Tag: Jim Hingeley

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The Power Issue: People and organizations that hold us together in tough times

Mental health advocate Myra Anderson warns that the social service systems need reform too. PC: Eze Amos

 

Every year, C-VILLE publishes a power issue. It’s usually a rundown of local real-estate moguls and entrepreneurs, tech tycoons, arts leaders, and big donors. This year’s issue is a little different—most of the people and groups listed here aren’t the richest folks in town. They don’t own the most land, they don’t run the biggest companies. But when things got really rocky, they stepped up, and exercised the power they do have to help those around them. This isn’t a comprehensive or objective list, of course, but we hope it highlights some of the many different forms that power can take in a community like ours. —Dan Goff, Brielle Entzminger, and Ben Hitchcock

The Organizers: Black Lives Matter movement in Charlottesville 

There’s a revolution brewing. Activists all over the country and the world are taking a stand against police brutality, and Charlottesville is no different. Over the last few weeks, local black activists young and old have organized events in support of the national Black Lives Matter movement and its associated goals, including a march from the Charlottesville Police Department to Washington Park and a Defund the Police Block Party that marched from the John Paul Jones Arena parking lot to hold the intersection of Barracks Road and Emmet Street. Other organizations such as Congregate Charlottesville and its Anti-Racist Organizing Fund are supporting the activists calling for defunding the police department. Little by little, change is happening—on June 11, Charlottesville City Schools announced it will remove school resource officers and reallocate those funds for a new “school safety model.”—D.G.

Eze Amos: Photo: Eze Amos

The Documenters: C’ville Porchraits

How do we preserve art and community during a pandemic? It’s been a question addressed by many creatives, perhaps none more successfully than the creators of Cville Porch Portraits. Headed by Eze Amos, the “porchrait” takers, who have photographed 950 families outside their Charlottesville-area homes, also include Tom Daly, Kristen Finn, John Robinson, and Sarah Cramer Shields—all local photographers in need of work once the city shut down. The group has donated $40,000 to Charlottesville’s Emergency Relief Fund for Artists. “This is for everyone,” says Amos of the project, which has been successfully emulated by other photogs, including Robert Radifera.—D.G.

The Musicians: The Front Porch

As most concert venues were struggling to reschedule shows and refund ticket money, The Front Porch, Charlottesville’s beloved music school and performing space, wasted no time in pivoting to COVID-friendly programming. Executive Director Emily Morrison quickly set up Save the Music, a livestreamed concert series that brings performances by local artists like David Wax Museum and Lowland Hum to the comfort and safety of your home. If you haven’t tuned in yet, there’s still plenty of time—as the city tentatively reopens, Morrison recognizes that live music will likely be one of the last things to return, so she’s extended Save the Music to late August.—D.G.

 

Jay Pun. Photo: John Robinson

The Innovator: Jay Pun

All restaurant owners have had to get creative to keep their businesses alive during the pandemic, but almost no one has been as creative as Jay Pun, co-owner of both Chimm and Thai Cuisine and Noodle House. Pun has gone further than just a pickup/delivery model by starting a virtual cooking series on Instagram and Facebook Live, and selling kits to be used in tandem with the lessons. He’s also donated significant amounts of food to UVA health workers, and most recently has brought other Thai restaurants into the conversation: A recent discussion with the proprietor of famed Portland institution Pok Pok focused on food, but also touched on the issue of race in America.—D.G.

The Reporter: Jordy Yager

Through his work as a Digital Humanities Fellow at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and as a reporter for multiple local news outlets, journalist Jordy Yager addresses equity or the lack thereof in all its forms. This is showcased most notably in his Mapping Cville project, which takes on the enormous job of documenting Charlottesville’s history of racially restrictive housing deeds, but also through in-depth coverage of Home to Hope, a program dedicated to reintegrating formerly incarcerated citizens into society, and other studies on the redevelopment of Friendship Court and the day-to-day lives of refugees. Yager’s also extremely active on Twitter, retweeting the content of community organizers as well as his own work, and keeping his followers up to date on, well, almost everything.—D.G.

Kat Maybury (left) and Sherry Cook volunteering at the Haven. Photo: Zack Wajsgras

The Safe Places: The Haven and PACEM

Since the onset of the pandemic, the places that serve some of our community’s most vulnerable members have ramped up their efforts to keep guests and staff safe. Downtown day shelter The Haven has opened its doors to women who needed a place to sleep, while also continuing to provide its regular services, including daily to-go meals, with cleanliness and social distancing measures in place.

