Senator Tim Kaine speaks at Batten about US-Iran relations. Photo: Sanjay Suchak
Kaine argues for peace
War with Iran may well be on the horizon—but U.S. Senator Tim Kaine has a few objections. He spoke about his new war powers resolution and his hopes for a return to diplomacy during an event at UVA’s Batten School of Public Policy on January 17.
Kaine has recently managed to drum up bipartisan support for a resolution that would limit the president’s powers of war and put more responsibility back in the hands of Congress. The resolution will almost certainly be vetoed by President Trump, but Kaine argued that on some level the veto is beside the point. “Congress should do whatever we’re supposed to do, [regardless of] what the president does,” the Virginia Democrat said.
Trump’s decision to walk away from the United States’ nuclear deal with Iran was “one of the worst decisions” the country has ever made, according to Kaine. “If you abandon diplomacy, you make war more likely.”
“We won the Iraq war, and yet looking back at it, most people say it was a catastrophic mistake,” said the senator, who serves on the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees.
Kaine delivered his remarks in his usual wonky, earnest style, invoking everything from Thomas Jefferson’s interactions with Barbary pirates to his own experience as a lawmaker with a child in the military. Ultimately, however, he made his opposition to war with Iran clear. “There is not a war scenario with Iran that is a simple, easy mission accomplished,” Kaine said. “There’s just not.”
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Quote of the Week
“Twelve handguns a year is more than enough, for most citizens. If you need more than that, go to Texas. They don’t have any laws.”
—State Senator Dick Saslaw, speaking in favor of Virginia’s proposed one-handgun-a-month law earlier this week
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In Brief
A police camera hanging on a telephone pole near Westhaven.
Caught on cameras
C-VILLE reported last week that the city had installed four surveillance cameras near Westhaven and Prospect, two majority black public housing neighborhoods in town. Since the article was published, the police have removed those cameras just as quietly as they hung them up. When asked why the cameras were taken down, police department spokesman Tyler Hawn said any questions about the cameras should be referred to city spokesman Brian Wheeler. Wheeler has not yet responded to requests for comment.
Bias unmasked
Only one arrest was made at Monday’s massive pro-gun demonstration at the state Capitol: Mikaela Beschler, a 21-year-old Richmond woman, was arrested for covering her face with a bandana. It’s a felony to wear a mask in Virginia, but many gun-toting protestors had also covered their faces. “It’s become abundantly clear that the mask ban, which was intended to combat the Klan, is now only enforced against anti-racist activists,” tweeted Delegate Lee Carter.
Speaking in CODE
Construction is chugging along on the gigantic CODE Building, the office and retail space coming to the west end of the Downtown Mall in 2021. At a press conference last week, organizers promised that the building will emphasize “entrepreneurial spirit and innovative ideas” as well as “the principles of wellness and sustainability,” foster “unplanned interdisciplinary cross-pollination;” and have spaces where people can “maybe do a webinar, film it, blast it out.”
Don’t Byers it
Albemarle County Police Department sent out a warning this week about a telephone scam: A mysterious caller has been ringing up locals, identifying himself as Captain Darrell Byers, and telling the marks they have an arrest warrant on their head that can be resolved by wiring money. Don’t fall for it. The local police aren’t perfect, but we’re pretty sure they’re not that corrupt.
The cameras were hung on telephone poles at the outskirts of Westhaven public housing neighborhood.
You wouldn’t notice the cameras if you didn’t know what to look for—but once you see the first one, the others are easy to spot: black balls hanging from telephone poles like sinister Christmas tree baubles.
Rosia Parker noticed the camera near her house in Westhaven when the city installed it over the summer. She can see it from her balcony, which means, of course, the camera can see her balcony. “They had the area blocked off like they were doing big work,” Parker says, “So that’s what made me look at them like, ‘what are they doing?’”
Parker’s search for answers hasn’t yet turned up the resolution she hoped for. The situation raises serious questions about the relationship between Charlottesville’s law enforcement and the residents of the city’s public housing neighborhoods.
Parker asked City Council about the cameras during the public comment session of the November 2 council meeting. At the next meeting, city manager Tarron Richardson explained the practice, saying “That was one of our cameras. We move those periodically throughout the city based on requests from different residents and different community groups.”
