Getting the city to divulge how much it’s paid to settle police misconduct claims over the past several years has been difficult.
Photo: Eze Amos
Fogel FOIA response from city
How much has the City of Charlottesville paid out in settlements for claims of police misconduct? That’s what attorney Jeff Fogel hoped to learn when he filed a FOIA request on behalf of the People’s Coalition two weeks ago, asking for any responsive records for the past two years. The city’s response to the request: dozens of pages of emails between officials and attorneys, with almost all of the content redacted.
“I don’t know anything more than I knew before,” says Fogel, who has now filed a second FOIA request with the city, expanding the information he’s seeking to include settlements for police misconduct paid on behalf of the city between 2017 and 2019.
Like most Virginia municipalities, Charlottesville is insured by the Virginia Risk Sharing Association, which pays out settlements from a pool of funds.
Fogel says city representatives have previously told him they don’t know how much settlement money has been paid as a result of claims of police misconduct. He suggests that ignorance represents a deliberate effort by city officials to avoid having to disclose the information through FOIA.
City attorney Lisa Robertson did not respond to C-VILLE Weekly’s request for comment.
The city’s response to Fogel’s FOIA about police misconduct settlements does shed light on another legal action against the city: a free speech lawsuit filed by former city manager Tarron Richardson, who alleged he was wrongfully terminated in 2020, and publicly disparaged by members of City Council in violation of a nondisparagement agreement. Richardson eventually dropped the lawsuit, and no information about any settlement has ever been made public. The documents in the city’s response to Fogel’s FOIA request include multiple emails identified in the subject line as “settlement negotiations” in Richardson’s case.
Fogel says if his latest FOIA request results in no information about settlements in police misconduct cases, he plans to file suit against the city seeking the information.
World of pain
An Albemarle County pain doctor charged with sexually assaulting female patients between 2011 and 2017 has been found guilty in the first of multiple scheduled trials. According to The Daily Progress, it took a jury two-and-a-half hours to reach a verdict on Friday, April 1, at the conclusion of Mark Dean’s five-day trial in Albemarle County Circuit Court.
Pain doc Mark Dean was found guilty of sexually assaulting a female patient. File photo.
The victim, identified in the trial by her initials, accused Dean of inserting his fingers into her vagina without her consent at an appointment in 2017. A second patient testified that she’d had a similar experience during an appointment with Dean. Defense attorneys sought to undermine the victim’s claims by noting she returned to Dean’s office for additional appointments after the assault and didn’t report it for several years. Expert witnesses, however, testified that is not unusual for victims.
Dean will be sentenced on August 31, and faces a minimum of five years to life in prison. His next trial is scheduled for June.
In brief
Boost up
The Food and Drug Administration has approved a second coronavirus booster shot for immunocompromised individuals ages 12 and older, and adults 50 and older. These groups are eligible to get the Pfizer or Moderna shot at least four months after their most recent booster. Appointments can be made on VaccineFinder.org.
Price cut
Senator Tim Kaine has co-sponsored legislation that could drastically reduce the price of insulin across the country. Introduced by Senator Raphael Warnock, the Affordable Insulin Now Act would require both Medicare and private health insurance plans to cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 per month. The cost of the life-saving medication has skyrocketed—diabetics currently spend around $6,000 a year on insulin, according to the Health Care Cost Institute.
Tim Kaine. Photo: Gage Skidmore
In reverse
Last spring, the University of Richmond’s board of trustees refused to rename campus buildings with white supremacists’ names on them, sparking student and faculty protests. But last week, the swanky private school reversed its controversial decision: It renamed six buildings, including Ryland Hall—named for the school’s first president Reverend Robert Ryland, who enslaved more than two dozen people—and Mitchell-Freeman Hall—partially named for 19th-century trustee Douglas Southall Freeman, who supported eugenics and segregation. In recent years, the University of Virginia has also stripped the names of racists from several academic buildings—but has yet to rename Alderman Library, named for the school’s first president and eugenicist Edwin Alderman.
Former Charlottesville police chief RaShall Brackney is threatening a lawsuit against the city. Photo: Jackson Smith
Two months after her controversial firing, former Charlottesville police chief RaShall Brackney has filed formal complaints against the city, and is threatening to bring a lawsuit.
In complaints submitted to CPD’s human resources department, the local Office of Human Rights, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the NAACP, Brackney—the city’s first Black woman police chief—says her firing was direct retaliation against her efforts to dismantle white supremacy within the department. Since Brackney’s firing by then-city manager Chip Boyles (who has since resigned) on September 1, she also claims that city leadership has defamed, harassed, and discriminated against her based on her race and sex.
Brackney is demanding $3 million and a public apology.
The city is allowed to fire Brackney without cause. However, Brackney claims that after she was dismissed, public comments from the city manager and other leaders insinuated that she was fired with cause. That, her legal team argues, constitutes a wrongful termination.
“For the actions I took, for the attempt to dismantle racism, misogyny, nepotism, and police violence, I was deemed, quote, ‘not a good fit’ for this city,” said Brackney at a downtown press conference last week. “My professional reputation has been diminished, harmed, devalued by this city.”
City spokesman Brian Wheeler, who also announced his resignation this month, said the city has “no comment at this time” on Brackney’s complaints.
During the press conference, attorney Charles Tucker of The Cochran Firm walked through the events leading up to Brackney’s firing, beginning with her receipt of an email and video from a “concerned citizen” on June 6.