PACEM has remained open, serving more than 40 people per night, even though its volunteer staff is smaller than usual. Guests are screened for virus symptoms, and they’re given face masks, among other safety precautions, before being admitted to either the men’s or women’s shelter, where there’s at least six feet between every cot. Though it had to move its male guests out of a temporary space at Key Recreation Center on June 10, PACEM will offer shelter for women at Summit House until at least the end of the month.

Thanks to funding from the city, county, and a private donor, PACEM has also housed 30 high-risk homeless individuals in private rooms at a local hotel, in addition to providing them with daily meals and case management. Men who still need shelter after leaving Key Rec have been able to stay at the hotel for at least 30 days.—B.E.

The Sustainers: C’ville Mutual Aid Infrastructure

One of the most heartwarming nationwide responses to COVID-19, and all of the difficulties that came with it, was the widespread creation of mutual aid networks. Charlottesville joined the trend in March, creating a Facebook page for community members to request or offer “time, money, support, and resources.” Since it was launched, the page has gained hundreds of followers, and posts have ranged from pleas for a place to sleep to the donation of a

half-used Taco Bell gift card. The page’s moderators have also shared resources such as a continually updated list of when and where food-insecure community members can access pantries. Though it came about through dire circumstances, the C’ville Mutual Aid Infrastructure network is proof that our community looks after its own.—D.G.

Howie and Diane Long. Photo: Keith Sparbanie/AdMedia

The Nourishers: School lunches

Before COVID, over 6,000 students relied on our public schools for free (or reduced price) breakfast and lunch. To make sure no student has gone hungry since schools closed in March, Charlottesville City Schools and Albemarle County Public Schools have given away thousands of grab-and-go breakfasts and lunches to anyone under age 18, regardless of family income. With the help of school staff and volunteers, both districts have set up dozens of food distribution sites, as well as sent buses out on delivery routes every week. During spring break, when CCS was unable to distribute food, Pearl Island Catering and Mochiko Cville—backed by the Food Justice Network and area philanthropists Diane and Howie Long—stepped up and provided 4,000 meals to kids in neighborhoods with large numbers enrolled in free and reduced-price meal programs. Even though students are now on summer break, that hasn’t slowed down staff and volunteers, who are still hard at work—both districts plan to keep the free meal programs going until the fall.—B.E.

The Superheroes: Frontline workers

After Governor Ralph Northam issued his stay-at-home order in March, most Charlottesvillians did just that: stayed at home. But the city’s essential workers didn’t have that luxury. In the language of Northam’s executive order, these are employees of “businesses not required to close to the public.” Frontline workers’ jobs vary widely, from health care professionals to grocery store cashiers, but they all have one thing in common: The people who do them are required to put on their scrubs or their uniform and go into their physical place of employment every day, while the rest of us work from the safety of our sofa in a pair of sweatpants. Their reality is one that the majority of us haven’t experienced—and the least we can do is thank these workers for keeping our city running.—D.G. 

Jim Hingeley. Photo: Elli Williams

The Reformers: Commonwealth’s attorneys/Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail

The area’s commonwealth’s attorneys are some of the most powerful people you might never have heard of. During normal times, Albemarle’s Jim Hingeley and Charlottesville’s Joe Platania have tremendous influence over sentencing decisions for those on trial in their localities. They’ve both worked toward progressive reforms since taking office, but since the pandemic took hold, they’ve accelerated their efforts.

The effect has been especially pronounced at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Under the guidance of the commonwealth’s attorneys and Jail Superintendent Martin Kumer, around 90 inmates have been transferred to house arrest. As prisons across the state have fought coronavirus outbreaks, the ACRJ has yet to report a single case among those incarcerated.

“It’s a shame that it took this crisis to motivate the community to get behind decarceration,” Hingeley said at a panel in May, “but it’s happened now, and when the crisis has passed, we’re going to work to continue doing this.”—B.H. 

Zyahna Bryant. Photo: Eze Amos

The Voices: Charlottesville Twitter

“Twitter isn’t real life,” some say. (Most often, they say it on Twitter.) But Charlottesville’s ever-growing group of dedicated tweeters has recently used the platform to make real-life change.

The synergy between social media and protest is well-documented, and the demonstrations against police brutality that have taken place across town have been organized and publicized on Twitter, as well as on other social media platforms. Meanwhile, people like Matthew Gillikin, Rory Stolzenberg, and Sarah Burke have used Twitter to call out the police department for botching its collaboration with state forces and dragging its heels on revealing important budget details. And Molly “@socialistdogmom” Conger—perhaps Charlottesville Twitter’s most recognizable avatar—continues to digest and interpret dense city government meetings for the public, making real-life advocacy easier for everyone.

