fay, Gary, Teresa, and Mike—to pile into the Raines’ car, where Warren had gathered with his parents and siblings: Johanna, 18, Carl, 16, Sandy, 9, and Ginger, 7.
Rising water killed the engine and the refugees took to Route 56. No one realized how rapidly the water was rising. “In less than two minutes, it went from knee deep to four or five feet deep,” says Raines. “The water was so swift you couldn’t stand against it.”
Warren and his brother Carl clung to trees and were the only ones in his family who survived the rising water. Two of the Wood children—Donna Fay and Gary—were among the 33 people whose bodies were never recovered.
For the next couple of years, Raines lived with another family. In his senior year of high school he went back to the homeplace, where the first floor had flooded during the storm. “The upstairs was untouched,” he says. “That was sad. If we’d stayed…”
Warren Raines still lives in Nelson County, and remembers his childhood home in Massies Mill as a happy place. He became an orphan August 19, 1969, when he lost five family members. Sanjay Suchak
He’s philosophical about what might have happened. “If we’d stayed, it would have been a frightening night. The lightning was like day. We would have seen the water rushing by with homes, automobiles. We would have been waiting for the house to break up.”
He pauses. “If is such a big word.” He’s aware that others who remained in their homes were swept away that night. “If we’d done that. If we’d not done that.” It was impossible to know.
Declaring a disaster
Jane Raup was 14, living in Wingina in the southeast part of Nelson County on the James River, and she awoke to see flooding in the fields around her home. “We had no idea what was happening at this end of the county,” she says.
Her father, Cliff Wood, was on the board of supervisors. He and two cousins put a jon boat on a truck and made it as far as Howardsville, where they rescued two people on a roof, she says.
“All this water on the Rockfish River—he realized something was going on,” she says. He took back roads to Lovingston to check on her grandmother, who told him, “I hear it’s bad at Davis Creek,” Raup remembers.
It was, in fact, really bad at Davis Creek, in the northern part of the county, where 52 people died. In the Huffman family alone, 18 perished. Aerial photos show Davis Creek turned into a river of rock going down the mountainside. The bodies of 20 people who died were never found.
In Lovingston that day, Wood ran into Bob Goad, the commonwealth’s attorney. They drove up U.S. 29 to Muddy Creek, which had flooded, and a house was in the middle of the median.
“Someone asked if it was a disaster,” says Raup. The county’s civil defense team had been preparing for a nuclear disaster, not a natural disaster. But as the only supervisor who could make it to the county seat, Wood declared a disaster, his daughter recounts, and took charge of the recovery and relief effort.
“Local governments have a responsibility in those situations,” Wood said in 2009. “That’s how I got involved.”
Wood set up the command center on the new bypass. “He said, this is the perfect place. It’s flat,” says Raup.
When Wood made it home that night, he told his family, “You wouldn’t believe it.” Says Raup, “He was in shock. I think everyone was in shock.”
The U.S. 29 bypass around Lovingston had just opened. It became the command center and landing strip for the search and relief effort. Brower York Jr./Nelson County Historical Society
Nelson Sheriff Bill Whitehead lived in the western district of the county, near Massies Mill and Tyro, and he couldn’t get to Lovingston, says his son, Dick Whitehead, who was almost 18 when the hurricane struck.
Like others, he was trapped by washed out bridges. But he was able to make a radio distress call that was heard by the sheriff’s department in Augusta County, which alerted the civil defense office in Richmond. John Kent, the Augusta sheriff, sent a helicopter to Nelson.
“The first day, you’re hoping to find survivors,” says Dick Whitehead. “It was still a rescue. By the first night, it was obvious it was not a rescue. It was a body recovery.”
Yet that first day, it was still hard to fathom how bad it was. “You don’t realize how many houses had washed away,” he says. Nor did he immediately understand how many people he knew who had died.
Thirty in the Nelson County school system died, he says, and estimates he probably knew 15 of them. Three were in his class, including Warren Raines’ sister, Johanna. But on August 20, he had no idea what to expect. “You can’t prepare yourself for that when you look out the window on the first day.”
The image of the overturned Bland Harvey house in Roseland has been published more than any other Camille photo. Brower York Jr./Nelson County Historical Society
Fifteen-year-old Phil Payne wasn’t aware anything was amiss when he awoke the morning after the storm in parents’ house, a mile south of Lovingston. “That’s what makes this storm unique,” he says. “We didn’t know. It’s mind boggling. The communications did not exist.”
His father, who owned the Chevrolet dealership, got a call from his bookkeeper, who said she couldn’t get to work because a house was in the middle of the road. “He didn’t really believe her,” says Payne.
After breakfast, he went with his father to Lovingston and saw mud in front of the IGA. They drove—or got rides when the road was blocked—up U.S. 29. “It was a matter of just yards,” says Payne, determining whether residents lived or died.
It wasn’t until midday that the rescue process began. “I don’t think anyone could grasp the scope of the disaster,” Payne says. “You have a flood in the mountains. How did that happen?”
His father coordinated search and rescue—although “by then there was no rescue,” says Payne.He went up in helicopters multiple times.