“What the video uncovered was that several officers using a city phone were engaged in police misconduct,” said Tucker. “[Brackney] put those who were responsible under investigation.”
According to a city statement released in August, the investigation revealed that SWAT team officers filmed their children setting off explosives, circulated pornographic videos and racist jokes on department cell phones, threatened to kill department leaders, and fired semi-automatic weapons at unauthorized events. Brackney fired one officer, and dissolved the SWAT team. Two more officers resigned.
As early as August 2, Tucker said that Boyles began holding secret meetings with city leaders to discuss terminating the chief. In her complaint to the Office of Human Rights, Brackney accuses Boyles, City Attorney Lisa Robertson, City Councilors Heather Hill and Lloyd Snook, Vice-Mayor Sena Magill, Police Civilian Review Board Chair Bellamy Brown, Police Benevolent Association President Mike Wells, Major James Mooney (who has also since retired), and Captain Tito Durrette of colluding to get her fired, in response to her disciplining “white male officers for criminal and departmental misconduct.”
Tucker claimed he and Brackney have records of emails with evidence of the meetings, but did not plan to release them publicly at this time.
Brackney declined an interview with C-VILLE for this story, but did provide written responses to our questions.
Before her termination, Brackney writes that she had an “open, transparent, and professional relationship” with Boyles, and that he gave her “no indication” he believed the department needed a leadership change.
Citing community backlash against Brackney’s termination—along with Mayor Nikuyah Walker’s pushback—Boyles resigned as city manager in October. He has taken a new job as executive director of the George Washington Regional Commission in Fredericksburg.
“The city’s response to my actions…[sends] a message that proclaims throughout CPD and City Hall that the good ol’ boys system of patronage and insularity are alive and well in Charlottesville,” said Brackney during the press conference.
In addition to disbanding the SWAT team, removing school resource officers from city schools, and ending CPD’s relationship with the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force, Brackney said she held officers accountable for severe misconduct, including police brutality, domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. She also claimed the SWAT team has been secretly reassembling since her termination, and will be fully funded in the FY23 CPD budget.
The former chief also accused the city of rewarding people who support systemic racism. Brackney said Durrette, a former SWAT team commander, was on a “performance improvement plan” before he was promoted to assistant police chief, following Mooney’s retirement last month. Durrette is leading the department until a new permanent chief is hired.
During her three-year tenure as chief, Brackney writes that some officers “openly embraced and supported reform.” But some of her initiatives were met with concerted pushback. In particular, she required officers to participate in implicit and explicit bias training, which was unpopular. She also required them to file Response to Resistance reports for every use-of-force incident in the field. Officers also disagreed with Brackney’s response to last year’s protests against police violence, and believed CPD “should confront and arrest individuals for blocking streets, shutting down traffic, or other violations of a special events permit.”
“My reward for doing what’s right? Slander. My reward? Defamation. My reward? Retaliation, harassment, humiliation. My reward for challenging the system of supremacy? Termination,” said Brackney at the press conference.
During a City Council meeting following Brackney’s termination, Boyles, who said he’d held discussions with police officers, city leaders, Wells, and other parties, claimed that key departmental leaders planned to quit their jobs due to their lack of trust in the chief. He pointed to the results of two anonymous surveys of officers—one conducted by the department last year, the other conducted by the Police Benevolent Association in August—which led him to believe the department would only descend into “further chaos” under Brackney’s leadership.
Tucker emphasized that the PBA survey was commissioned in July, shortly after Brackney had disbanded the SWAT team and disciplined multiple officers for misconduct. It remains unclear who the survey was sent to. “The timing of it is suspect, where it came from is suspect, the way it was used is very suspect,” he said.
Brackney pointed out that Boyles himself admitted he had no faith in the survey, and called it “unscientific.”
In explaining his rationale for the firing, Boyles claimed that he had consulted various department employees and area public safety experts. Brackney’s team submitted Freedom of Information Act requests for records of those meetings, and was told that no records matched the request. “Not one shred of documented evidence exists that these ‘interviews’ were conducted,” she writes.
“You slandered me. You libeled me. You literally diminished me. And then now you’ve been torturing me for the past two months,” said Brackney of Boyles.
According to Tucker, Brackney still works at the department, and will be on the payroll until the end of the month. However, she has lost access to all CPD spaces and systems, and must make an appointment to enter the department and be escorted around by a subordinate officer.
“They have curtailed the information that she’s receiving on a day-to-day basis, and have basically stripped her of her responsibilities for the most part, and have her shadow a captain,” he explained during the press conference.
The city has until November 26 to respond to Brackney. If it does not reach a settlement agreement with her, the former chief will take her case to federal court. In her complaint to the NAACP, she also urged the organization to file a class-action suit against the city for its “pattern” of discrimination.
After all this, Brackney remains open to staying at CPD, if the city’s new management offers her the job back.
“My attorney and I will not take anything off the table,” said Brackney. “The city’s got the next move.”
In August, Charlottesville’s Police Civilian Review Board, a body designed to investigate accusations of police misconduct, approved a new ordinance that expanded its powers. City Council, which began discussing the proposed ordinance last week, will have to vote in favor of it for the CRB to begin its work.
In accordance with a new state law that took effect in July, the ordinance would allow the board to independently receive and investigate complaints, hold hearings, subpoena documents and witnesses, and issue disciplinary recommendations in cases that involve “serious breaches” of department and professional standards.
During last week’s lengthy work session, City Council’s discussion of the ordinance included CRB members and its Executive Director Hansel Aguilar, who was appointed in September.