That comment elicited surprise from City Council—“Oh yeah we need to discuss that more,” said Mayor Nikuyah Walker—and a retraction from the city, which later said via social media that the city “does not have a program related to citizen-requested security cameras.” The cameras are placed at the discretion of law enforcement, not residents.
At the January 6 City Council meeting, Parker and local civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel brought up the cameras again. Walker revealed that four cameras had been installed, three near Westhaven and a fourth near the entrance to another public housing neighborhood on Prospect Avenue. When asked about the purpose of the cameras, Walker said, “I can’t answer that, I don’t have the information.”
A camera hung at the corner of 7th St NW and 8th St NW
The placement of the cameras rankled Fogel and Parker. Westhaven and Prospect are majority black neighborhoods. “They’re clearly targeting black communities,” Fogel says.
“There are white neighborhoods where still, you have meth labs,” Parker says. “Why were Prospect and Westhaven the only two chosen?”
“The problem here is that there is a misperception that crime doesn’t happen in predominantly white areas,” said local resident Angeline Conn at the January 6 council meeting. “I’m not for state surveillance at all, period—but if you’re not extending the same surveillance to those communities, you’re being biased.”
Parker and Fogel feel the camera dust-up reveals the police department’s lack of willingness to collaborate with the communities it’s policing. “If the city really wanted to be transparent with the community, and especially the black community, they should at least have had a town hall meeting or something,” Parker says. “I appreciate being safe, but I would also like to know that I’m under surveillance. That’s my privacy.”
Fogel says the surreptitious installation of the cameras suggests the police department is more focused on punitive measures—racking up arrests—than proactive problem-solving. “What was the purpose of these cameras? Are they to get people arrested? I’d rather see them prevent the crime,” Fogel says. “The way to do that is, if you have cameras, you announce the heck out of them.”
City spokesperson Brian Wheeler responded to questions about the cameras in a brief statement. “The Charlottesville Police Department will continue to deploy cameras in the community in response to crime trends, shots fired incidents, robberies, and larcenies,” read part of the statement. “The cameras are for investigative purposes only and there is no active monitoring of the camera feeds.”
According to Wheeler, the only other area where the city maintains similar cameras is a four-block radius around City Hall.
The city did not answer a question about how it decided where to place the cameras. Also not addressed: if evidence from the cameras has been used to make any arrests.
John Whitehead, a civil rights lawyer at the Rutherford Institute, says that surveillance like this treads on shaky constitutional ground. “The police should be notifying anyone when they’re watching them,” Whitehead says, “because it implicates the Fourth Amendment, which dictates that before any government agent is doing surveillance on American citizens they have to have probable cause.”
Whitehead says that surveillance like this is not an uncommon practice for police departments around the country, and that municipal governments have the ability to intervene. “It’s the job of the City Council members to reel this in and tell them to stop it,” Whitehead says.
For Fogel, the cameras are one more example of what he calls untrustworthy behavior by the Charlottesville Police Department. He cited the department’s reluctance to release stop-and-frisk data and its 2018 purchase of a Dodge Charger—the same make and model as the car used to kill Heather Heyer—as recent examples of actions that can be interpreted as egregiously tone-deaf at best.
Parker, meanwhile, is determined to keep looking for answers. “I’m going to stay on them,” she says, “until we figure out what’s going on and why these cameras are here.”
Paul Summers pulls a Frazier Fur tree, which he sells for $75 each, from a shed near the Knights Gambit tasting room on Saturday, Dec. 7, 2019. Summers sources the pre-cut trees from a farm near Mount Rogers. He gives all the proceeds to the Charlottesville Area Community Fund in honor of his late daughter Alex who passed away in 2007. PC: Zack Wajsgras
Tree huggers
On an unseasonably warm December Sunday, Yoseph Asmellash, owner of Little River Christmas Trees, had dozens of Fraser and Douglas fir trees for sale in the parking lot of the Fashion Square Mall—one of many local spots for buying Christmas trees that pop up around the holidays. Asmellash, a native of Ethiopia who’s been selling trees for over 20 years, got into the business after working at a garden center during high school and college.
Business has been brisk, he says, and he orders new trees weekly–ever since the time, about 10 years ago, when he ended up with several hundred extra trees on his hands. He had to offer a buy-one-get-one-free sale (sometimes adding a third tree to the deal).
When he’s not selling trees, Asmellash, who lives in Arlington, runs several other seasonal businesses across Virginia, including pumpkin patches. In the off months, he operates a tax service.