Because other volunteers hadn’t arrived, he and his friends searched. They found three bodies the first day. After a few days, his father decided maybe that wasn’t the best job for teenage boys. “Dad pulled some of the young guys out of it, including me,” recalls Payne. “That didn’t last long.”
Some of the older men had to go back to work and Payne continued to search during a period of time that all ran together. Later, he tried to label some photos he’d taken. “I was off by one week on every one,” he says.
The force of Camille
In the Nelson County Historical Society archives, there’s this entry: “The height of the storm—midnight to 3am; Most victims were nude when found.”
The force of the water stripped off clothes and even wedding rings, and people either escaped injury entirely, “or they died,” said Dr. Robert Raynor in 2009. He assisted chief medical examiner Dr. James Gamble, and said the dead either drowned or suffered blunt force trauma from the tons of debris surging through the water.
A home on the Rockfish River after Hurricane Camille. Nelson County Historical Society
And it was the water that caused mountains to melt. “It was one of the most catastrophic, historic floods to hit the U.S.,” says Jeffrey Halverson, a geography and environmental sciences professor and severe storm expert for the Washington Post.
Hurricane Camille reached the Gulf Coast as a Category 5 storm—“one of only three to hit the United States in the 20th century,” says Halverson. But after killing 174 people there, it was losing steam as it headed north and had transformed to a depression, he says.
The local forecast called for a chance of showers, clearing in the morning. “The fact it roared back to life in Virginia was a tremendous surprise to everyone,” says Halverson.
He lists five pieces in a “conspiracy of circumstances” that turned Camille into a killer again. It contained remnants of low pressure that were pulling moisture into the air. The mountains helped accelerate that. In addition, a cold front moved into central Virginia from the north and parked. A disturbance in the jet stream over central Virginia also caused moist air to rise. And to top it off, the ground was “very, very wet,” says Halverson. Evaporation from the saturated ground enriched the air with higher levels of moisture, causing extremely high humidity.
Any one of those factors independently can cause moist air to rise, says Halverson. All together, “they conspired to produce one of the most intense rainstorms ever documented in the United States.”
For eight hours, at least 30 inches of rain fell over Nelson County, although that’s believed to be a minimum as most rain gauges washed away—and they don’t measure 30 inches anyway. “That’s almost three feet of water,” he says. “This system kept generating itself over eight hours.”
Here’s what happens when 30 inches of rain falls in a short period: “The land surface cannot accommodate that volume of water,” says Halverson. Add to that the steepness of the mountains and the denseness of the soil on top of bedrock. “It was like a sponge. This huge, tremendous weight gave way. Whole sides of mountains came down…mud, vegetation, rock, and even habitation.”
Mudflows from hundreds of locations where the slopes gave way coalesced and merged, burying rock and anything else in its path many feet deep, says Halverson. “It literally tore apart the land.”
You can still see those bare spots on the mountains around Nelson today. When helicopter pilot Douglas Neims flew into Nelson in 1969, he saw what looked “kind of like ski area tracks going through the trees, but it was mud and landslides.”
Neims, who had returned from Vietnam in 1968, was one of many vets who used their piloting skills in getting in and out of difficult spots to help with the rescue effort. He remembers flying south to Lovingston from Fort Belvoir over a lush, green Virginia in August—”until you fly over a hill and you’re looking at total devastation. You could see houses and cars buried. It hit you that this was devastation.”
Many Nelson residents oppose the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, and some point to Camille and its thousands of landslides as an example of why the pipeline is a bad idea.
Anne Witt, a geohazards specialist with Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, which has mapped over 5,000 landslides from Hurricane Camille, says, “Any large construction project that includes large excavations in soil and rock should take geological hazards (including landslides) into consideration during the building process.”
Geologists at the department are using a laser system to develop landslide susceptibility maps for the area, but Witt says the project is still in progress, and hasn’t reached any conclusions yet. It’s expected completion date is 2021.
50 years later
Over the course of half a century, any locality will change. In 1969, Nelson County was a farming community with two major employers—American Cyanamid, which extracted titanium dioxide and created a superfund site on the Piney River, and Alberene Soapstone in Schuyler.
Both are now closed. There’s still some farming, but “the small orchards did not recover,” says Woody Greenberg. “Years ago, every farm had an orchard.”
That includes Clyde Harvey’s family farm, at the top of Davis Creek. And although his orchards were damaged, in trying to salvage trees he discovered the Ginger Gold apple, which he patented. Says his daughter Debbie Harvey, “Ginger Gold came from Davis Creek.”
Since Camille, Wintergreen has been built, along with microbreweries and wineries. “Now the tourism industry is thriving,” says Greenberg.
Bar Delk still finds it odd that the county would go from making illegal moonshine and peach brandy to legal alcohol. “Who would have thunk it?” he asks.
For Warren Raines, the sound of a helicopter brings back memories of Camille. “So many helicopters,” he says. He recalls a strange smell to the mud that he’s only smelled one other time, possibly from stagnant mud at a construction site.
Helicopters also trigger memories of Camille for Jane Raup, and she remembers an aroma that was “part decay, part green wood.”