The effect is felt on UVA Grounds, as well—this month, tweeters shamed the university into changing its new athletics logo to remove a reference to the school’s historic serpentine walls, which were designed to conceal enslaved laborers. After UVA abruptly laid off its dining hall contract employees in March, outraged tweeters raised tens of thousands of dollars for those workers, while pushing the university to create an emergency contract worker assistance fund. And recently, Zyahna Bryant drew attention to UVA President Jim Ryan’s limp response to the protests that followed the death of George Floyd, when she tweeted her resignation from the school’s President’s Council on University Community Partnerships. Keep tweeting, people. It’s working.—B.H.

 

Updated 6/24 to clarify which organizers were responsible for recent demonstrations to support Black Lives Matter.

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Zero crimes, zero cases: Charlottesville’s progressive pandemic response has long-term implications

Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Photo: Skyclad Aerial

 

As the pandemic took hold in mid-March, Charlottesville and Albemarle’s criminal justice decision-makers started letting people out of jail. Two months in, it looks like the emergency measures have paid off: The Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail has not reported a single coronavirus case among inmates, and those transferred to house arrest have not posed any notable threat to public safety.

When the pandemic began, jails and prisons were quickly identified as potential coronavirus hotbeds, given the crowded living conditions and low quality of medical care. The area’s commonwealth’s attorneys, judges, and jail administration responded accordingly: They ended pretrial detentions, meaning people awaiting trial no longer had to sit in jail simply because they could not afford bail. And they transferred non-violent prisoners with short remaining sentences to home electronic incarceration (house arrest). That’s resulted in the lowest number of inmates inside the ACRJ in decades.

Local advocates have long hoped to see these decarceration policies put into practice. The pandemic offered a chance to speed that process along. Speaking to C-VILLE in March, Albemarle County’s reform-minded Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley framed the pandemic as a sort of experiment: “We are going to be accumulating information about the effects of liberalized policies with respect to sentences and bail decisions,” Hingeley said. “We’re going to see how instituting these different practices works out…My hope is that it’s going to work out well.”

Two months later, early returns show that the liberalized sentencing policies have had just the effect that Hingeley and other advocates envisioned. 

The ACRJ has transferred around 15 percent of its pre-COVID population to house arrest, and the jail has recorded zero cases of COVID among inmates. By contrast, the state prison system has transferred just 217 of its 30,000 prisoners (less than 1 percent) out of the prisons, and the system has seen more than 1,100 cases of the virus in facilities around the state.

Meanwhile, in Charlottesville, allowing ACRJ prisoners to serve their time on house arrest has not endangered the public. In the last 70 or so days, more than 90 people have been released on house arrest, and “no new criminal offenses were committed,” says jail superintendent Martin Kumer. Eight people, out of 90, have been transferred back into the jail, all for technical violations such as drug use or unauthorized travel. 

Last week, the Tom Tom Foundation convened a panel of local criminal justice leaders to discuss reforming the justice system during and after the pandemic. For some, the conclusions from the past two months support arguments they’ve been making for years. 

“The data has already been there,” pointed out panelist Cherry Henley, who runs Lending Hands, an ex-offender aid service. “Most people like myself already recognize that if you can release people into the community, they are not that high risk. At the jail, at the work release department, most of these people go out anyway, every day.” 

Even so, the pandemic has given these reformers new momentum, and keeping that going is important to them. “People forget stuff really quick,” said Harold Folley, a community organizer at the Legal Aid Justice Center. Folley thinks that moving forward, advocates for decarceration must “constantly remind [people] that releasing folks is safe. Those folks that were released didn’t go and do something criminal here in Charlottesville.”

It’s also important to remember that the house arrest system is far from perfect. “We’ve been dealing with a lot of inmates being released, and they’re on HEI, and they don’t have identification,” says Whitmore Merrick, who works for the city’s Home to Hope offender aid program. “So they’re not able to be employed. They’re stuck in the house with nothing to do. That’s been a major struggle.”

Martize Tolbert, an ex-offender who now works for the Fountain Fund, a re-entry support program, said that this moment feels like an opportunity to make change. “Let’s talk about things that we can radically do now,” Tolbert said. “Programs over prisons. Now is the time to [be] thought-provoking, to try to figure out institutions that we can use here in Charlottesville.”

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania, who supports these alternatives to incarceration, outlined the challenges ahead. Not everyone in the system is on board. “You have victims, you might have detectives or police officers that have worked on the investigation, you have judges that are going to have to buy in…maybe probation officers that are involved in a violation hearing,” Platania said. “They feel a responsibility that might be at odds with some of what Jim [Hingeley] and I are trying to do. There’s a lot of different interests that you have to factor in as a prosecutor.”