Fir facts:
Asmellash orders about 800 trees per year for his spot at the Fashion Square Mall
His trees come from Whitetop, Virginia, and Sparta, North Carolina
According to the National Christmas Tree Association, the price of Christmas trees has gone up about 10 percent nationwide, due to limited supplies of Christmas trees—caused by hotter weather, too much rain, and the ripple effects of the 2008 recession that cut demand for trees (and led to less trees being planted)
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Quote of the week
“We should declare ourselves as a sanctuary city, as some other communities have done…We should declare ourselves a sanctuary city against monuments, statues, and memorials that glorify slaveholders, that lift up racists and rapists and traitors.” —Rev. Don Gathers, addressing City Council at its final meeting of the year.
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In brief
No go
Five months after James Fields used a gray Dodge Challenger to mow down dozens of people at the Unite the Right rally, killing Heather Heyer, the Charlottesville Police Department added a gray Dodge Challenger, which also featured “thin blue line” decals, to its official fleet. Though the car was purchased in January 2018, the department told C-VILLE last August that it had been “designed and purchased” well before the attack. Asked to explain this discrepancy, spokesman Tyler Hawn called it “a misunderstanding.” Last week, the city announced that the car has been removed from service in response to community feedback.
CPD purchased a Dodge Challenger in January 2018. PC: Staff Photo
Borer war
Charlottesville’s ash trees are dying, thanks to an infestation of the emerald ash borer, an invasive beetle that arrived from Asia in 2002. The Charlottesville Tree Commission has mapped 107 ash trees in the city, and anticipates that 99 percent of them will succumb to the borer. Last week, representatives from the Tree Commission asked the Planning Commission for money to fight the bugs, but it remains to be seen if there will be enough space in the budget.
Tragic loss
The Charlottesville community mourns the death of St. Anne’s graduate Tessa Majors, who was fatally stabbed in a botched mugging in Manhattan’s Morningside Park on December 11. Majors, 18, was a freshman at Barnard College. A musician, Majors had just released a new album and had a series of local shows scheduled. A 13-year-old boy has been arrested in connection with her death.
Put it in “D”
It’s not just your imagination–Virginia really is home to some of the country’s worst drivers. According to a nationwide study by insurance company QuoteWizard, Virginia drivers earned a “D” grade, losing points for distracted driving and frequency of accidents. The worst city in our driving hellscape of a state, per the study, is Manassas.
Students Sarah Fadhil (left) speaks during a graduation ceremony for students getting their GED's through the Thomas Jefferson Adult and Career Education program at PVCC on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019. Photo by Zack Wajsgras
On their own terms
“If you have a dream, and you focus on it, and you work hard, your dream will come true one day,” Bushiri Salumu told a small crowd assembled at Piedmont Virginia Community College on Thursday, November 7. He spoke from experience: Salumu lost family members to the civil war in his home country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and lived in a refugee camp in Zambia for four years before arriving in Charlottesville in 2012. While working at a car wash and as a housekeeper, Salumu managed to learn English, become a U.S. citizen, and complete his GED. Now, he works at UVA hospital and hopes to become a nurse practitioner.
Salumu was the keynote student speaker at a graduation ceremony for adult learners from the PVCC Thomas Jefferson Adult Career Education program, which offers English language classes, career skills instruction, and GED and NEDP high school credential programs.
“The United States is a country where dreams can come true,” said Salumu. “It doesn’t matter where you come from or how you look.”
Each of the seven graduates took the podium to tell their story and thank their families and teachers for helping them along the way.
“I will continue to excel in my own time frame with no regrets,” said Crystal Morris, who earned her GED while juggling “two jobs, two leases, and a crying toddler.”
“To my fellow graduates—our lives may once have held bitterness and sadness,” said Sarah Fadhil, who arrived in the United States in 2017 and joined TJACE to learn English. “But now, all we need to do is look forward, with your head held high, and smile. Congratulations to all of us to succeed in our way.”
Quote of the week
“Two words have never been spoken in the 400-year history of the Virginia House of Burgesses and the House of Delegates: ‘Madam Speaker.’” —Senator Adam P. Ebbin on Delegate Eileen Filler-Corn’s election as the first woman speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates
In brief
Oops
A judge has dismissed a felony explosives possession charge against a Zion Crossroads man who was pulled over for having expired license plates and arrested when Charlottesville police mistook a tire pressure gauge in his car for a pipe bomb. Police searched the car after smelling marijuana and the department’s newly-hired bomb-sniffing dog identified the device, which police detonated. On Twitter, city councilor-elect Michael Payne called the case “an example of why we need a strong, independent Civilian Police Review Board.”
