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The Crisis of Eviction and Gentrification: An Interview With Allan-Charles Chipman

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For Richmond City Council candidate Allan-Charles Chipman, preserving local communitites by keeping longtime Richmonders in their homes is at the heart of the issues facing the city in 2020.

Allan-Charles Chipman is a candidate running for city council in the 6th district of Richmond against longtime incumbent Ellen Robertson, who has represented the 6th district for 16 years. The 33-year-old Chipman has a background as a community organizer and Christian faith leader, and is currently working for Initiatives of Change. If he is elected this November, it will be his first time serving in a political position. RVA Mag sat down with Chipman (over Zoom, of course) to find out some more about him, his campaign, and his opinions on the issues facing Richmond today. 

RVA: How has your faith shaped your political views and your life in general?

ACC: My parents were pastors and community organizers. They were part of an organization that helped transition people out of homelessness. My parents started a school within their church that was dedicated to helping kids in the neighborhood get up to a third-grade reading level, and then send them off to public school. 

I was about six years old when I was in these rooms, and I just saw how my faith calls me to help my community. Even today I work as a community advocate, really helping to expand past the societal biases that impact how people show up in their communities — like racism, dehumanization. Really, how my faith informs me is that we are not to leave behind our neighbors when they face injustice. Just as we want them fighting for us, we want to make sure we are fighting for justice, the humanity and dignity that each person’s life holds. We want to have the skillset to be able to expand the work of justice.

RVA: So you’re running primarily on an anti-gentrification platform. Can you tell us about that?

ACC: The city is really starting to recognize how unstable and unsustainable the level of growth in housing values has been. You can’t be both the arsonist and the firefighter. You can’t incentivize the type of development that has caused this burden to households. The point of entry — the price at which you can purchase a house — has risen 52 percent in the past couple of years. It’s not enough that we just talk about affordable housing, because we can’t have affordable housing being built on the displacement of long-term black neighborhoods. We can’t have this new doctrine of discovery, where people who have been indigenous to this place for a while are being displaced by this new vision of what things should be. 

I’ve met people on the campaign trail who are afraid they’re gentrifiers. If people want to come into our neighborhood, that’s not a problem. I believe we can have development without displacement. But it has to be intentional. There are innovative ways that we can do that. I want to make sure we’re focused on not just making sure the next person moves in, we have to make sure we have community stabilization funds. If you look at Atlanta, Georgia, they’ve actually created something called ‘community stabilization funds’ that actually help long-term residents stay in. 

We also have to realize that it’s not just seniors who are struggling. I was talking to a young woman who said she’s not sure how long she can stay in her house because of how fast housing values are escalating. We also have to make sure we’re not clearing out our low-income public housing. The RRHA’s plan is to demolish all six of the Big Six [public housing courts in the city] in 2021. 

RVA: Are they actually trying to get rid of the Big Six, or just phase them out?

ACC: If you read the plan, it’s quite blatant that they’re trying to demolish them and move to a project-based voucher. They would send residents out into the private market with a voucher that doesn’t protect against discrimination. We have to be clear that we can have plans to redevelop and give people a better opportunity to live in an environment that better reflects their dignity, but we have to make sure we have a plan for where people are going. We have 300 people on a waitlist just to get housing. It’s a very concerning time in the city, and we’re already number two in the nation for the highest number of evictions. 

RVA: Do you think gentrification and evictions are Richmond’s biggest problems right now?

ACC: Absolutely. We cannot build the affordable ‘RVA’ on the backs of Black Richmond. It’s not enough we have to be a city of the future, we have to be a city where people can exist in the future. If we know that what’s attracting some businesses to the city is our affordability, we can’t continue this gentrification. 

This is also about being able to build generational wealth. If people lose that home, they lose the ability to pass it on to a nephew, or a family member, who might be able to use it. I was talking to an entrepreneur who said the only way he was able to start a business is because his uncle let him use his home as collateral. But if that home is no longer in the family, they no longer have access to that. We’re talking about an attack on generational wealth, an attack on housing stability. We have to have a relief fund for those who are pushed out. We don’t want people to feel guilty for coming to our city, we don’t want to make people feel that their presence means the eventual absence of others who have been here. We need to have homestead exemptions, and community stabilization funds. 

RVA: How does VCU figure into the gentrification of Richmond?

ACC: There have been a lot of concerns among VCU students especially, wanting to know what the expansion of VCU has meant to the city of Richmond. We have to make sure that VCU is paying their fair share of taxes. PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) is a way our city can arrange a form of payment based on how much of their land is occupied, and it’s a way they can bring more money into the city funds. 

RVA: How do you feel about the Richmond police department, especially after the protests this summer?

ACC: One of the most dangerous institutions in the world is one that doesn’t have to answer to anyone. We have seen that the police department doesn’t have to answer to anyone. Just a couple months ago the mayor made Jody Blackwell, who killed an unarmed black Air Force veteran, the police chief. We saw the police driving over protesters with no consequences. When people know that there is no accountability — this is what happens when leaders don’t stand up against the police. 