“It’s a shame that it took this crisis to motivate the community to get behind decarceration,” Hingeley said, “but it’s happened now, and when the crisis has passed, we’re going to work to continue doing this.” 

Stay tuned for the next edition of the Tom Tom Foundation’s Com Com Live! series, which will feature some of the leaders mentioned in the article and will be free and open to the public. Date to be announced.

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Get out of jail virus-free: Coronavirus crisis sees local justice system adopt progressive reforms, for now

Chanell Jackson is one of 61 people recently transferred from the ACRJ to home electronic incarceration. Photo: Zack Wajsgras

 

Chanell Jackson is home early.

The local resident and mother of three had about seven weeks left on her six-month sentence in Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail when she was transferred to house arrest in late March. She’s one of the 61 non-violent offenders who have so far been released with ankle monitors, as the ACRJ braces itself for the worst-case scenario playing out in prisons across the country: a coronavirus outbreak within the jail. 

“It feels good to be home and with my family, especially with everything that’s going on,” Jackson says. “In the jail it’s scarier if you get sick. I don’t feel like I would be able to quarantine properly.”

Jackson’s concerns are legitimate: more than 5 percent of inmates in New York’s huge Rikers Island complex have already tested positive for COVID-19, meaning the jail has a higher infection rate than any country in the world. In Virginia, as of April 8, 11 inmates and 12 staff at the Virginia Correctional Center for Women have confirmed cases of the virus. Some Virginia prisons have had serious health care problems even in the best of times—in 2019, a judge determined the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women had failed to provide sufficient care after four women died while incarcerated there. 

Also nearby, local advocacy groups report that 100 immigrants held in a Farmville ICE detention center have gone on hunger strike to protest their continued incarceration despite confirmed cases of the virus in the jail. The facility, run by the for-profit company Immigration Centers of America, experienced a mumps outbreak last year. ICE denies that the current strike is occurring.

“The jails and prisons already don’t have adequate health care for people who are inmates,” says Harold Folley, a community organizer at the Legal Aid Justice Center. Given the virus, “if you lock somebody up, I feel like it’s a death sentence to them.” 

Under normal circumstances, ACRJ has six “hospital cells” for more than 400 inmates. 

ACRJ Superintendent Martin Kumer understands the concern. “I want to be clear, jails and prisons are not set up for social distancing,” he says. “They’re designed to house as many people as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

 

Emptying out

Across the country, advocates have demanded that local justice systems reduce the risk for incarcerated populations by letting as many people as possible out of jails. Some such programs are underway—in March, California announced it would release 3,500 people over the next two months. 

Locally, some prosecutors have enacted progressive emergency measures designed to reduce jail populations. Others haven’t deviated from their usual practices. 

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania and his Albemarle counterpart Jim Hingeley have worked with the jail to identify nonviolent prisoners with short amounts of time left on their sentences, and transfer those people to house arrest or release them on time served. The commonwealth’s attorneys have also recommended releasing nonviolent prisoners being held pre-trial. That’s resulted in 122 of the jail’s 430 inmates leaving the premises so far. 

Nelson County prisoners also go to ACRJ, but Nelson County Commonwealth’s Attorney Daniel Rutherford, a Republican who campaigned on aggressively prosecuting drug crimes, has not participated in the efforts to decrease the jail population, says Hingeley. Rutherford did not respond to a request for comment.

“People don’t understand, the commonwealth’s attorneys have so much damn power,” Folley says. “Joe and Jim have the ability to release people to home monitoring free of charge.” Normally, offenders must pay their own home monitoring costs, up to $13 per day.

“Home electronic incarceration is not release,” says Hingeley, a point Platania also emphasizes. People on HEI are still incarcerated, and can be returned to the jail without any court getting involved if they violate the terms of their house arrest by doing things like traveling without permission or failing a drug screening.

A history of violent convictions will ensure an inmate stays in jail, Kumer says, but there are other considerations, too, like if the inmate is medically vulnerable or where they might go upon release. “We have a large number of individuals who are otherwise nonviolent but they have no place to live,” Kumer says, so they have to stay in jail.

Police Chief Rashall Brackney supports the shift to home monitoring. “I am very confident in the commonwealth’s attorneys, as well as the superintendent, that they are reviewing those cases and taking a very careful look at each of those individuals who would qualify,” she says. That’s a more tempered tone than some other police chiefs in Virginia: “The COVID-19 pandemic is NOT a get-of-out-jail-free card in Chesterfield County,” the county’s police chief wrote in a Facebook post. Last week, two employees at the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center in Chesterfield County tested positive for COVID-19.