Spelling counts
Delegate Nick Freitas failed to get his name on the ballot this fall due to incomplete paperwork, leading the Republican incumbent to rely on a large-scale write-in campaign. But that left voters with the challenge of spelling his name. Culpeper administrators, who had to sift through more than 5,000 write-in votes, accepted Nick Feitas, Nick Freitos, Nick F, and the mononym Friets as legitimate votes, but nixed voters’ choices for Friems, Freton, Freit Rick, Nick Fruit, and NICKTKLE.
To catch a vandal
Downtown’s controversial statue of Stonewall Jackson has been vandalized more than once, and Jackson defenders may be taking matters into their own hands: A small camouflaged trail camera and a bell attached to a wire were recently found near the monument. Charlottesville police removed the items soon after pictures were circulated online, and said the camera did not belong to the department.
Pricey pied-a-terre
Some of the most expensive—and longest unoccupied—residential real estate downtown is finally seeing movement. Architect Bill Atwood’s Waterhouse project, which houses WorldStrides, put deluxe condos on the market in 2015. Most were still empty in 2017, when Atwood said he was “land banking” them, before losing them to creditors in 2018. In September, John and Renee Grisham picked up one of the units for $1.079 million.
Bill Atwood in his Waterhouse project.
Wright stuff
Harold Wright, the founder and general manager of NBC29, will call it quits after 46 years heading Charlottesville’s first TV station, according to the Progress. David Hughes, news director for WDBJ Roanoke, will succeed Wright.
Janice Kavanagh rents out this cottage to tenants through Airbnb, but has been forced to turn away several scam victims who tried to book the place via Craigslist. Courtesy of Janice Kavanagh
Prospective renters using Craigslist to find temporary housing in Charlottesville have recently been the victims of scammers, paying thousands of dollars in rent up front before showing up on the doorstep of bewildered homeowners who already rented out their space.
Janice Kavanagh is a Charlottesville real estate agent who rents out the front half of her house, as well as her mother’s cottage next door, through Airbnb. But over the past year, scammers have grabbed photos of her property from Airbnb and posted them on Craigslist, advertising her property as available for rent. Since the start of June, she’s had five different people pull up to check out the house, some expecting to move in that day.
“I feel like I [can only] bang my head against the wall because no one really cares,” Kavanagh says. “Craigslist is too big to care, and the police have probably bigger fish to fry. And quite honestly, I am not a victim of anything, but the people are who are…trying to rent out my properties.”
When these scammers are contacted about a listing, they send the interested renter a photo of a driver’s license in order to “prove” their identity. They tell the victim they can’t go inside the house because other renters are currently staying there, then negotiate a monthly rate and ask for a certain amount to be paid up front by depositing it directly into a bank account.
As a real estate agent, Kavanagh has seen homes she’s listed for sale pop up on Craigslist as available for rent for years. Those houses always had “For Sale” signs out front, so interested renters who stopped by would call her asking whether or not the property was actually available to renters. While she was able to help those people avoid being scammed, Kavanagh has no idea how many victims never called.
Kavanagh has posted a warning on Craigslist with pictures of her cottage to inform prospective renters. But it’s not just her home that’s been exploited. One of her friends who also rents out her home had an older couple show up at her door who needed to stay in Charlottesville until December for chemotherapy treatments at the UVA Medical Center. They’d already paid several thousand dollars for the three months’ rent.
In an email to a woman from Virginia Beach who tried to rent Kavanagh’s property, one scammer impersonating a property manager at Perfect Home Letting—which doesn’t exist—wrote, “You’re getting things wrong. You can walk through or drive by the apartment to see the neighborhood and surroundings. There was an agreement between me and the current tenants that there won’t be any form of disturbance while they are in the apartment. This is legitimate. Not one of those scams on craigslist. Attached is a copy of my drivers license.”
The scammer also grew frustrated at the woman’s request to speak on the phone about the cottage. Sensing something was off about the property manager, she decided to stop by the property anyway. It was there she met Kavanagh, who has since gone to the Charlottesville Police Department to report the series of incidents.