We need an independent community oversight board, independent of police, to be able to police the police. We support the Marcus Alert, fully funded and led by community care units. We want to know that ethnic and racial makeup of the people who police stop, to make sure we know about racial profiling and can stop it. We also know that in Richmond City Justice Center, there is an outbreak of COVID-19. We stand with RVA26, which has been showing the horrors going on in the jail. We have to reallocate responsibilities to our community organizations, who have been having the impact that we’d like to see. I have no problem with reallocating resources to them. If police can do what they want — bend the rules, call anything that questions them an “unlawful assembly” and be able to tear gas — and we do not have leadership that challenges them, the leadership are complicit in the expansion of the corruption of the police. 

RVA: What are your thoughts on the issues that face LGBTQ Virginians, especially those who are Black?

ACC: I think it’s important that we are applying a racial equity lens in everything, to make sure that the issues that face our Black LGBTQ siblings are coming to light. I’m glad that the Virginia Values Act was passed, and one of the ideas I want to bring is something called the Equity Assessment Index, which is a rubric that applies to policies that come out of City Council or City Hall, to make sure that our policies are not having a negative impact on historically marginalized communities. 

There is a great level of housing discrimination that happens against LGBTQ people, and our Black and brown brothers and sisters. We have to make sure we are supporting our orgs, such as Side By Side, that deal with how many of our youth who are sent out into the streets, are disowned by their families. I want to use vacant city housing stock to bring them up and really give them a future. I want to tell them that they have a champion in me, that I’m listening. That’s why I want to start ‘Everyday Solidarity Task Forces’ that meet monthly for people to talk about what’s happening in their communities. As we try to implement the Virginia Values Act, I want to hear about places where it’s not being implemented. I want to make sure that the act is a reality in their healthcare, in their workplace. 

RVA: I know that the one thing on everyone’s mind right now is the coronavirus. Is there something the city should be doing to better fight the virus?

ACC: There needs to be an eviction moratorium. We don’t have a vaccine, so the best thing we can do is shelter at home, wear a mask, and socially distance. But if you don’t have a home to shelter in, that becomes very hard to do. We need to make sure people are staying in their homes. We’re in more of a gig economy. A person may lose one job and then not qualify for a total loss of income, so they’re still drowning. We need to make sure we’re also helping people who aren’t working a 9-to-5 job.

We also need hazard pay for our public workers, and we need to make sure that they have the sick leave that they need. We have to provide safe, socially-distanced ways to help restaurants stay open — maybe having a zone for street dining. But we have to be careful, because we don’t want to go back to the more restrictive phase that crippled the economy. I think we’ve been doing well with the availability of testing. But we need to make sure we are not displacing our residents from their communities. We need to use city housing stock to make sure we’re housing as many residents as possible, really ramping up the city’s stock for emergency shelters and other ways to house people during this time. We have to do as much as we can to keep people housed, keep them safe. 

All photos via Allan-Charles Chipman/Facebook. This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Turning The Tide For Southside

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BLK RVA founder Amy Wentz hopes to challenge Reva Trammell’s multi-decade hold on Richmond’s 8th District and bring a new energy to Southside Richmond.

Richmond City Councilwoman Reva Trammell has been in office for a very long time — having presided over Richmond’s 8th district since 1998. Though it appears the residents of the 8th district love Councilwoman Trammell, not much has changed over her 22 years of representing the city’s geographically largest voting district — and arguably its most neglected.

When Councilwoman Trammell first took office in 1998, the district in Richmond’s Southside had no grocery stores. Today the number of grocery stores in the district remains the same, with the exception of a few small storefronts along Route 1 and Broad Rock Boulevard. 

Being a food desert is just one of the many problems that needs to be addressed in the district, and Amy Wentz, who is running to unseat Trammell, intends to bring those problems to light so that the 8th district can get on pace with the rest of the city.

Wentz was born and raised in Richmond’s Southside. After graduating from Huguenot High School on Forest Hill Avenue, she joined the military, spending two years in Afghanistan before returning to Richmond. Wentz has lived in the 8th district for the past 11 years. She first became involved with local government after attending a meeting and seeing that complacency had set in with her representative, who wasn’t even taking questions from residents. The lack of communication between City Hall and the 8th district, and the obvious lack of attention given to the Southside of Richmond in general, is what prompted Wentz to run for city council.

“Being from Southside and seeing the neglect and seeing the way that our area has gone down over the years has been an eyesore. It has been hard and painful to watch,” Wentz said. “And although I’ve been able to do a lot of community work and community service to help in certain areas, I really felt like it was time for me to transition my community service into public service.”

Wentz is the creator of BLK RVA and co-founded Virginia Black Restaurant Experience, two tourism platforms that highlight Black culture in the Richmond area. Through those organizations, she’s worked to make clear to the outside world that Richmond is about more than the Civil War.

“For a long time we’ve had this Capital of the Confederacy cloud over us, where we feel like we have to highlight the Confederate history as a means towards tourism here in the city,” Wentz said. “We want to tell the whole story of Richmond’s history, and make sure that tourists know that there is Black culture that is thriving here. We want to highlight and uplift that.”