In 1969, school was delayed a month. “I remember seeing Warren’s brother standing in the door to the cafeteria, wondering what to say to him,” she says. “There was no counseling. We didn’t know about PTSD.”
Unlike Warren Raines, who says he never wanted to leave Nelson County, Carl Raines left and never came back.
The home of Nina Fitzgerald ended up in the median strip of U.S. Route 29 north of Lovingston, courtesy of Hurricane Camille damage. Blair Clarke Camille Photo Collection/Nelson County Historical Society
Of the many heroes from Camille, one group stands out. “Nelson County really loves the Mennonites,” who showed up to recover bodies, shovel mud, and help rebuild homes, says Raup.
The hurricane “made us aware we needed a 911 emergency system,” she says, and bridges and roads were improved when they were rebuilt.
“I do believe those of us growing up then are closer,” says Raup. “There’s a bond there.”
For Dick Whitehead, the big difference between the 50th anniversary and the 40th is “fewer and fewer people who have first-hand knowledge” are still around. So many of the people “who got us through this,” like his own father, are gone.
There’s more awareness now of floodplains, and very few homes were rebuilt in those areas, he says. “That’s a positive.”
The news isn’t so positive in areas where there were rockslides and people have built. “Maybe they didn’t do the research,” he says, “but some are building in vulnerable areas.”
Houses collided in Massies Mill, where the Tye River flowed down Route 56. Nelson County Historical Society
The big question: Can the devastating effects of Camille happen again?
“Absolutely,” says Halverson—and you don’t even need a hurricane.
He points to Madison County in 1995. A summer system of thunderstorms dropped more than 20 to 25 inches of rain in 12 hours, he says. Three people died, and there were “terrific flash flooding and debris flows.”
Says Halverson, “We see in less than 30 years two extreme rain events along the Blue Ridge Mountains due to these torrential cloudbursts.” He sees no reason to think this didn’t happen in the past before people were around to measure it, given the area’s steep mountains and “unlimited supply of moisture.”
He says, “You’re experiencing thousands of years of erosion in the space of a few hours.”
And with a changing climate and rainstorms becoming more intense, combined with the “proclivity of more people moving into harm’s way in these locations,” he says it could happen again, maybe not in the same location, but anywhere up and down the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Halverson offers this advice: Don’t forget about a hurricane once it makes landfall because it can spring back to life. Hurricane Agnes started in Florida in 1972, and created Pennsylvania’s worst flooding ever, he says. In 2004, Hurricane Ivan hit Florida and continued on to drop 50 to 60 tornadoes over Washington, DC.
“Over and over, we see these remnants gaining strength,” he says.
There are some tremendous lessons to be learned here,” observes Halverson. “It’s a dramatic story.”
Remembering Camille
A memorial for the victims, with music and photos, will take place Sunday, August 18, at 2pm at Nelson County High School.
And a forthcoming book, Commemorating Camille: Never Forget, edited by Doris Delk, Bar Delk, Dick Whitehead, and Woody Greenberg, tells the stories of the 18 communities affected by the hurricane. It will be available at Oakland Museum the third week in August.
Along with the Civil War, Hurricane Camille was one of the deadliest events to hit Nelson County. Sanjay Suchak
Death toll: 124
Fatalities in Nelson weren’t limited to one part of the county.
By the time the rain stopped on August 20, 1969, Hurricane Camille had killed 124 people in Nelson County. This map indicates where they perished—some of the bodies were never found.
Claudrena Harold, Tanesha Hudson, and Zyahna Bryant discuss how white supremacy was in Charlottesville long before August 12 at a UVA panel moderated by UVA vice-provost Louis Nelson.
staff photo
Why Charlottesville was targeted by a white supremacist rally, ostensibly to protest the removal of a Confederate statue, has led to several theories. That was the starting point for a panel sponsored by the UVA library August 12, two years after the Unite the Right rally.
“Beyond the statues: The invisibility of black Charlottesville” began in the Harrison/Small auditorium with a moment of silence—then a discussion on whether Charlottesville became a target for white supremacists because of the absence of a counternarrative of truth telling on white supremacy and black activism.
It was a premise moderator Louis Nelson, a UVA vice-provost, admitted he didn’t necessarily buy. But he also questioned the “prevailing mythology” that white supremacy came from outside, and Charlottesville really wasn’t like that..
Charlottesville native and soon-to-be UVA first-year Zyahna Bryant challenged the out-of-towners narrative of August 12 and reminded that the man who organized the Unite the Right rally was a graduate of UVA. “Really, people just came out of their houses and came out from their basements into the street and started displaying their ideology,” she said.
In Charlottesville, black people have always had stories about building community, she said. “They just haven’t had those same platforms as white people.”
Activist Tanesha Hudson said, “When narratives are controlled by masses that have the power and the resources, you’re never going to get the truth. You can’t tell our truths if we’re not in the room.”
She’s making a documentary on black Charlottesville, “mainly because the story hadn’t really been told from a black perspective.”
Negative stories about black people perpetuate a system of racism, she said. “You never see the people rising up against white supremacy.” For instance, the story of Nat Turner, who led a slave rebellion, was one she did not learn in Charlottesville schools, she said.