The board has yet to determine exactly who is allowed to file a complaint, and what kind of cases would require it to conduct an independent investigation. To limit the criteria for CRB investigations, board vice-chair William Mendez suggested Aguilar could closely oversee CPD’s internal affairs division, and make recommendations throughout its investigations to ensure they are complete and unbiased.
Councilor Lloyd Snook pointed out that potential complaints like use of excessive force are typically cases of criminal conduct or civil action, which the board is not allowed to investigate. “Where do these exclusions leave the PCRB with something meaningful to do?” he asked.
Aguilar suggested the board take notes from Washington, D.C., where he formerly served as a police misconduct investigator. If the city’s CRB received a complaint about a potentially criminal act, the board conducted a preliminary investigation and sent it to the U.S. attorney’s office. If the office decided not to prosecute the police officer, the board then continued to investigate the complaint as a breach of department standards.
Councilor Michael Payne asked if complaints involving the University Police Department could also be submitted to the CRB. “It was absolutely the intent of the legislature to consider the campus police in this process,” replied Delegate Sally Hudson, who said she could help clarify that part of the law during the upcoming General Assembly session.
Payne also recommended the board include a code of ethics in the ordinance, detailing when council could remove members for misconduct. During public comment, several community members called for the removal of board chair Bellamy Brown, who has been accused of collaborating with the Police Benevolent Association to get former CPD chief RaShall Brackney fired.
Mayor Nikuyah Walker said she brought up Brown’s behavior to council multiple times, but was told it was a private matter. “If there is only the will of one person to take his behavior [and] determine if he’s a good fit for the board, then there’s not much that can be done,” she said.
During the work session, councilors also commented on the CRB’s proposed interim hearing procedures, which would allow the board to proceed with one review request while it waits for the full ordinance to be passed.
The placeholder hearing procedures give board members full access to the police department’s internal affairs files, but leave complainants with just a police department-authored summary of the files. Snook voiced multiple concerns about that mechanism, suggesting that it could make it more difficult for complainants to argue their cases.
Following the work session, Council voted 4-1 during its Monday night meeting to approve the interim hearing procedures, with Mayor Walker dissenting. In the coming weeks, several CRB members and councilors will hold another work session to further discuss and amend the ordinance. Council hopes to pass the final ordinance before the end of the year.
Last summer’s protests prompted Virginia legislators to pass the Marcus-David Peters Act, which limits the role of police during mental health crises. PC: Eze Amos
Last summer, hundreds of people took to the streets of downtown Charlottesville, demanding justice for Black people murdered by police across the country. Many protesters urged the city to drastically reduce the Charlottesville Police Department’s $18 million budget, and reallocate those funds toward community services, including mental health treatment.
Thanks to new legislation, a mental health crisis unit could soon be coming to Charlottesville. In November, the Virginia General Assembly passed the Marcus-David Peters Act, named in honor of a 24-year-old Black high school biology teacher killed during a severe mental health crisis in 2018 by a Richmond police officer.
The act directs localities to limit the role of law enforcement in mental health crises, instead establishing a Marcus Alert system to bring non-police responders into the fold. By July 2022, the city must create a 988 phone number for mental health crises, and develop a response protocol defining when law enforcement will—and will not—need to be involved in answering calls.
In January, a work group—including city councilors, community leaders, emergency services professionals, and individuals who have experienced mental health crises—began exploring how to create a new mental health response system in Charlottesville. Last week, the group presented its findings to City Council, alongside the Imagining A Just Cville work group.
Mental health advocate Myra Anderson, co-chair of the Marcus Alert group, explained how police have mistreated her during many of her mental health crises. She also highlighted the cases of Black people who were killed by police while experiencing a crisis, including Corrine Gaines, Deborah Danner, and Anthony Hill.
“There have been times where I’ve found the police to be very helpful, [and] there have been times when things have gone horribly wrong,” said Anderson. “But I feel like when I’m in a crisis, I shouldn’t have to play Russian roulette with how they are going to show up.”
Lieutenant Larry Jones, who works with CPD’s crisis intervention team, expressed his support for the Marcus alert system. Responding to mental health calls is often very time consuming and costly for police, he said. He suggested the department create a specialized mental health unit specifically for high-risk calls requiring police intervention.
In order to establish a robust response system, mental health care professionals and facilities will need a lot more funding and community support, explained Region Ten Executive Director Lisa Beitz. In July, five of Virginia’s eight state-run mental hospitals stopped accepting new admissions due to staffing and capacity issues. Many people experiencing mental health crises have had to spend days with a police officer in their local emergency room, waiting for a bed to be available at a state or private mental hospital.
Representing the Imagining a Just Cville work group, which was organized by Mayor Nikuyah Walker last year, Neal Goodloe of the Jefferson Area Community Criminal Justice Board shared the results of his study on crime in Charlottesville over the past decade. Though reported crime has decreased by similar percentages among Black and white residents, Black people are more likely to be arrested and incarcerated, and white people are more likely to stay in jail for less than a day.
Charlottesville resident Wanda Smith, Walker’s cousin, spoke about how her family has been impacted by mass incarceration. While her brother and sister were incarcerated for over a decade, she had to help raise her nieces and nephews, preventing her from pursuing her own life goals. Raylaja Waller of City of Promise discussed how seeing her father go in and out of jail deeply affected her as a child, and she advocated for more grassroots re-entry programs.