The jail is emotionally isolating in the best of circumstances, Jackson says, and coronavirus precautions won’t help—all visitation has been halted, except attorneys. The jail is offering two free emails and two free phone calls per week to try to ameliorate the situation. (Normally, an email costs 50 cents—“a stamp will cost you more than that,” Kumer notes—and a phone call costs 12 cents per minute.)

Fewer people behind bars means prisoners can be more spread out and the facility requires fewer staff to operate. Kumer says the plan is to segregate—the jail has emptied out and rearranged one wing to house all inmates who start exhibiting symptoms. 

For now, inmates and officials wait with bated breath to hear the virus’ dry cough rattle through the cell blocks. So far, “no one has been symptomatic enough to test,” says Kumer.

Despite these precautions, Kumer isn’t rosy-eyed about the situation. “There’s not a lot we can do if an outbreak does occur,” he says. 

 

Looking ahead

The 308 inmates currently inside the jail is the smallest number in at least 20 years, says Hingeley. 

The emergency measures represent baby steps towards a more equitable justice system. The city-commissioned Disproportionate Minority Contact report earlier this year concluded that black people were disproportionately punished at every level of the local justice system. As it turns out, releasing non-violent offenders and people serving short sentences disproportionately helps black people: A little less than half the jail’s total population is black, but two-thirds of the people transferred to HEI due to coronavirus are black. 

“There’s a lot of folks who are not paying attention to people who are incarcerated,” says Folley. “When you think of people incarcerated you think, automatically, they are criminals, right. But what people should know is they are human, too.”

“I think they definitely should offer [HEI] more,” Jackson says. “There’s still rules and regulations that you follow, but some people have minor violations and they’re being incarcerated and taken away from their family. At least on home monitoring you can stay home and take care of your family. Because every day is precious.”

Jackson says she loves cooking, and she’s been doing plenty of it since she got home. Her favorite thing to make is lasagna; she just pulled one out of the oven. “I’m very family oriented. I’m very happy to be home with them,” she says. “I have a younger daughter, she’s 1, so I’ve been catching up with her, spending time with her…Everything is mama, mama where’s my mama,” she says, laughing. 

Will the change last? That depends who you ask. 

“We’re taking some calculated risks with some of these decisions,” Platania says—he doesn’t want to “overreact one way or another.”

He says it’s “absolutely” possible that the local justice system takes a more progressive view of sentencing and bail decisions after coronavirus. “But you know to turn that on its head,” he adds, “if we make a decision to release someone on a nonviolent larceny offense, and they break in to someone’s house and steal something or hurt someone, do we then say well, everything we did was unsafe and foolhardy?” 

Hingeley, who ran his 2019 campaign as a candidate for prosecutorial reform and alternatives to incarceration, is more direct. “Absolutely it is my goal to have these practices last,” he says. “From my perspective these are things that we should be doing.”

The emergency measures offer an unusual opportunity to see progressive policies in practice. “We are going to be accumulating information about the effects of liberalized policies with respect to sentences and bail decisions,” Hingeley says. “I am optimistic that that experience—as hard as it comes to us, in this emergency—that experience nevertheless is going to teach us valuable lessons. And we’ll see big changes going forward.”

“I can take the initiative, but other people have to agree,” Hingeley says. Platania also emphasizes that judges are a coequal branch of government to prosecutors, and though there’s been great “judicial buy-in” during this emergency, that won’t necessarily be true in the future.

“I do hope that this will change the system,” Folley says, “but it takes a number of people with courage.”

 

Updated 4/8 to reflect the number of confirmed cases in the Virginia Correctional Center for Women.

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Turning up the heat: Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci faces a progressive challenger with deep pockets

Robert Tracci hopes to fend off challenger Jim Hingeley to retain his seat as the Albemarle County commonwealth’s attorney in a race that’s already had an “unprecedented” twist. Photo by Jen Fariello

Political races in Albemarle County are usually pretty staid compared to Charlottesville’s—except for the commonwealth’s attorney race.

Prosecutors Jim Camblos (in 2007) and Denise Lunsford (in 2015) were both ousted after controversial, high-profile cases. And 2019 has promised to be another closely watched contest—even before incumbent Robert Tracci’s opponent received an unheard-of $50,000 donation.

Republican Tracci, 47, is a former federal prosecutor and U.S. House Judiciary Committee counsel. Jim Hingeley, 71, founded the Charlottesville Albemarle Public Defender’s Office in 1998. Both men tout their experience—and their opponent’s lack of it.

Democrat Jim Hingeley, founder of the Charlottesville Albemarle Public Defender’s Office, faces Republican Robert Tracci in the commonwealths’s attorney race.

“He doesn’t have any prosecution experience at all,” says Tracci.