“One thing I loved about separate but equal,” said Hudson, were the black newspapers like the Reflector and the Tribune, which did provide news about what was going on in the black community.
Bryant pointed out how African Americans like Toni Morrison have contributed to American culture. “She was writing to and for black women,” said Bryant. “We created our own culture. I’m fascinated with how we can be so oppressed and so great at the same time. It fills me up.”
Claudrena Harold is a UVA history professor who co-edited Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequity with Nelson and has made films on the history of black student activism at UVA. “I wanted to capture the beauty and texture of everyday life,” and how black students in the ‘60s and ‘70s created a culture, she said. “I wanted to visually tell that.”
Nelson asked the panelists about the most pressing systems and structures that need to be addressed.
A living wage and union representation, said Harold. “When people talk about the university as a plantation, they’re not talking about its architectural design.”
Hudson listed health care and justice, while Bryant said public education. She described how her guidance counselor tried to steer her away from applying to UVA and she realized she was the only one of 30 black students at Charlottesville High who applied.
“UVA is not actually accessible to black students in Charlottesville,” said Bryant. “Most of their parents have worked for the university.”
Bryant also warned about “the dangers of free speech,” which shut down city schools for two days when a teenager made a threat on social media. In school during conversations about history, she said, “Young white boys feel emboldened to be like, ‘I don’t like black people,’ and feel the classroom is a safe space to say that, and then we wonder who’s doing the mass shootings in school. Do we not see any level of connectedness there?”
Construction at Congregation Beth Israel will beautify its space—and improve security. EZE AMOS
Pittsburgh. Christchurch. Charleston. The list of communities devastated by mass murderers continues to grow, as the past weekend attests. And houses of worship have found that nothing is sacred to those determined to target people of certain religions or races.
Congregation Beth Israel realized that the weekend of August 12, 2017, when neo-Nazis marched through UVA Grounds chanting, “Jews will not replace us,” and past the synagogue intoning, “Sieg Heil.”
Alan Zimmerman, the synagogue’s former president, stood outside during services that weekend with an armed guard. A year later, after an anti-Semitic gunman killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue, Zimmerman wrote in USA Today, “I’d like to say I’m shocked at the shooting of Jews in Pittsburgh, but I’m not. Given what I saw in Charlottesville, it seems an inevitable tragedy.”
Mark Heller lives near the Charlottesville synagogue, and walking by recently, he noticed architectural plans titled, “Security upgrades for Congregation Beth Israel.” He saw a “new deep trench with a lot of rebar.”
Work is going on to replace a fence and beautify the front, says Diane Hillman, president of Congregation Beth Israel’s board. The upgrades will also “improve the security of the space,” which houses a preschool and kindergarten.
The trench and rebar Heller saw are for a bench for people to sit on that matches the steps, says Hillman, and she says the fence going up “is definitely not a wall.” Hillman declines to say how much the synagogue spends on armed guards, but “it’s significant.”
Given the times we live in, “It’s wise,” she says. “I know everyone is improving security.”
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Congregation Beth Israel received a 2018 grant from DHS’ Nonprofit Security Grant Program.
The Islamic Society of Central Virginia is also stepping up its security after a couple of incidents during Ramadan in May. In one, two congregation members said a car tried to target them as they walked from the mosque, says Saad Hussain, the organization’s outreach coordinator.
The mosque set up a GoFundMe account to beef up security “because of some recent events in Charlottesville the past few years,” he says. The facility has seen an increase in the number of people attending youth programs and daycare, and “the building is used more often during the day.”
A big difference compared to other religious centers is “the mosque is a place of worship where Muslims come to pray five times a day,” says Hussain. “Accessibility is very important.”
The Islamic Society of Central Virginia now has a police presence during its services and the nights of Ramadan. It has increased camera coverage, improved locks with swipe access for members, and consulted with law enforcement about what needs upgrading in the building, says Hussain. “We’re not going to take any chances with security.”
Other local houses of worship did not return phone calls from C-VILLE or declined to comment. First Baptist Church on Park Street recently held an event on church security conducted by Albemarle police Sergeant Gary Pistulka, who had not responded by press time.
“It’s a sad testament to our times,” says Heller. It’s disheartening every school in the United States has to have security guards. It’s disheartening to see this happening in a house of worship. I’m uncomfortable with it. I understand it, but I’m uncomfortable with it.”
Novelists John Hart and Corban Addison (pictured here with their attorney Renée Flaherty) are freelancers who work from home or remote locations. They’re suing the city and county for collecting taxes on what they say are their constitutionally protected endeavors. Eze Amos
John Hart and Corban Addison Klug both make a living writing novels. Unlike writers for newspapers and magazines, which state code exempts from business license taxes, Hart and Addison received sizable tax bills from Albemarle County and Charlottesville that they say are unconstitutional.
The two men filed lawsuits against the city and county July 24, represented by the Arlington-based Institute for Justice, a “nonprofit, public interest law firm that litigates cutting-edge cases,” according to attorney Renée Flaherty.