CPD intern Nancy Amin, a University of Texas School of Law student, highlighted the effects of officer discretion during arrests, using recent police department data. She described a traffic stop involving a white woman who admitted to driving drunk, but started crying and claimed that another CPD officer was her best friend. The woman was allowed to park her car and take an Uber home, and was not arrested. During a similar traffic stop involving a Hispanic man, the officer became impatient because the man did not speak English. The man did not understand the officer’s request for a sobriety test, but the officer arrested him for “refusing” the test, and he was found guilty of a DUI. (The charge was later dismissed.)
To take discretion away from officers, former CPD chief RaShall Brackney—who continues to work with the group despite her recent firing—suggested the city create a diversion program that people accused of certain offenses could opt in to before being arrested or charged.
City Manager Chip Boyles expressed his support for the recommendations and a willingness to get to work on them.
“These are just really starting points,” said Walker. “There’s a lot of work still left undone, and those things are going to require some funding [and] whoever is at the table in the city to see the vision.”
Questions remain about the firing of former Charlottesville police chief RaShall Brackney, who spent less than three years on the job. Photo: Eze Amos.
By Brielle Entzminger and Ben Hitchcock
Three weeks ago, Charlottesville City Manager Chip Boyles announced that he had decided to fire Police Chief RaShall Brackney. The city will open a national search for the next chief of police, though community members and city councilors alike feel the reasons for Brackney’s dismissal remain murky. And for a city beset with organizational turmoil—and a police department that’s proven itself resistant to reform—the path forward is anything but clear.
Questions remain
Brackney, the first Black woman to serve as Charlottesville’s police chief, was hired in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally and relieved of duty after less than three years in charge. Shortly before her departure, the area Police Benevolent Association released an anonymous survey of 66 police officers, in which they expressed their dislike for Brackney and a lack of faith in her leadership. After that, the city made public multiple documents detailing police officers’ bad behavior, and implying that Brackney’s unpopularity was a result of her attempts to change the department’s racist and sexist culture.
Boyles has not taken media questions about Brackney’s firing, though he has penned two press releases and a Daily Progress op-ed explaining his decision.
The survey of officers “revealed substantial concerns of trust and confidence in the leadership,” wrote Boyles in the Progress last Sunday. “While great strides were made during Chief Brackney’s time with the department in areas of racial equity and addressing officer conduct, many of these changes came about at the expense of leadership mistrust among many of the officers we depend on to protect and serve our city.”
Boyles claimed that he wished he could have involved City Council more in his decision and worked with Brackney to develop an “improvement plan,” but felt that he needed to act quickly before the department became “gripped in chaos.”
“I took decisive action to prevent key leadership positions—which were in jeopardy of becoming vacant—from erupting into deeper divides within the department,” he explained. “I did not expect to be confronted with such anger and vitriol…I felt the larger community would respect my intentions.”
Mayor Nikuyah Walker, who criticized Brackney’s firing, said it was the last straw in a decision to cancel her own November re-election campaign. At Monday night’s City Council meeting, she pressed Boyles for answers about his decision-making process.
Boyles said he spoke with half a dozen police officers, met with the Police Benevolent Association twice, and consulted other law enforcement agencies including the UVA Police Department, the Albemarle County Police Department, and the Emergency Communications Center. The city manager said he couldn’t go into more detail because he felt the officers and leaders he’d consulted had a “confidentiality right” when they spoke with him about the chief.
“You have said in the past that the reforms that were taking place were necessary,” Walker told Boyles. “I think you should be able to give us a general understanding of what the complaints were, and how you made a decision that those complaints were more important than reforming racist policing practices that have devastated the Black community in this city.”
Walker reiterated that she felt her fellow city councilors were not concerned enough about the circumstances surrounding the firing. “The rest of you just sit there and don’t say anything,” Walker said. She specifically addressed Lloyd Snook, a defense attorney: “Unless you’re motivated by getting more clients for you to provide inept defense for, you should be concerned about how police treat citizens in this community.”
“I certainly want greater clarity on motivations of the decision, and what the plan is for the future direction of the department, as well as criminal justice reform efforts that the department was involved in,” Councilor Michael Payne said to Boyles. Payne felt that the timing of the firing suggested the decision was a “direct response to the PBA.”
“Regardless of intent,” Payne said, “it sends a message that reform had gone too far.”
Brackney in hindsight
Charlottesville leaders who have followed the police department closely in recent years say the city has to learn from this saga in order to move toward its stated police reform goals.
Local activists Don Gathers and Rosia Parker appreciated Brackney’s efforts to modernize the department and address longstanding racial issues. They praised her for ending the department’s relationship with the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement Task Force and dissolving the CPD SWAT team after reports of misconduct surfaced. Brackney also was supportive of the Obama administration’s report on 21st-century policing, which emphasized police transparency and accountability, outlined specific use-of-force policies, and detailed critical steps toward police reform.
Gathers also understands the immense pressure Brackney faced.
“Coming in on the heels of the Unite the Right rally, any chief was going to have issues,” says Gathers. “I’m not sure if she ever fully embraced the community as some would have hoped she would have, but I’m certain there was at least a popular segment of the community who never embraced her.”
Albemarle County detective and Central Virginia Police Benevolent Association president Mike Wells worked to push the survey into the public eye, and has praised the decision to fire Brackney. Wells did not respond to a request for comment.
Parker had issues with the former chief’s communication—she says that Brackney lied to the community about her actions multiple times, and spoke publicly against her and other community members. She wishes that Brackney had established a memorandum of understanding with the city’s public housing communities, too, in order to keep “out of control” officers in check.