“CPD has been made aware of this incident and it is under investigation,” Public Information Officer Tyler Hawn wrote in a statement. “CPD recommends Craigslist customers review advertisements thoroughly and take steps to contact the advertiser and verify the name of the company to ensure the listing is real.”
One Charlottesville High School senior estimates about 25 percent of his classmates vape. Photo: Myles Clark
Bathrooms. Locker rooms. Cars. Check any of these places on a typical school day, and you’re likely to find students taking part in the latest teen trend: vaping.
“It’s pretty common around my crowd,” says one Charlottesville High School senior, who estimates about 25 percent of his classmates vape. “Kids will duck out of class every once in a while [to go vape.]”
Teen vaping, declared an “epidemic” by the U.S. surgeon general last December, has been a growing source of concern for parents and public health officials for a couple years, leading Virginia to join several other states and more than 400 municipalities in raising the age to buy tobacco and vape products to 21. A mysterious new vaping-related illness has only increased the alarm. But has the new law had any effect?
At St. Anne’s-Belfield, the law has made it “a little more difficult” for students to vape, says one senior. “But it’s not like students are going to stop or have stopped because of that.”
“Everyone knows who the people are that you get all the vaping supplies from, who’s going to buy [them],” he says. “It’s just generally kind of accepted.”
Since the law went into effect in July, students have used fake IDs and their “connections with retail locations” to purchase vaping products, says the CHS senior.
According to a 2018 Monitoring the Future survey, more than 37 percent of high school seniors, 33 percent of sophomores, and 18 percent of eighth graders reported vaping within the past year—a dramatic increase from 2017. Experts say many teens vape because they’re not aware of its dangers.
Sally Goodquist, Virginia Department of Health’s Tobacco Control Coordinator for the Northwest Region, finds that many teens believe e-cigarettes just contain water vapor.
“Young people are only educated on cigarettes,” says Goodquist. “They see vaping … as a safe alternative to smoking.”
Even after learning about the dangers of nicotine, some St. Anne’s students simply switched over to using vapes containing THC, a chemical commonly found in marijuana, believing that it was healthier than nicotine, says the St. Anne’s senior.
And at CHS, says the senior at the school, most students think there is little chance vaping will harm them.
Virginia’s new law “typically carries a punishment by a civil penalty or fine,” for those who are caught vaping under age, according to a statement from the Charlottesville Police Department. But it hasn’t led to more teen vapers being charged.
“We have not requested enhanced enforcement, and I’m not aware that we have seen any increase in the number of charges [since July],” says Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania.
But the recent outbreak of vaping-related illness—and a ban on flavored e-cigarettes and nicotine pods that’s been proposed in response—could be a bigger deterrent for teens.
Since August 24, 535 cases of vaping-related lung illness have been identified across the country, and seven people have died.
In the Virginia Department of Health’s northwest region, which encompasses Charlottesville, there have been three confirmed cases and one probable case.
Many have blamed “kid-friendly” flavors of nicotine products for the growth of teen vaping, and in response to the latest health scare, the Trump administration announced September 11 that it would ban the sale of most flavored e-cigarettes and nicotine pods, excluding tobacco flavors.
“Nobody wants to use a tobacco Juul. Getting rid of those [flavors] will take away the appeal because now it’s just as gross as smoking a cigarette,” says the senior at St. Anne’s, who stopped vaping after he learned about the vaping-related illness.
It is also possible the ban could backfire.
“People don’t really care what [the vape] tastes like,” says the senior at CHS.
If there is a ban on most flavors, some teens may turn to the online black market, use tobacco-flavored vapes, or even switch to smoking regular cigarettes.
“I know people that have already switched to [cigarettes] because of the stories about vaping,” added the CHS senior.
It’s unclear when—or if—a nationwide ban on flavored e-cigarettes will be enforced. For now, the CDC has advised people to avoid using e-cigarettes and never buy them on the street. It has also warned against modifying e-cigarettes or adding any substances to them that aren’t intended by the manufacturer.
Herb Dickerson, who has been recognized by the public defender’s office for his work in the community, says state police “disrespected” him when they tore up his house executing a search warrant. Eze Amos
Herb Dickerson and his sister own a house in Fifeville, and when he got a phone call from her telling him to get over there on August 27, “I could hear the frantic in her voice,” he says.