The libertarian institute focuses on government overreach in cases involving private property, occupational overregulation, free speech, and school choice. Its most famous case, and the only one it lost before the U.S. Supreme Court, according to its website, was Kelo v. New London, which spurred an eminent domain backlash against government confiscation of property for private development.
In this case, the city and county “unconstitutionally discriminate between different kinds of speech,” says Flaherty. “Instead of protecting and supporting its creative community, Charlottesville and Albemarle County have decided to treat it like an ATM.”
Klug, who writes under the name Corban Addison, has lived in Charlottesville since he attended law school here in 2001, and has written four novels that address human rights issues. Because he offers no goods or services for sale in the city, he was unaware he was subject to business taxes—until he got a notice from Todd Divers, the commissioner of revenue, who also is named in the suit, advising him he may need to pay up.
“I’m committed to paying my taxes,” says Klug. But he believes he should be treated the same as the press and also get First Amendment protections.
Klug says he ended up paying the city almost $2,600 for three years in back taxes, penalties, and interest on his gross receipts, which don’t allow the deductions for travel or other expenses that he would get on his income taxes.
Hart, a former lawyer and financial adviser, spent 15 years trying to be a published author. His six literary thrillers in Southern gothic settings have been New York Times bestsellers. “I need a laptop and pure imagination, he says. “I don’t understand why the county feels they’re entitled to a piece of that.”
In 2016, he—many other local freelance writers—learned that the county, which had hired two full-time business-tax auditors, did indeed believe it was entitled to a piece of his income going back to 2011. He’s coughed up nearly $11,000 in taxes, penalties, and interest, which he paid under protest.
Besides claiming the business tax on freelance writers is unconstitutional, Hart and Addison also allege city and county tax officials “exploit” the code, which they say is vague and doesn’t list writers or authors among those businesses and services that must pay 36 cents per $100 on gross receipts if they earn over $100,000. Writers who earn less pay a flat fee that starts at $35 in the city and $50 in the county.
While other localities like Arlington have business taxes, they don’t target writers, says Flaherty.
When individuals are self-employed, they file a Schedule C on their income taxes to report profit or loss, and local tax collectors have access to those forms.
In 2016, Charlottesville didn’t regularly go after freelance writers. Divers told C-VILLE then, “The juice has got to be worth the squeeze. I don’t know how much it’s worth with our workload. We do check Schedule Cs occasionally.”
Divers declined to comment about the suit, and Bill Letteri, his counterpart in the county who is named in Hart’s suit, did not respond to an inquiry from C-VILLE.
The authors want the courts to declare the business license ordinances unconstitutional and to refund the taxes they’ve paid.
The July 1 increase in the meals tax caused some miscalculations in diners' tabs.
staff photo
Charlottesville raised its meals tax to 6 percent July 1, which, on top of the 5.3 percent state sales tax, adds more than 11 percent to your dinner tab. But a computer glitch at one local restaurant meant some customers were paying more than 16 percent.
Lorena Perez, a designer at C-VILLE Weekly, had lunch with friends at Wild Wolf Brewing Company on Second Street SE on July 4. She calculated that the $7.66 tax charged on her $46 bill was 16.65 percent. Her companions also had more than 16 percent added to their bill—about $2 more than what the tax should be.
The tax on this bill should be $5.20, not $7.66.
Perez says, “We told the manager, who called the general manager, who said over the phone that their system had the accurate percentage in, and that it was the correct tax. We asked the manager in the restaurant to do the math, and although he agreed that the amount was more than what the percentage should be, he said, ‘I can’t do anything about it.’”
Commissioner of Revenue Todd Divers confirms that the meals tax is 6 percent and the state tax is 5.3 percent for a total of 11.3 percent on restaurant tabs in the city. “It could be an honest mistake if the wrong number was put in at the point of sale,” he says.
If it’s an ongoing problem, says Divers, “it could escalate to the police.” According to city code, “the wrongful and fraudulent use of such collections” constitutes embezzlement, he says.
A week later on July 11, C-VILLE dined at Wild Wolf, which opened its Charlottesville location in May, to see if the excess tax had been fixed. It had not been.
On a bill of $34, the tax was $5.64, almost 17 percent—a $1.80 overcharge. The manager on duty said she’d have the marketing manager call back. C-VILLE also left a message for Troy Berge, the general manager.
It was July 17 before C-VILLE caught up with Berge, who said he’d look into it. “We don’t want to be overcharging.”
He discovered there was a problem. “After July 1, the system reprogrammed. It was only a few days. We didn’t realize it.”
Perez says the manager she spoke with offered to discount her bill—but didn’t do it. “We left quite disappointed” by the customer service and “knowing that they are overcharging customers with the tax.”
Berge says no one called him about Perez’s tax concern July 4—and that the manager Perez spoke to is no longer there.
“Please ask her to come in,” says Berge. “I’d like to take care of her.”
Wild Wolf added a couple of extra dollars in tax to a recent lunch tab (top).
RaShall Brackney has had a challenging year as Charlottesville police chief, but says she has no regrets about taking the job.