“I’m proficient as a criminal trial lawyer,” says Hingeley, noting his more than 40 years as an attorney. A factor in his decision to run, he says, “was [Tracci’s] inexperience and the mistakes he made…When he was elected, he’d never tried a case on his own in state court.”

Hingeley calls Tracci’s failure to secure a perjury conviction against Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler “a rookie mistake. He failed to prove the perjury occurred in Albemarle County.”

“The court made a finding with which I disagree,” says Tracci.

The two men differ on their interpretations of prosecutorial discretion and on the role of money in the campaign, notably activist Sonjia Smith’s $50,000 donation to Hingeley.

Hingeley says he also decided to run because he disagrees with Tracci’s approach. “Mr. Tracci has, for the most part, the view that prosecuting people, convicting them, and removing them from the community is the way to address criminal behavior and solve crime in the community,” says Hingeley, who describes himself as a progressive.

For his part, Tracci says Hingeley is part of a “political prosecution movement in which the commonwealth’s attorney is a political activist rather than a legal advocate.” He is “already expressing a reluctance to bringing felony offenses and that has consequences that are not good for public safety,” says Tracci.

“We don’t have authority to summarily disregard the law,” says Tracci, who suggests Hingeley is running for the wrong job and should be seeking a seat in the General Assembly to change the laws with which he disagrees.

“I have a different approach,” says Hingeley. “I know a lot about what is driving criminal behavior.”

Mass incarceration is the “result of the kinds of policies Mr. Tracci has in his office,” says Hingeley. “I think we need to look at ways to keep people in the community.”

Both Hingeley and Tracci cite support for treating substance abuse and mental illness outside of incarceration. “Jails and prisons are not equipped” to treat those issues as well as the services that are already available in the community, says Hingeley.

Tracci says, “I’ve sought alternatives to prosecution, including the therapeutic mental health and drug dockets.” He says his is the first commonwealth’s attorney office in the state to have overall responsibility for sexual assault at UVA, rather than have cases handled as Title IX. “We were ahead of the curve,” he says.

And while he’s committed to enforcing laws as written, Tracci says some reforms are in order. “I’ve written the attorney general that it’s time to look at cannabis laws.” And he wants to see a uniform standard to determine cannabis impairment.

That was an issue Hingeley cites as an example of Tracci’s inexperience. When a train collided with a garbage truck on the tracks in Crozet in early 2018, Tracci tried driver Dana Naylor on involuntary manslaughter and maiming from driving while impaired because he had THC in his bloodstream.

The problem, says Hingeley, is that the science on THC, including results from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, is that “THC in the blood does not appear to be an indication of impairment.“ And when Tracci attempted to prove Naylor was impaired, “his own toxicologist said that’s not correct,” recounts Hingeley.

Hingeley has raised more than $150,000, the largest amount for any commonwealth’s attorney race in memory. That includes $50,000 from Smith, who also gave $10,000 to Andrew Sneathern, who, when he decided not to seek the prosecutor’s job, contributed those funds to Hingeley.

“I think it reflects the support I have gotten for change and for criminal justice reform,” says Hingeley.

Tracci thinks it reflects an “unprecedented” amount of campaign money in this district, if not the commonwealth, and that Smith’s $50K was almost equal to what he spent on the last election.

“The community should have the right to know what conversations were made before that contribution,” he says.

Tracci says he met with Smith, who disagreed with his support of the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail’s notification of ICE when undocumented immigrants are released from the jail. “After that, I learned she wrote the $50,000 check,” he says.

Smith says she’d contributed to Hingeley more than two months before she met with Tracci at his request on April 1, and that her record as an active Democratic donor shows “that I do not support Republicans.”

Tracci says he didn’t do any fundraising his first three years in office, and as the county’s current prosecutor he doesn’t accept contributions from any defense attorney with cases that will appear in Albemarle courts. “I’m going to be outspent and I know I’m going to be outspent.”

Hingeley says he wants to find solutions that will break the cycle of racial injustice and the disproportionate number of minorities in prison. “I’m seeing a lot of interest in this community in doing things differently.”

“We don’t have the authority not to prosecute violent crimes,” says Tracci. That disrespects the victims, he says, “and there’s nothing compassionate about that.”

Tracci and Hingeley will face off at The Center on Hillsdale Drive on October 9 at 1:30pm.

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In brief: Millionaire Hoos, honest haikus, candidate news, and more

Malcolm Brogdon, UVA class of '16, is currently making $1.5 million with the Milwaukee Bucks. What will the university's newest NBA recruits make? Photo by Matt Riley

Hoos blues

You know that feeling you get when you support UVA men’s basketball through the years, and then the team finally wins the NCAA championship for the first time ever, and several players decide a college degree isn’t as valuable as playing in the NBA?

