NAACP – C-VILLE Weekly

In brief: Deadly disparities, graduation guesses, and more

Deadly disparities

While the COVID-19 pandemic has affected people of all backgrounds across the globe, statistics show that it has had a disproportionate impact on black Americans. Data is limited, because only about 35 percent of U.S. cases specify a patient’s race, according to the CDC. But its numbers show that black people comprise nearly 34 percent of those infected with COVID-19, though they make up only 13 percent of the population. And African Americans make up nearly 30 percent of U.S. deaths from the virus, according to the latest Associated Press analysis.

Charlottesville is certainly not immune to this issue. In the Thomas Jefferson Health District, as of April 17, about 32 percent of people infected with coronavirus (and 25 percent of those who’ve died) are black, while black people make up only 13.9 percent of the district’s population.

Black communities in other parts of the state have been hit even harder by COVID-19. In Richmond, all eight people who’ve died from the virus were black. And while 48 percent of the city’s population is African American, black people make up about 62 percent of local cases.

Medical professionals, activists, and political leaders around the country have attributed these disparities to pre-existing inequities within our health care and economic systems. Blacks are more likely than whites to be uninsured and receive lower-quality health care, as well as have underlying conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease—all often caused or worsened by poverty. And due to unequal education, housing segregation, and other systemic inequalities, a significant portion of black Americans live in densely packed areas and do not have jobs that allow them to work from home, making social distancing more difficult.

To provide more black Virginians with adequate health care access, the Albemarle-Charlottesville NAACP has sent a letter to Governor Ralph Northam asking him to use his “executive discretion” to speed up the Medicaid eligibility process using data available immediately from the Department of Taxation, along with other resources. Because there is currently a backlog of applications, those trying to be approved for Medicaid may have to wait as long as 45 days—which, for some people, “may be a death sentence.”

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Quote of the Week

“There was a housing crisis two months ago, and this entire community spent a number of years moving towards addressing that…And now we have an even bigger crisis.”

—Brandon Collins, Public Housing Association of Residents, addressing City Council on Monday

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In Brief

Gradual grads

UVA announced two tentative dates for graduation, after the original ceremony was canceled due to coronavirus. The class of 2020 will walk the Lawn on October 9-11, or, failing that, May 28-30, the weekend after the class of 2021 graduates. The university will still hold a digital ceremony to confer degrees this May, although it’s unclear if Zoom will have installed a virtual cap-flinging feature by then.

Sales are not on the menu

Seventy-eight percent of Virginia’s restaurant employees have been laid off since February, according to a new study from the National Restaurant Association. In the first week of April, the state’s restaurant sales declined 77 percent, compared to the same time period last year. That downturn has already forced longtime Charlottesville staple the Downtown Grille to permanently close its doors, while other beloved spots like Rapture, Tavola, and Oakheart Social have closed temporarily.

Capital loss

Death penalty critic Jerry Givens died last Monday in Henrico County at age 67. His son, Terence Travers, did not reveal Givens’ cause of death, but said that he had pneumonia and had tested positive for COVID-19. Givens, who spoke with C-VILLE in February for a story about the fight against the death penalty in Virginia, served as the state’s chief executioner for 17 years, before becoming an outspoken opponent of capital punishment.

Out of the House

Legislators in the state capital won’t be able to meet in their regular chambers for this month’s short veto session. Instead, Democratic leadership reports that the Senate will gather in a convention center, with members seated at desks 10 feet apart from each other, and the House will convene in a huge tent on the lawn near the capital.

Updated 4/22: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Rapture had closed permanently; according to the restaurant’s Facebook page, it is closed “indefinitely.”

FOIA suit fails: Judge rules police don’t have to release stop-and-frisk records

After Charlottesville Police Chief Tim Longo’s report to City Council stated that 70 percent of the people police stopped were African-American, the Public Housing Association of Residents and the local NAACP filed a lawsuit seeking police records under the Freedom of Information Act, according to their lawyer, Jeff Fogel.

Judge Rick Moore ruled September 11 that what had been described as “narratives” of temporary detentions, aka stops and frisks, were criminal investigative files and exempt under FOIA. He read a handful of the reports, saying, “I think it’s in the public interest to hear so there’s not a veil of secrecy.”

In 2012, Longo required officers to start reporting narratives of each stop to look at “the decision making of the officer making the stop,” he testified. “I was shocked we weren’t keeping this important constitutional record.”

Fogel initially made a FOIA request for the narratives in June 2014 and was told he could have them, but then he became ill, according to the lawsuit. When he requested them again in February, he was told they were criminal investigative files and exempt under FOIA. In court he asked Longo why he changed his mind.

Longo said he wanted to balance the needs of the community with the department’s interest in exercising the exemption by constructing an independent review process that could include the citizens advisory panel, the Human Rights Commission and the commonwealth’s attorney office.

In one instance, said the chief, an officer was sent to take a constitutional class at Montpelier to make sure he had proper knowledge of the law. “It was determined an officer had made a misapplication of the law,” he said.

After the hearing, Fogel said, “We learned there were some bad searches from the mouth of the police chief.” And he contended that withholding the narratives was “a political decision not to expose the police department to liability from illegal searches.”

Moore acknowledged that Fogel was at a disadvantage in the suit because he had not seen the narratives, and the judge said he read all 237 of the records the city provided. “They are all, in my opinion, criminal investigative files,” he said. Almost all were in response to calls—about fights, someone drunk, property loss or injury, he said.

He read the first four reports:

A white male drank half a beer and walked out of a bar without paying. He told the officer the beer was warm and went back in to pay for it.
A man was disorderly and drinking in front of a store. The officer found a person matching the description with a 40-ounce malt liquor, and gave him a ticket.
Three witnesses said during an argument at closing time, a man spit in the face of a woman and kicked her several times on the mall. The officer talked to the suspect who denied touching anyone.
A witness said a black male was sleeping on a bench. The officer spoke to the man, noticed slurred speech and the smell of alcohol, and took him to the Mohr Center, a residential treatment center.

In all of these instances, said Moore, although no arrests were made, they were all criminal investigations.

After the hearing, PHAR staffer Brandon Collins said he was disappointed with the ruling, but felt the judge seemed to encourage the idea that the information could be made public eventually.

“I think I was expecting something different from the narratives,” he said, “and why decisions were made.”

Updated 10:40am September 12 to clarify Longo’s testimony on not releasing the narratives.