Eze Amos
RaShall Brackney took the job as Charlottesville police chief a year ago, despite the notoriety the department faced following the violence of August 2017, the damning indictment of the Heaphy report, and the abrupt departure of her predecessor, Al Thomas.
Although she hasn’t flinched from the public drubbing that came with the job, could anyone really know how contentious it would be to be chief of police in a city still recovering from the trauma of 2017? At her first press conference, meant to simply introduce her to the local media, civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel showed up to protest police teargassing of protesters at the July 8, 2017, KKK rally.
The first anniversary of the deadly Unite the Right rally came fewer than two months after her June 18, 2018, start date, and Brackney faced more criticism for her handling of the police-heavy event, during which the Downtown Mall was put on lockdown.
Just as she was starting the job, City Council appointed a Police Civilian Review Board that had its issues with her, including a member who claimed Brackney “literally attacked” her and others who challenged her unavailability to meet with the board.
And it is hard to get on Brackney’s calendar. Despite our pleas, C-VILLE was only able to get 30 minutes for an interview (we managed to stretch it to 38). So there’s a lot we didn’t get to ask.
But Brackney, 56, who spent most of her career on the Pittsburgh police force, and had retired as chief of George Washington University police, did cover a lot of ground, including how she’s been welcomed to Charlottesville, media coverage—including C-VILLE’s—and running a department that’s seen a mass exodus of officers and is currently down 15 cops.
It’s been a busy year, and she still hasn’t had a chance to unpack.
Chief RaShall Brackney talks about her first year heading the Charlottesville Police Department. Photo Jackson Smith
C-VILLE Weekly:If you were to describe the past year in three words, what are the first that come to mind?
RaShall Brackney: Chaotic. Whirlwind, but also exciting.
What has been the best part of being chief here in Charlottesville?
Getting to know the personnel, their stories, to talk about their challenges, their hopes, their fears. They have been a very open and honest department. And what I’m finding, more and more, is oftentimes the public persona of Charlottesville Police Department, for the most part, does not match who these individuals are.
So tell me about the public persona. How would you describe that? What do your officers run into?
It varies. I would be remiss if I said there was a constant barrage of negative encounters. In fact, we get lots of letters about how well the officers do, how much they’re appreciated. There isn’t a week that goes by where some organization or person isn’t sending letters or donating food to the station to say we care about our officers, but that’s a very quiet majority.
What about the loud response that officers get?
I don’t think I have been in a single council meeting—and I attend them pretty regularly compared to my predecessors—that during community concerns, someone has not said something negative about our officers. And that goes live because everyone in the media sits there [and] they all run with every single one of those negative comments.
Has that been a problem in recruiting officers to come here?
It’s a challenge when everything that is being put out there is negative. It’s been a challenge when there’s been a disconnect between the majority of the population and this very vocal group who tends to, I can say unabashedly, bash our officers even if it’s not truthful. And no one ever corrects the record, even if it’s not true.
As a matter of fact, most reporters don’t even follow up to ask questions. They’re comfortable with a quote, and as long as it’s a quote, they’re good with that, regardless of the damage it might do to our officers, individually and the department collectively.
Is there anything you want to follow up on about the column [on police-community relations] that ran in C-VILLE Weekly? [“Unavailable: To re-establish trust, the police department, and the city, need to do better” by Molly Conger, May 8]
I would talk about the [City Notes opinion] column in C-VILLE Weekly more generically. There were some things in there to start with that were just absolutely incorrect. One of the columns said specifically, Chief Brackney has never shown an interest in the events of August of 2017 and looking at those.
I’ve been on record since before I arrived here to say, I can see where the department or law enforcement may not have lived up to the expectations of the community. But literally I would have no authority to investigate [the Heaphy report]. I wasn’t even hired at that point and would not have access to all the information because there were so many things in place prior to my arrival.
So I think when we talk about being responsible, if I have to be a responsible leader in my field and take responsibility and accountability for the policing profession, even though I may not have been personally affiliated with it, then the media has to do the same thing.
I’m not disagreeing with you. While we’re talking about unpleasant things, you said you personally get the same treatment that your officers do. What’s a specific instance you’re thinking about.
It actually started before I even arrived. If anyone watches a single council meeting, I’m sitting there, just arriving. They’re going to vote on my appointment. I’m being yelled at. I’m being screamed at. I’m being told I am responsible for all the events that occurred here and what am I going to do about it.
Literally the first week I’m here, I’m walking from the Paramount from a meet and greet. I’m being screamed at, told that “cops and Klan go hand in hand.” That I need to resign.
I believe there’s a tweet that says, we don’t hate Chief Brackney because she’s a black woman. We hate her because she’s a cop. And if I were to pull that tweet up, I believe it also belongs to one of your persons that work for the C-VILLE Weekly now.*
I literally will be in council and someone will walk past me and call me a lying bitch. I’m constantly being called a liar at every community concern. I’ve even been attacked and told I should be more sympathetic, referring to my race and being biracial. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone refer to my predecessors by their race and their gender.
If you recall my first day here, saying, ‘“It’s disappointing here in 2018, my race and gender are part of the conversation.” That it wasn’t that I had 33 years in law enforcement. That I had risen up through the ranks. That I held a Ph.D. I can honestly say there’s probably not a print media outlet, including C-VILLE Weekly, who has been very neutral or generous.