While we predict they won’t be in the same paycheck league as Duke’s Zion Williamson, we can’t blame De’Andre Hunter, Ty Jerome, Kyle Guy, and Mamadi Diakite for cashing in on what could be some of the biggest paydays Virginia players have ever seen.

Here’s what other UVA players are earning since they graduated from—or jettisoned—their alma mater.

Malcolm Brogdon, Class of ‘16

  • Milwaukee Bucks
  • $1.5 million

Joe Harris, Class of ‘14

  • Brooklyn Nets
  • $8.3 million

Mike Scott, Class of ‘12

  • Philadelphia 76ers
  • $4.3 million

Justin Anderson

  • Atlanta Hawks
  • $2.5 million

And here’s how three previous NCAA hot shots cashed in.

DeAndre Ayton

  • Former Arizona Wildcat who was drafted by the Phoenix Suns
  • $8.2 million

Marvin Bagley III

  • Former Duke Blue Devil who was drafted by the Sacramento Kings
  • $7.3 million

Wendell Carter, Jr.

  • Former Duke Blue Devil who was drafted by the Chicago Bulls
  • $4.4 million

Hingeley windfall

Jim Hingeley. Staff photo

Candidate for Albemarle commonwealth’s attorney Jim Hingeley received a $50,000 donation from Sonjia Smith, the philanthropist known for writing big checks to Democrats who are running for office. As far as we can tell, this is the largest donation for a local prosecutor race, and former public defender Hingeley has raked in more than $100,000 so far. Incumbent Robert Tracci reports $21,000 as of March 31.

“Supersteve” declares

Supervisor Ann Mallek has a challenger in her White Hall District. Retired Army aviator Steve Harvey, whose email address is “supersteve,” says he wants to put his foot down on property tax increases.

Quote of the week: “This is exciting. Y’all came out for this! …You must have really had nothing else to do tonight.” —Reddit co-founder and UVA alum Alexis Ohanian at an April 17 New York Times-sponsored event on Grounds

Tuition bump booted

UVA’s Board of Visitors voted to roll back a previously announced 2.9 percent in-state tuition bump, thanks to additional General Assembly funding to public universities that opt not to up their tuition. The Charlottesville school will now receive an additional $5.52 million from the state, and the College at Wise can expect $235,000.

Riggleman stops by

Denver Riggleman. Submitted photo

Representative Denver Riggleman made a quiet visit to Charlottesville Monday for a meet-and-greet with SNP Global employees, at the invitation of the company’s political action committee. As far as we can tell, the Republican distillery owner did not take the opportunity for a more public meeting with constituents in Charlottesville, which went 85 percent for his opponent, Leslie Cockburn, in last fall’s election.

Well, that backfired

We’re not exactly sure what officials thought they’d get from an April 17 tweet posted on the city’s official Twitter account, which noted it was National Haiku Poetry Day, and called for Charlottesville-related submissions in the 5-7-5 syllable format. But we bet it wasn’t this.

 

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Hingeley runs: Veteran defender wants prosecutor job

Jim Hingeley promises a more “progressive, humane approach” to criminal justice in his campaign for Albemarle commonwealth's attorney. Staff photo

Dozens of people, many from the legal community, braved the chill January 23 to stand in front of Albemarle Circuit Court, where Jim Hingeley, founder of the Charlottesville Albemarle Public Defender Office, announced his campaign for Albemarle commonwealth’s attorney.

“It’s time for criminal justice reform in Albemarle County,” said Hingeley, 71. He said he wants to take a more “progressive, humane approach” to prosecution, because lengthy prison sentences come at a cost to society.

Hingeley will seek the Democratic nomination, and he took aim at the Republican incumbent. Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci, said Hingeley, was putting nonviolent offenders in jail and had increased by 29 percent the number of cases tried last year in circuit court, where felonies are heard.

“Many times Mr. Tracci has asked for jail time for driving with suspended licenses,” says Hingeley. “I won’t do that.”

The state’s policy of automatically suspending driver’s licenses for unpaid court costs and fines is murky since a judge ruled December 21 the practice is likely unconstitutional.

Tracci, who plans to run for reelection, says he has stopped prosecuting those cases since the injunction. He also says the county has seen an increase in felony offenses in recent years.

Hingeley stressed his 43 years of experience as an attorney handling thousands of cases. “We’ve seen examples of how inexperience can affect justice,” he said. And he drew applause when he said he would not pursue the death penalty.