Local civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel supported Brackney’s efforts to eradicate the department’s outdated “warrior mentality.” He thinks Brackney shouldn’t have hesitated to alert the public of the changes she made.
“I’m sorry she didn’t talk more about some of the things she had done inside of the police department that got some of these officers rattled,” says Fogel. “The community would have supported her in those endeavors, instead of being critical of her in certain other endeavors.”
Job description
To successfully implement the crucial reforms many in the community have called for, the new police chief must understand Charlottesville’s complicated history and politics, and be committed to 21st-century policing, the activists say. They should also be strong-willed and have thick skin, but be able to listen to the entire community and find common ground.
A new chief should “at least have some type of knowledge of what it is that you’re going to do when you come here to Charlottesville,” says Parker, who was a key part of the creation of Charlottesville’s Police Civilian Review Board. “You’re coming in behind so many different things that have taken place within the department. And have an understanding of what is the meaning for what Black people are going through today.”
Parker emphasizes that the chief should have a “no-nonsense” attitude, and not hesitate to hold officers accountable and discipline them when they are out of line. They should also prioritize building strong, transparent relationships with the community and the Police Civilian Review Board.
Gathers wants the new chief to be a person of color. At the same time, Charlottesville must drastically improve its treatment of Black leadership, he says. Since the Unite the Right rally in 2017, two Black police chiefs and two Black city managers have either resigned or been fired, and the Black mayor has decided not to seek re-election.
Mayor Nikuyah Walker recently called off her re-election bid, saying Brackney’s dismissal was the “final straw” after months of contemplating dropping out of the City Council race. Photo: Eze Amos.
“The person who was next in command [to Brackney] was a Black man with over 30 years of service to the community,” says Gathers, referring to Captain Tito Durrette. “Instead of giving [the position] to him, we asked Mr. Mooney to un-retire and lead the charge…that truly was a slap in the face to the Black community.”
Fogel believes the city needs to do more than hire a new chief to solve its policing issues—it needs to completely overhaul the department. The new chief must recruit new officers who are committed to progressive policing, and fire everyone who is not, he says.
“We have to start sweeping up that department from the bottom up,” says Fogel. “And if Chip Boyles expects somebody to come in and clean out that department without having some upset police officers, he’s got his head buried in the sand.”
“Overall, we’re going to have a hard time replacing [Brackney]—there aren’t that many police chiefs who have a progressive view of the role of police,” he adds.
In the meantime, Fogel remains concerned about the department’s current leadership, and fears that officers will retaliate against local residents, pointing to the survey participants who expressed disdain for the community.
“They don’t trust this community. They are making demands to trust [them], yet have not shown any reason why the community should trust them,” he says.
No matter who takes charge of the department next, activist Ang Conn of Charlottesville Beyond Policing does not expect much to change.
“We’re speaking about trying to reform an institution created by white men in order to inflict harm and even death, at will, upon Black and Indigenous people to benefit white property—structural and human beings—owners,” says Conn. “These same ideals and practices have been transformed over time to fit in with social norms.”
“There’s no reforming that,” she adds.
Now hiring
At the end of Monday’s council meeting, city leadership discussed the process for hiring a new chief. Boyles said the city will first have to hire an interim chief, and that person would ideally be someone from within Virginia who could start almost immediately. Then the city will conduct a national search for a permanent candidate. The search process will require retaining a firm and consulting with community groups.
The last time Charlottesville had to retain a search firm to select a candidate for a major position was in January, when Tarron Richardson’s resignation left the city without a city manager. That hiring firm wound up calling off their contract when the firm’s boss told Snook that he had “never seen a level of dysfunction as profound as what he was seeing here.”
Both Walker and Payne said they were concerned that the applicant pool of potential chiefs wouldn’t exactly be brimming with reform-minded progressives. Boyles agreed with the councilors that it was vital for the new chief to arrive with a desire to change the department.
Walker suggested amending the city’s charter to allow City Council to have approval on high-ranking city appointments such as police chief. Currently, the hiring power lies with the city manager.
“This may be a very difficult position to fill,” Boyles said of the vacancy he created.
Chief RaShall Brackney was let go last week. Photo: Eze Amos.
Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney is on the outs—City Manager Chip Boyles terminated her contract last Wednesday evening. Brackney, the first Black woman to hold the job, had been at the head of the department since June 2018.
A recent survey of police officers indicated that the rank-and-file had lost trust in Brackney, but other newly public documents give numerous examples of misconduct within the department and detail Brackney’s efforts to turn things around. Seven officers have been terminated for bad behavior since Brackney took charge.
The city initially announced Brackney’s firing in a brief press release on Wednesday evening, and then elaborated on the decision in another release on Friday. The city manager’s team declined to speak directly to C-VILLE about the termination.
“I fully supported the difficult personnel decisions made recently by Chief Brackney,” said Boyles’ statement. “However, in order to dismantle systemic racism and eliminate police violence and misconduct in Charlottesville, we need a leader who is not only knowledgeable in that work, but also is effective [at] building collaborative relationships with the community, the department, and the team at City Hall.”
Councilor Lloyd Snook, the only city councilor who could be reached for comment, echoes Boyles’ concerns about Brackney’s ability to build consensus.
“When Chief Brackney came, she very early on ruffled a lot of feathers among the good old boys network,” Snook says. “That didn’t bother me. There were a lot of people who had been in the job too long or had brought an unhelpful attitude.”