I would suggest even when I looked at your questions [Chief Brackney required written questions in advance of the interview], to ask me about dresses or uniforms. Have you ever asked Tim Longo about his outfits? Or did you ever ask Thomas about his outfits?
Brackney holds a press conference about stop-and-frisk data outside the police station. photo Samantha Baars
That is one of my favorite things about your style. How do you decide? Today I’m wearing…
I’m glad it’s a style issue. I’m very intentional about what I wear. Extremely intentional. But this city in general seems to be obsessed [with] when I’m not in uniform. And even recently, I threw the ball out at the game. Someone tweets, “It’s about time she’s in uniform.” Are you kidding me? Do you know how often I’m in uniform?
But I’m intentional about it. So for instance, if I’m in uniform, I’m attempting to make a statement about something and I need you to pay a little bit more attention about whatever it is that’s going on.
But it’s also situational. When I’m reading at the school with the elementary students, I’m in uniform because they need to be able to make that connection between the law enforcement community and our service that we give. When I’m on college campuses, I tend to be softer dressed because students do not react as well to officers in uniform. When I’m with an older crowd, I also have to be careful, because most of your older seniors will defer immediately to your authority and won’t necessarily speak up. Depending on the group and what I’m doing is whether I’m in uniform or not. Almost every ceremonial promotion, I’m in uniform.
And if you notice, more and more, I’m at council in uniform, and that’s intentional as well, because there needs to be at least the visible presence of some sort of order in council. I’ve replaced my officers being there because I will not subject my officers to that. So I sit up, I take the brunt, and they at least get to not get beat up on every day.
I’ve even had one reporter tweet, “Chief Brackney is in the back of the room and that’s not unusual. What is unusual is that she’s in uniform.” Like, are you kidding me? You would ask at least, is she competent versus does she look a certain way. So I appreciate your candor that it’s a style issue.
I think it’s cool. I love dresses.
I love dresses. As I say, I have no problem carrying a gun in a Kate Spade bag.
Have you had any regrets about taking this job?
There have been some challenges, not necessarily regrets. There’s a challenge in that my husband commutes to Fairfax to teach at George Mason University twice a week. That is a challenge we didn’t have before.
The challenge of distance—my family in Pittsburgh is now five hours [away] and a bit more difficult to get to. There have been challenges trying to understand the nuances of this community and managing—or even understanding—their expectations. Because that seems to be a bit more nebulous and slippery.
There have been challenges about trying to understand the political landscape as an outsider, someone who is not or hasn’t been a resident in Charlottesville for a very long time.
There are challenges around building up the department—and the morale—and continuing to try to get the public to see its worth and its value.
How is that going? Do you have any feeling about how morale is here?
Much like any agency and business and organization, it’s going to ebb and flow based on where we are. I’m sure it’s a little bit challenging now because we are so down. Five last week. Two individuals are retiring, but three—one is going into another profession altogether. One is moving to be closer to his family. And the other one is going to another agency. We’ll lose another detective in another week or two. We are significantly down. So to continue to keep the morale up is a challenge.
To address that, I had to make sure that everyone knew every one of us were all in. I have a directive now that sergeants and below, everyone is in uniform twice a month to work calls with the officers. Then lieutenants, captains, and the chief—myself included—has to work four hours a month in uniform out there on the street with them answering calls. We just put our uniforms on and answer calls with them so they all know we’re all in this together.
We had our first all-hands meeting where we brought every single officer into a space to hear what their concerns are and to get out information about where we’re headed as a division.
We came up together recently with a motto for our department: “Service beyond the call.”
I just wanted to touch on the civilian review board. Is that necessary? Any thoughts on that?
I think the challenge for me is, I’ve never been able to understand or get a clear answer as to why there was the development of a civilian review board here. Every time you ask a different person you get a different answer. I‘ve seen the letters recently where the civilian review board says it’s because there’s a systemic issue with policing, but interestingly enough, all their comments up to this date have been because of the events of August 2017. So I think that’s the challenge.
And also this civilian review board, the way it was put into existence, is very different from what typically occurs across the nation. There’s only about 200 out of 18,000 policing agencies in the nation. This civilian review board—our agency would be one of the smallest to ever have one.
Typically, they come into place one of two ways. Either by statute—not ordinance —statute. Somebody puts a referendum on the ballot to say they want this, that they believe this community needs this. The second way is typically through Department of Justice consent decree, in which they say, there’s such a pattern of corruption going on that there needs to be some additional oversight and then a judge gives them some authority that is typically backed by state statute as well.
So far to date, I’ve been picking through the civilian review board’s recommendations. They don’t think complaints are being resolved in a timely manner. So the possibility of creating a board that costs the taxpayers well in excess of $200,000 or $300,000 a year—because it’s not $180,000 [which is what the CRB requested], I don’t care what anybody says. Or 1 percent [of the police department’s budget]. There’s still staff equity and labor you’re putting into this. There’s printing costs, there’s research costs. There’s meeting time with everyone.