So far, Hingeley has raised over $10,000, most of that from a committee for Andrew Sneathern, who ran for the 5th District congressional seat last year and who was encouraged by some to run for commonwealth’s attorney. Sneathern introduced Hingeley

He lauded Hingeley’s “recognition of the dignity of every member of the community,” while excoriating the war on drugs and Virginia’s punitive misdemeanor marijuana possession laws, which “take driver’s licenses away for something that has nothing to do with driving.”

Hingeley, currently a city resident, says the law allows him to run in the county, and notes that former commonwealth’s attorneys Denise Lunsford and Jim Camblos lived in the city when they were elected and subsequently moved to the county. He says he’s planning to move to the county before the election “because I’m very committed to this.”

Among those gathered at Hingeley’s announcement were Albemarle Clerk of Court John Zug, Charlottesville Clerk Llezelle Dugger, who used to work for Hingeley in the public defender’s office, Albemarle sheriff candidate Chan Bryant, and City Councilor Wes Bellamy.

“I’m entering this race because we need to turn Albemarle County’s criminal justice system in a different direction,” he said. “I’m entering this race because our community can and should end the politics of mass incarceration.”

 

 

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Climate change: All quiet on the council front

In the first meeting since new councilors Nikuyah Walker and Heather Hill were elected mayor and vice-mayor, respectively, the normally disruptive crowd kept things civil, unlike the first City Council meeting of the year on January 2 when audience members held up signs and jeered throughout. Eze Amos

The second City Council meeting of the new year on January 16 was markedly different from council meetings of the past year: no interruptions, no yelling and no profanities, behavior that suspended 2018’s first meeting two weeks ago.

Newly elected Vice-Mayor Heather Hill ran the meeting in the absence of Mayor Nikuyah Walker, who was ill after she appeared on “The View” in New York the day before.

Several speakers promised continued incivility, but refrained from the disruptions of the recent past.

When former mayor Kay Slaughter said, “All citizens who speak should be respected” and “not subject to heckling, jeering and profanity,” she was not booed as were speakers asking for the same at the last meeting—although some hissing has been reported.

“I don’t think anyone should be subjected to crowd bullying when they are presenting their ideas,” she said, noting that some of those who were jeered “had served the city well.”

One of those would be former public defender Jim Hingeley, about whom Slaughter says, “Nobody’s done more in trying to help with criminal justice than Jim.”

He was greeted with catcalls and interruptions when he made a plea for civility January 2, and described the tactics as the “hecklers veto” and “intimidation by an angry mob,” which brought further jeers.

Hingeley watched the most recent meeting from California, and says, “I don’t know that one meeting is a trend.”

Councilors discussed changes to the public comment section of the meeting, which has been a sore point since former mayor Mike Signer implemented changes two years ago that included online sign-up—and which led to a court ruling of unconstitutionality for banning group defamation.

Hingeley attributed the less-heated meeting to “possibly the fact council has made it clear they’re going to make changes to their public comment format that had people holding back from their normal disruptions.”

In September, after the deadly white nationalist and neo-Nazi invasion of Charlottesville when council chambers were out of control, then vice-mayor Wes Bellamy declared that “white supremacy masks itself through politeness.”

“Does that mean the Ku Klux Klan is civil?” asks Hingeley. “That’s nonsense.”

He offers a definition of civility from Wikipedia, which also says the word comes from the Latin for “citizen”: “The notion of positively constructive civility suggests robust, even passionate engagement is found in respect of differing views.”

The irony, he says, is that the biggest disruptors want to have white supremacy addressed, but “yelling about it the loudest and taking time away from policy leaders is not the way to make progress.”

Hingeley also says he doesn’t like the inequality in the way City Council enforces its rules based on content, escorting unpopular speaker Jason Kessler out of the chamber, while allowing activist Mary Carey to stay. “That’s a violation of the First Amendment,” he says.

UVA prof and activist Jalane Schmidt has also declared that politeness masks racism. She says she’s talking about “systemic” incivility, such as the lack of affordable housing and economic inequality.

“The lack of transparency created uncivil conditions,” she says. Some of those getting booed are also contributors to those on council. “They get more than their three minutes,” she says.

After the new year’s first meeting, Schmidt suggested that Walker could have a calming effect on the “rambunctious” council meetings.

She says she doesn’t know why the climate changed at the January 16 meeting, but she offers a few theories. “New year, new council. It also had a short agenda and a lot of listening by councilors.”

For Signer, who has been in the hot seat pretty much his entire term as mayor and is the target of frequent calls for his resignation, the cooler temperature was no doubt a pleasant change of pace.

He says in an email, “I enjoyed the meeting and was glad to join in a constructive conversation with community members and my colleagues about community engagement and exciting new ideas like participatory budgeting.”