But Snook says he became concerned when reports surfaced that department morale had reached an all-time low, and when officers who Brackney herself had hired began to leave. “I’ve been generally quite impressed with the folks who have been hired,” Snook says. “The problem is that most of the folks who I was impressed with didn’t stay.”
Mayor Nikuyah Walker, who had spoken favorably of Brackney throughout her stint as chief, disagreed with the firing.
“The City of Charlottesville publicly eviscerated Dr. RaShall Brackney to protect police officers who are fighting the internal reforms she’s implementing,” Walker wrote on Facebook after Brackney’s dismissal.
“I supported Dr. Brackney because she is as committed to breaking down these racist systems as I am,” Walker wrote in a separate post. “I’m saddened because little Black girls everywhere are looking at this and learning what happens when you risk everything to tell the truth.”
Shortly after the news broke, Walker posted a four-page memo that Brackney had shared with councilors in early August, which goes into further detail on the type of behavior that was common in the police department.
Officers let their children fire police weapons and detonate explosives, swapped pornographic images and racist jokes on department cell phones, and shotgunned Bang energy drinks before their shift on the anniversary of August 12, the memo reveals. SWAT team recruits “were frequently subjected to humiliating comments regarding their skin tones and ethnicity, as well as stereotypical references to an African American recruit eating chicken,” it reads.
The document also includes a transcript of a text exchange between three officers, in which one high-ranking department member brags that he “just threw the boys into the octagon at the house and told them to fight for my amusement…winner got ice cream. Loser got to watch the winner eat the ice cream…I’m breeding next gen savages!…I want them both fucking the prom queen one day.”
As a result of these incidents, the SWAT team was disbanded, one officer was fired, and two more resigned. Those personnel moves were among the decisions that had irritated the department’s officer corps—some officers complained about the departures of their colleagues in an anonymous survey released two weeks ago.
On the other side, some police reform activists expressed mixed opinions about Brackney’s firing.
“While the Chief was not particularly in favor of community oversight, the City’s firing her for trying to change police culture is a step in the wrong direction,” reads a statement from the People’s Coalition, a police oversight advocacy group.
“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,” Brackney said in a 2019 interview with C-VILLE.
Snook says he understands the gravity of letting the department’s first Black woman police chief go, and that he’s heard from some in the community that “by firing Chief Brackney you’re allowing the racists in the police department to win.”
“All I can say is right now, what’s clear is that Charlottesville is losing,” the councilor says, “and we need to figure out a better way to do this.”
Brackney will be paid a lump sum equal to 12 months of her $160,000 salary. Charlottesville has made a habit of paying large severance packages to outgoing officials: Last year, former city manager Tarron Richardson took a check for $205,000 with him on his way out the door.
Assistant Police Chief James Mooney will take over while the department conducts a national search for a new chief.
The city revealed the reasons for the departure of three police officers after a survey surfaced showing officers’ dissatisfaction with department leadership. Photo: Eze Amos.
Charlottesville SWAT team officers filmed their kids setting off explosives. They fired semi-automatic, department-owned weapons at unauthorized events. One officer consoled a colleague who was frustrated with police department leadership by suggesting “we kill them all and let God sort it out.” When videos documenting these behaviors made it to the chief, one officer was fired and two resigned, and the chief dissolved the SWAT team.
We know all of this because the city admitted it in a press release: The unsigned, 1,700 word document was posted on the city’s website on Friday evening. The press release was not shared because the department felt it was important to update the community on these matters, but rather because the city wanted to explain the results of a recent anonymous survey of CPD officers, in which a large majority of surveyed officers expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the department’s leadership.
Since her hiring in 2018, Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney has vowed to make her department’s operations more transparent to the public. Both Brackney and the city’s communications director declined to comment on the press release.
The unsigned press release and the anonymous survey results paint a picture of a department where rank-and-file officers are upset at various attempts to institute reforms.
In the survey, which was conducted by the Central Virginia Police Benevolent Association in June, many officers expressed unspecific concerns about the existence of the Police Civilian Review Board. The board was formed recently with the goal of monitoring police activity from an external standpoint. The board has gotten off to a rocky start, however, and has yet to officially codify its own powers and rules.
Officers also complained that Joe Platania, the commonwealth’s attorney, was too progressive and too soft on crime, an illustration of the disconnect between officers and the community they serve. This summer, Platania won a Democratic primary election against an even more progressive challenger—41 percent of local Democrats voted for Ray Szwabowski, indicating that they felt Platania wasn’t progressive enough.
One survey respondent specifically said that the firing of former officer Jeffrey Jaeger was unjust. Jaeger was found guilty of assault in court after slamming a Black man’s head into a fence while on the job.
Some survey respondents said the department’s leadership was too harsh in punishing officers who had broken the rules. Officers were found responsible for infractions in 37 percent of internal affairs cases in 2020, the department reports.
Sixty-nine percent of surveyed officers said they do not feel that Brackney has the ability to lead the department into a new era. Ninety percent said the current political climate in the city has caused them to “reduce [their] normal policing activities…for fear of being targeted by community groups.”
In response, the city detailed the SWAT team infractions described above, and also aimed to characterize the department’s culture more broadly. Before Brackney arrived, the department was “embedded in traditional, procedural policing approaches that created an ‘us vs them’ mentality” and was reliant on “outdated policies, practices, and training,” the release says.
The city says the department leadership will continue “efforts to ensure that aggressive, misogynist, machoistic, paramilitary-style and racist attitudes and behavior will not be tolerated within the workplace,” because such behavior “presents a threat to public safety and to the safety of all the officers who diligently, conscientiously and lawfully perform their duties every day.”