He pulled onto Seventh Street and saw “this armored vehicle blocking the street and a state police car blocking the other end,” he says.
Dickerson is a recovered addict who won the prestigious Gideon Award in 2017 for his community service helping others struggling with substance abuse. He says the officer he spoke to told him they had a search warrant because a confidential informant said his son, a convicted felon, had a weapon.
He found the show of force—neighbors estimate 20 officers in combat attire and two armored vehicles—perplexing because he’d driven by his house twice that day and seen his son sitting on the front porch. And when police arrived, his son was standing across the street. “I don’t know what kind of investigation they do when they didn’t even know what he looked like,” he says.
It’s one of many questions that remain concerning the Virginia State Police and Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement task force operation that took place in Charlottesville without the knowledge of city police. And it comes as cops across the country are increasingly using SWAT team raids merely to serve warrants, says Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead, who has written several books on the militarization of the police.
For neighbors, it was terrifying.
Cops were in combat gear with armored vehicles when they questioned two little girls about where their uncle was. courtesy Herb Dickerson
Dickerson’s daughter, Annette Anthony, lives in the house with her 11- and 6-year-old girls, who were sitting on the porch when police arrived around 6pm.
The cops asked the girls where their uncle was, then told them to go across the street, she says. Anthony had just come into the house when she heard, “Come out with your hands up,” she says. “They had guns drawn with a beam on my head. I looked on my porch where my kids had been and asked, ‘Where are my kids?’”
Neighbor Brock Napierkowski filmed the operation. He says when Anthony came outside to look for her daughters, she and a friend had their hands zip tied by police and were put in an armored vehicle. “I was going crazy,” Anthony says.
“When parents are taken into custody, children become wards of the state,” says Napierkowski. “No officer took care of them.” Nor were they forthcoming in telling Anthony where her children were, he says. “I can’t imagine how traumatic that was.”
Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney declined to comment about state police and JADE, the multijurisdictional task force that Charlottesville police used to lead but now no has officers on, coming onto her turf without notice. She and Captain James Mooney met with Dickerson, Anthony, and Napierkowski at the house the next day.
“They were not happy with the whole incident,” says Napierkowski. “Chief Brackney took time to speak with the children to make sure they weren’t scared.”
“She came and apologized,” says Dickerson. “She apologized to my daughter and my grandkids.”
When asked about notifying local police before a major operation, state police spokeswoman Corinne Geller says, “We are a state police agency, thus we have statewide police authority and arrest powers.” Geller says Brackney was informed that evening before a press release went out, after the search.
“Because the individual we were searching for is a violent, convicted felon, use of the tactical measures utilized to effect the warrant are standard practice for the purpose of public and officer safety,” she says. And the operation, she adds, “was not a ‘raid.’”
It’s a “common courtesy” to notify a local jurisdiction if another law enforcement agency is coming in, says former Charlottesville police chief Tim Longo. But not one frequently observed by state police, which did not notify Longo when it conducted a raid on a fake ID operation on Rugby Road in 2013.
When there’s a danger of shots being fired and local police don’t know another agency is there, “We’re coming in blind at a tactical disadvantage,” says Longo. “What was the sense of urgency that you come in here with no notice?”
Court records show an August 5 search warrant filed by Albemarle Detective Matt McCall that was voided and never served. McCall serves on JADE and had a $50 heroin case rejected by a jury as entrapment in 2016 when an addict was used to set up another addict. McCall filed a second search warrant August 27 at 4:29pm, fewer than two hours before the raid.
Geller declines to say how many officers were involved in the incident, nor would she identify the jurisdiction of two of the men wearing “sheriff” vests, “because this is an ongoing criminal investigation and any additional release of information would jeopardize that investigation.” Both Charlottesville and Albemarle sheriffs say none of their deputies were involved.
“One of the men had a patch of ‘The Punisher’ on his vest,” says neighbor Amy Reynolds of the skull emblem that can be a favorite of law enforcement. “I understand that this may be his First Amendment right, yet it is in poor taste.”
Reynolds says she was “very alarmed” to see the show of force on her street and she wrote state Senator Creigh Deeds expressing her concern.
Two weeks after the operation, no one has been arrested. Nor was a gun found, although state police report that bullets, a bag of white powder, digital scales, and baggies were found. Anthony calls the reported white powder “bullshit” and says there were no drugs in her house.