So, this board could really be an expensive board and I’m asking, to solve what problem? If you tell me what problem we’re attempting to solve, I think we could have come to some agreement about it. And the timing—it was formed almost literally after I just arrived, so could there have been some opportunity to say, here’s what we’re interested [in] with the new chief, let’s look at closing the gap between those concerns we have and where we could be.
And if it’s [that] complaints aren’t closed, I can say right now, with 100 percent authority, all 2017 complaints have now been closed and investigated. All 2018 complaints have been closed and investigated. And all of 2019 with the exception of the last one to come in have been closed and investigated. I will be posting all of those on our website.
If you’re looking for transparency, if that was the issue, again, I’m the only one that’s been posting investigative detentions [aka stop and frisks] since September of 2018. I didn’t arrive here until June of 2018.
We are now posting all of our charging data on our website and have been doing so for months now. All of our use of force for the last year are posted on our website and everything surrounding that.
We’ve added and are posting a position for another part-time internal affairs investigator, so there would be someone from outside the agency. Again this leaves more credibility to the investigation if you hire someone from outside. So there’s so much work that’s being done here, I’m just still confused as to the current necessity or what the impetus was behind [the civilian review board].
Do you feel like you’re supported by the city manager, by City Council?
The primary person I’ve engaged with has been Mike Murphy, when he was the interim city manager, and who I still report to as of this time. And Mr. Murphy, I have to say, is very supportive. It’s always going to be a challenge as to whether his voice can be heard as well.
As for City Council, I can say that [it] depends on the issue, what the support looks like. I think there have been certain members of City Council who I would probably have asked to have more engagement with, because there have been times when I thought council could have been more vocal in support, not just of me, but this agency, when they knew there were things that were not correct and were not brought to the forefront.
In February, demonstrators demanded that Brackney be held accountable for an alleged verbal attack on Katrina Turner, a member of the Civilian Review Board. eze amos
Or when there were challenges, when we had members of the Civilian Review Board who were not behaving in a manner that was best representative of any board that had been appointed by City Council. Did they take any steps to address that? And I would have to say that as a council, they did not.
Are there any misperceptions you’d like to have cleared up about you or the police department in general?
The biggest misperception about this police department that ultimately falls on me, as well, is that this department is filled with these individuals who despise minorities and are part of some white nationalist or alt-right kind of group.
It’s interesting the way that this data that we’re putting out, as transparent as we’re being, is being used against us, not even in a way that would be genuine and reflective.
I put out all of the data on all of the stuff the officers are initiating, as well as all of the calls. And it’s interesting how the data that is being reported overall is how African American men are arrested or stopped disproportionately. And that’s the tagline.
But it’s not just the officers who are initiating this. This is the 911 calls that they must respond to. Or a warrant that has to be served. Actually it’s captured under officer initiated, but it’s vetted by some judge. Or you as an individual can swear out one and we have to serve it. But somehow we’re holding all the responsibility for an entire system.
And I think you really should look at the number of engagements that the officers do at such a low staffing level: the community engagements, the community contacts they make that have nothing to do with the law enforcement portion of policing. So there’s often a conflation of policing and law enforcement. Law enforcement is one component of our policing duty.
When she was sworn in a little more than a year ago, Brackney became the first woman to lead the Charlottesville Police Department. Eze Amos
What do you like to do in Charlottesville for fun?
[Laughs.] I don’t have any fun. It’s so horrible. My self-care has completely deteriorated since I’ve been here. My poor husband. We haven’t visited a single winery. I keep hearing there are amazing wineries here. We’re very limited even in the number of restaurants we’ve been able to get to. We’ve been trying to get to Lampo, which we hear is amazing and have a gift certificate for.We still have not been able to get there.
I would like to get back to the things that I loved doing prior to arriving here. I was a runner. I’ve not been running. Love to read. Not been able to really do that. Cooking. My husband likes to cook. Well, I do the cooking and he kind of watches because I’m real possessive about my kitchen. We love to do those kinds of things.
For recreation, it’s been a real challenge to do the nonworking things because unfortunately, I’m always working. A misperception about my calendar—there’s a big to-do about my calendar—when you look at the number of hours and events, I’m [always] somewhere—including nights and weekends.
It’s a challenge to have some personal time. There’s also the assumption I’m not supposed to have any personal time. Ever. Or my officers. I would challenge anyone in their eight- to 10-hour day to say they don’t have any personal time. Our team and our personnel are expected to never have that.
Why did you decide to get into law enforcement?
That was not a decision. I kind of fell into it. I literally fell into law enforcement and policing at the age of 21, not believing this is something I should be doing. But it was a full-time job with benefits. And my mom was very clear that everyone worked in the house if you were living at home.
Now, as a more mature woman, I understand you don’t fall into anything. You are literally led to where you’re supposed to be in life.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
*On December 18, 2018, Molly Conger, who later began writing a freelance opinion column for C-VILLE, tweeted, “chief brackney says people in charlottesville feel ‘empowered to confront black women in power.’
she says she’s never been disrespected the way she has been since coming to charlottesville. (i don’t doubt there is a race & gender element, but people hate you because you’re a cop)”