Tell us how you really feel
Sixty-six Charlottesville police officers participated in the Police Benevolent Association’s anonymous survey about the state of the department. Read a selection of their comments below.
“The citizens themselves constantly think we are racist and are throwing it in our face. Disregard that they are being racist to us for wearing a uniform.”
“Leadership panders to the [Police Civilian Review Board] and public instead of providing support to officers.”
“Paperwork. We have 8 different ways of documenting information on a single traffic stop, and we have to do them all. A lot of us don’t do traffic stops because it’s too much work.”
“The Chief and Command Staff base too many of their decisions off of the possible public opinion and how their decisions will be viewed in the media.”
“Use of force policies are so strict almost any officer could be punished for doing almost anything.”
“All they do is play into the political atmosphere of the city in order to cover their own butts. We have been told in the past to stop patrolling some high drug/crime area so much because an activists complain.”
“It has become evident over the years that if you make mistakes, no matter how small, you will be punished.”
“This department is a dumpster fire.”
“To quote a retiring Portland Oregon Detective which best describes the current situation at CPD. The only difference between CPD and the Titanic? ‘Deck chairs and a band.’”
Bodo’s returned to in-store counter service on Monday, abandoning a drive-thru system that the famous local bagel chain had been operating at its Preston Avenue and Emmet Street locations since last May, when the onset of the coronavirus pandemic made going inside the bustling restaurants a no-go.
“We’ve had to wait to do this until it was alright for people to be standing as close together as they do in our line, but we’re now at the point where this should be safe if everyone is masked,” reads a post on the store’s Facebook page announcing the change. “We’re very grateful to all of you for helping us make our drive-thrus work as well as they did.”
Making the jump away from counter service was a natural choice: Both stores were already equipped with drive-thru windows. The Emmet Street shop was originally a Bob Evans and the Preston location had been a Rob Roy. “We are literally the only restaurant in the city that had an unused drive-thru,” says Bodo’s co-owner Scott Smith.
The touchless drive-thru system worked smoothly, complete with handheld credit card scanners and radio headsets. The staff braved all kinds of bad weather, and no Charlottesvillian had to miss their Deli Egg or Cleo salad.
While it seemed like the new model would be a keeper, Smith says it was always temporary. “I know that a lot of people love the drive-thrus, but we’re told that our by-right use of them lapsed years ago with changes to zoning law, and we’ve been running them on the basis of an agreement with the city that we would return to our in-store model soon after all COVID restrictions have been lifted in the city.”
Smith promises that it’s better on the inside, and he sees his customers as more than just a number on a printed ticket. “Apart from any issue of by-right use, we are simply faster and better inside, but we also really just miss having people in,” he says. “Seeing people is part of the idea.”
Not so fast
Photo: City of Charlottesville
Since December of 2019, Charlottesville police officers have been scooting around the Downtown Mall on three-wheeled Segway SE-3 Patrollers. Do the Segways prevent crime? Fair question, though it seems that’s not the vehicles’ purpose. The police department released its annual report last month, which said, “Our new Segways are mostly used on the Downtown Mall as a community engagement tool.”
According to Segway, each SE-3 Patroller costs $12,999. The vehicles have a 15-mile-per-hour top speed. Anyone interested in evading the “community engagement tools” should try running up a hill—the Segways can climb a 15-degree slope at the steepest.
“If you’re going to shoot off illegal fireworks, at least make sure you’re getting enough elevation that the burning remnants of phosphorus don’t land on your neighbor’s roof.”
Charlottesville reddit user redd-zeppelin, posted while watching the festivities on the Fourth of July
In brief
Money set aside for statue disposal
City Council is set to hold a special meeting on July 7, in which it plans to set aside $1 million for “removal, storage, and/or covering” of the downtown statues of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, as well as the Ridge Street statue of Sacagawea, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark. Council resolved to remove the Ridge Street statue in 2019, and voted to remove the Confederate monuments last month. According to 2020 laws regarding the removal of war memorials, the City Council can do whatever it wants with the Confederate statues beginning July 7.
New citizens sworn in at Monticello
People from several different countries take the oath of citizenship at the 2019 Monticello naturalization ceremony.
Photo: Jack Looney.
Monticello held its annual naturalization ceremony for new American citizens on Sunday, July 4. The event saw 21 people from 14 different countries become official Americans. Welcome, everyone! We hope you know what you’re getting yourself into.
Skill games are now illegal
A host of new laws went into effect on July 1, including a rule banning skill games from Virginia. The gambling-adjacent slot machines had become popular in convenience stores around the state and in Charlottesville. A group of Norfolk business owners unsuccessfully filed a lawsuit challenging the ban, reports Norfolk’s WAVY-TV 10. Meanwhile, five cities around the commonwealth are in the process of setting up full-scale casinos, after a rule change in 2019 gave select localities permission to do so.
In light of a recent increase in local shootings, Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney held a press conference to call for the community to help prevent future acts of violence. PC: City of Charlottesville
Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney held a press conference Thursday afternoon to address what the department is calling an “unprecedented” rise in gun violence in the city. There have been eight incidents since November 5, a period that caps off a year in which police responded to 122 reports of shots being fired.
There were four gun homicides in 2020, a notable rise from the two homicides in 2019 and one in 2018.