Civil rights attorney Jeff Fogel wonders why police didn’t obtain an arrest warrant if Dickerson’s son is so dangerous, and why “they didn’t go after him and give a description.”
The show of force in executing the search warrant, including two flash bang grenades thrown into the house, is “unreasonable,” says Fogel, and “shows a total insensitivity to the community, a primarily black community,” especially after state police failed to intervene in the violence of August 12, 2017, and then showed up with “overwhelming force” last year.
“They could have watched and arrested him coming and going,” says Fogel. He believes police didn’t have enough evidence to arrest the son. “The whole thing stinks.”
A broken mirror was part of the property damage at 311 Seventh Street after the state police raid, along with a broken window, bed, and ruined clothing and carpet. Courtesy Herb Dickerson
Dickerson had been busy replacing a window broken during the raid the day he spoke to a reporter. He says his house looked like it had been flipped on its side, and he’s had to throw away a lot of damaged belongings, including an oriental rug ruined by the flash grenades.
State police and JADE “ran roughshod” over the community, he says. “You got the whole neighborhood upset and you didn’t need to.” He’d like police to “apologize to the community where I live.” And he’s not ruling out litigation.
Says Anthony, “It’s crazy that two weeks later, I still cry.”
Correction: Charlottesville police still contribute funding to JADE—about $13,000—but no longer has officers on the task force.
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)”
Local mogul Coran Capshaw’s Riverbend Development has plans for the former Kmart shopping center on Hydraulic, now known as Hillsdale Place.
Another Tar-jay?
Local mogul Coran Capshaw’s Riverbend Development has plans for the former Kmart shopping center on Hydraulic, now known as Hillsdale Place. The company went before the Planning Commission May 14 for entrance corridor approval (after C-VILLE went to press).
The plans keep the existing footprint of the center that’s been closed since 2017. An 8,000-square-foot plaza lined
with shops and restaurants will be the space’s new focal point.
A Target-red-colored anchor, an outdoors store that looks suspiciously like an REI, and a mysterious storefront dubbed “Bells & Whistles” are depicted in the drawings.
Quote of the week
“There’s no way to prepare for a madman.” —WINA’s Dori Zook reports on the May 11 machete attack of two hikers on the Appalachian trail, one of whom was killed. James Louis Jordan, 30, of Massachusetts, faces federal charges.
ICE wins
The Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail Authority Board voted 7-4 to continue voluntarily notifying U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when an undocumented inmate is released from jail, prompting explosive reactions from some people in the audience. Activists had been pressing the board to change its policy for more than a year.
Hit and run
Police are searching for the driver of a dark-colored sedan that grazed a pedestrian around 11pm May 9 on Pine Street near the Islamic Society of Central Virginia. Police do not believe the victim was intentionally targeted, but the mosque, which is holding nightly prayers during Ramadan, has a GoFundMe campaign to pay for additional security measures, and is now paying a police officer $40 an hour to be there every night.
Photo by Edward Thomas
Cop on a roll
An unusual sight on Seventh Street caught the eyes of many passersby last week, when a Charlottesville police cruiser rolled backward over a steep embankment, narrowly missing an apartment window. Only its front end could be seen peeking over the hill, putting it in a pretty challenging position for a tow. Cops say an officer exited his car to chase a suspect on foot—and you can probably guess what happened next.
Sheared
Greene County Commonwealth’s Attorney Matt Hardin cut his 10-inch tresses and donated them to Locks of Love May 8.
New ride
Megabus is launching a route from Charlottesville to Dulles Airport beginning May 16. The service will leave from the Seventh Street SW entrance of the Amtrak station and run Thursdays through Mondays, for $25 to Dulles and $20 back. Megabus entered the local market last fall, causing the Starlight Express to halt, and a trip to New York City that once took about six and a half hours now takes nine or 10.
Sheepskin stats
UVA will hand out 7,090 degrees over the upcoming weekend, about the same as last year.
4,211 baccalaureate degrees, 151 of which were earned in a speedy three years, and five in a super-fast two years.
457 medical and law degrees.
2,448 total graduate degrees, including 311 Ph.D.s, 12 doctors of education, 20 doctors of nursing practice, and 10 doctors of juridical science.
CRB member Rosia Parker wondered why police Chief RaShall Brackney couldn’t find time on her reportedly empty calendar to meet.