“I’m calling on community advocates, influencers, organizers to go beyond Twitter or Instagram, Facebook, your news interviews, podcasts, or social media mediums to leverage your collective resources,” said Brackney at the press conference. “This cannot be laid solely as a burden at the police department’s feet…We cannot arrest our way out of this.”
The rise in gun violence has continued into 2021—last week, two shootings occurred near apartment buildings on Sixth Street SE and Prospect Avenue, in addition to a shooting in the middle of Emmet Street near Hydraulic Road.
“In one of those apartments, a woman lay in her bed and a bullet traveled right through her mattress and another woman was struck in the forehead,” said Assistant Police Chief Jim Mooney. “These are innocent victims that have nothing to do with whatever is causing this, and it has to end.”
Some people involved in the recent shootings lived outside of Charlottesville, but still had connections to the city, explained Brackney. The violence cannot be called an “outside” problem, or tied to a specific group or person.
While the department has made arrests for three of the four homicides from last year, as well as other shootings, Brackney emphasized the limits of policing.
“We understand the drivers of long-term systemic violence…to include poverty [and] exclusion from education and living wage opportunities. We understand institutional supremacy and racism, and its effects,” said Brackney. “We’re trying to stop the next act before it occurs. That takes more than just proactive police work, that takes community involvement.”
Brackney also pointed to the “breakdown in systems” caused by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as a potential reason behind the uptick in gun violence.
Though Brackney acknowledged that some community leaders may be working behind the scenes, she also claimed they have been “completely silent on these issues” and needed to get involved publicly, such as by offering jobs, tutoring, mentorship, health care, therapy, and other critical needs.
“Get in contact with me,” she said. “We will coordinate the resources with you.”
Since the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement last year, community activists have been calling for budget adjustments to police funding. On Thursday, Brackney also suggested the city use its budget—which currently allocates $18 million a year to the police department—to take meaningful action.
“We’re going into budget season. What does our budget look like to address community drivers of violence?” she said. “The city has a responsibility to consider the budget allocations of every department to address community and social priorities as we provide social safety services.”
A scene for Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church’s “Christmas in Crisis” video is filmed underneath the Belmont Bridge.
PC: Courtesy Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church
Holiday hope
COVID-19, like the Grinch, has threatened to stop Christmas. But Dr. Alvin Edwards, senior pastor at Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church, says, “We decided early on we weren’t going to let this crisis drive us, we were going to make it work.”
Jonathan Spivey, Mt. Zion’s minister of music worship, agreed. Back in July, recovering from COVID-19 (“I wouldn’t wish this virus on my worst enemy,” he says), inspiration struck. Since the church couldn’t stage its annual Christmas Cantata, the group would make a Christmas video that would also address the challenges of the pandemic.
Spivey recruited his friend Kelvin Reid, a musician at New Green Mountain Baptist Church in Esmont, and Caruso Brown, Mt. Zion’s drama director. Soon they had a working group to produce four episodes of “Christmas in the Crisis,” one posted every Sunday during Advent on Mt. Zion’s YouTube channel. Each episode focuses on an issue of these times: depression, grief, suicide, and racial inequality. The volunteer videographers, musicians, and actors come from all walks of life—other churches, other religions, no religious affiliation at all.
“Christmas in the Crisis” is uplifting but also moving and real. In episode three, the holy family beds down underneath Belmont Bridge; the Magi are homeless men who offer the Child their treasures. When the group was staging a Black Lives Matter rally on the Downtown Mall for episode four, a white family strolling by stopped to watch, and used the filming as a teaching moment for their children.
“We posted each episode Sunday at 4 pm, so families could watch together,” Spivey says. “Within 15 minutes, I’d start getting texts and emails from people saying ‘This is the real thing.’” After the episode in which a pastor grapples with depression, Spivey heard from a real-life preacher: “I feel validated.”
Spivey is glad the series is being seen and shared. “So many people are hurting right now,” he says. All four episodes are still available online. The final episode, to be posted on Christmas Eve, will be a Christmas message from Edwards. All are welcome.—Carol Diggs
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Quote of the week
“That was one of the most disturbing press conferences that I’ve ever seen.“
—Initial Police Civilian Review Board member Katrina Turner, addressing City Council about the police department’s December 10 press conference
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In brief
Attorney aims
Charlottesville-Albemarle public defender Ray Szwabowski announced last week that he’s running to become Charlottesville’s next commonwealth’s attorney. Szwabowksi says that, should he win, he’ll end felony drug prosecutions. “Our community knows that incarceration can’t treat addiction. We must do better,” reads his announcement. Current Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania has not yet said if he’ll seek reelection.
A dime a dozen
A dozen candidates—eight Democrats and four Republicans—have so far announced bids to become Virginia’s next governor. The field includes six state delegates or former delegates, and will begin to narrow as we approach the summer’s primaries.
Back to class
After nearly a year of virtual learning, students in Charlottesville will return to the classroom for face-to-face instruction early next year. While all pre-K through second graders, along with select special education students and English language learners in third through sixth grade, will start classes January 19, Buford Middle and Charlottesville High School will not return until February 1. On January 7, the Charlottesville School Board will decide when the remaining third through sixth graders will participate in in-person learning.
Keeping it civil?
In their Thursday meeting, the city’s Police Civilian Review Board expressed frustration at the options available to them when considering how to respond to Chief RaShall Brackney’s press conference from the week before. In the press conference, the chief called on church leaders who had filed a racial profiling complaint to resign from their posts. But the civilian review board, as currently constituted, cannot initiate a further investigation, or even officially comment on the incident.