Truth in scheduling: Progress joins City v. Civilian Review Board fray
A Daily Progress reporter was a topic of discussion during public comment at the May 6 City Council meeting, following Nolan Stout’s story earlier that day that police Chief RaShall Brackney’s calendar seemed to contradict claims that she was unavailable to meet with the Police Civilian Review Board.
CRB member Rosia Parker thanked Stout for his reporting, while Mayor Nikuyah Walker blamed Stout for the escalating tension between the chief and the review board. Councilor Wes Bellamy said he had “personal issues” with the article, and defended Brackney and her calendar. Police gadfly Jeff Fogel yelled at Bellamy to “not punk out,” and Bellamy replied, “You’re the last one to tell me to punk out.”
The latest outburst follows a bizarre April 26 city press release that accused a CRB member of lying about Brackney refusing to meet with the board. That was followed by an even weirder April 30 retraction of the falsehood allegation, which instead pointed the finger at the Progress’ reporting. The paper stands by its story.
And in the latest deepening of trenches in the war of words, city spokesman Brian Wheeler told Stout his Freedom of Information Act request for emails between Brackney or her secretary and City Council or CRB members, and emails between councilors and CRB members, would cost $3,000 and require a $700 deposit. Wheeler refused to break down the costs, which are unprecedented in C-VILLE Weekly’s experience with FOIA.
Megan Rhyne with Virginia Coalition for Open Government says this is only the second time she’s seen a local government refuse to detail its alleged costs, and tells the DP, “I don’t think it’s very transparent.”
Quote of the week
“I believe we have more than enough mandatory minimum sentences—more than 200—in Virginia state code.” Governor Ralph Northam on why he won’t sign any more such bills, which he calls punitive, discriminatory, and expensive
In brief
Carbon friendlier
Charlottesville’s carbon emissions per household—11.2 tons annually—are a ton above the national average. City Council voted unanimously at its May 6 meeting to approve a climate action plan that includes a goal of 45 percent carbon emissions reduction by 2030, and total carbon neutrality by 2050.
Wine pioneer dies
David King. file photo
David King, patriarch of King Family Vineyards, died May 2 after what the family calls a “hard-fought” battle with cancer. The 64-year-old was a past chair of the Virginia Wine Board, a polo player, pilot, and reserve deputy with the Albemarle County Sheriff’s Office search and rescue division. The family will host a celebration of life on June 14 at their Crozet family farm from 7:30-9:30pm.
Rioters plead
The last two members of the now-defunct California white supremacist group Rise Above Movement, who traveled to Charlottesville for the August 2017 Unite the Right rally to brawl with counterprotesters, pleaded guilty May 3 in U.S. District Court. RAM founder Benjamin Drake Daley, 26, from Redondo Beach, and Michael Paul Miselis, 30, from Lawndale, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to riot. Fellow RAMmers Cole White and Thomas Gillen previously pleaded guilty.
The Guys
Unrelated Bridget Guy and Kyle Guy got top UVA athletics honors at the Hoos Choice Awards May 1. Bridget, from Greensburg, Pennsylvania, is an all-American pole vaulter who was undefeated this season. Indianapolis-native Kyle was named Most Outstanding Player of the NCAA Final Four, in part for his sangfroid in firing off three free throws in a row to beat Auburn 63-62.
Flaggers appeal
Confederate battle flag-loving Virginia Flaggers were in circuit court May 2 to appeal a Louisa Board of Zoning Appeals decision that the 120-foot pole they raised on I-64 in March 2018 to fly the “Charlottesville I-64 Spirit of Defiance Battle Flag” exceeded the county’s maximum of 60 feet. The judge has not yet issued a ruling.
Cruel and unusual
The U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Virginia’s death row inmates, who spend years alone in a small cell for 23 to 24 hours a day. The justices said the inmates face a “substantial risk” of serious psychological and emotional harm in violation of the Eighth Amendment in the case filed by local attorney Steve Rosenfield.
UVA student sentenced
When former UVA student Cayden Jacob Dalton drunkenly abducted and strangled his ex-girlfriend in August 2018, she told the judge “there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to die.” Now, he’ll serve one and a half years for the crime, with the rest of his 15-year sentence suspended.
Show us the money
With the first campaign finance reports filed March 31, we learned who’s pulling in the bucks ahead of the June 11City Council Democratic primary, as well as the funds raised by independents Paul Long and Bellamy Brown.