Richmond’s Public Schools are known for their lack of quality, and having gone to school in the Southside, Wentz knows how quality of public schools is connected to wealth inequality.

“Unfortunately, all the schools in the 8th district are what we call Title 1 schools, and that means the majority of students come from families that are experiencing poverty,” Wentz said. “That in itself is a tough pill to swallow.” In addition to improving the schools the 8th district’s kids attend, Wentz wants to improve access to adult education programs for the Southside’s residents. Right now, all of the programs the city offers are located North of the James River.

As the representative for the 8th district, Wentz wants to restore the line of communication between the residents and the local government.

“The communication strategy in the 8th district as it stands now is nonexistent,” Wentz said. “We’re the only district that does not receive newsletters or any sort of communication from our district representatives.” Wentz believes the lack of communication and inability for the residents of the 8th district to provide feedback or ask questions is directly responsible for the complacency and lack of accountability that has plagued the district’s representatives in City Hall.

The 8th district still faces many of the challenges they’ve been dealing with for decades. The district leads the city in evictions and health disparity. It’s at the bottom of the municipal infrastructure budget as well as access to GRTC, despite being the city’s largest district. According to Wentz, Councilwoman Trammell is good at providing “band-aid” fixes for some of the problems her constituents are facing, such as giving gift cards and rides around the city. But she feels that it will take institutional change to reverse all the damage that has been done to the 8th district over the years. 

“I want to usher in policy that could really affect our quality of life, so that we’re not leaning on those things as much as we have been in the past,” Wentz said. “We’re operating with a sense of integrity on our campaign, doing things the right way, and so it gets tough to try to compete with the types of practices that have been in place for 18 years.”

All photos via Amy Wentz/Facebook

Two Black LGBTQ Candidates Seek Richmond City Council Seats

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We sat down with City Council candidates Tavarris Spinks and Joseph S.H. Rogers to talk about their ties to Richmond, plans for their respective districts, and how they want to switch up Richmond’s representative voice.

Tavarris Spinks, 2nd District 

Tavarris Spinks, a noted participant and activist in Richmond politics, is a fifth-generation Richmonder and VCU alumnus with strong connections to the 2nd District community. He’s running to fill Councilwoman Kim Gray’s seat. 

Spinks’ childhood in a lower-income community in Richmond has informed his experience as an activist, and so has his journey to become a first-generation college graduate and a prominent member of Richmond’s political scene over the past 17 years.

“You know, I grew up in subsidized housing, like Section 8 subsidized housing,” Spinks said. “For the first several years of my life, I remember having a relatively happy childhood. My parents worked very hard to make sure that I didn’t want for anything, but they also had help from family because so much of my family lives here.”

His grandmother still lives in his old neighborhood, Spinks said, and is able to stay in her home despite rising housing costs due to subsidies for people over 65. But that experience isn’t universal, Spinks said.

“The 2nd District, in Jackson Ward, historic Jackson Ward, used to be a thriving African American enclave. But now, folks are being pushed out by political and economic forces,” he said. “Keeping those neighborhoods together, allowing people, especially black folks, to stay in their homes, is super important.”

His worldview shifted, Spinks said, when he first exited the world of his childhood during a field trip in eighth grade and saw the parts of Richmond that had wealth and well-maintained infrastructure. 

“Once you get older, you start to see the wider world. You know, it took me a while to realize, ‘Oh, we are actually quite poor compared to [other families],’” Spinks said. “We went to the VMFA and that was my first time going. And, you know, riding through Monument Avenue, and then seeing that this is still the same city.”

Attending VCU and living in the Fan gave Spinks a chance to observe the disparities in neighborhoods of Richmond in his everyday life. 

“Running in the 2nd district — this is my home. You know, it’s a great part of town,” he said. “I want to see it get better, and I want to see all of Richmond get better. City Council doesn’t just vote on issues that affect one district.”

Spinks is passionate about developing and maintaining the infrastructure of the city, specifically the accessibility of sidewalks and walkways around construction sites. He lived in the Fan for 12 years, and said he now knows “what it’s like to live in a part of town that has more access to transit services, better roads.” He sees how these issues specifically affect people in the 2nd District. But he said that even more wealthy parts of the city like the Fan and Scott’s Addition still need help with sidewalks. 

Spinks’ advocacy for accessible sidewalks stems from his familiarity with activists in the disability community, he said. He’s observed “folks who are using mobility devices, like wheelchairs, or walkers in the street, facing vehicle traffic.” His sensitivity to this issue comes from his experience thinking about the groups most impacted by the city’s decisions. 

“When I think about a policy I meet, the first thing I think about is, ‘Who tends to be vulnerable? And who can lose in this type of policy?’” Spinks said. “And going from there, I then think, ‘Okay, what are the solutions to the problem that we’re trying to solve?’” 

Photo via Tavarris Spinks/Facebook

This sensitivity extends to the issues he’s observed and lived as a Black and gay man, he said. “Just to be clear, I’m not saying that you need to be gay to understand gay issues or represent gay constituents,” Spinks said. “But, it helps.” 

Living with those two identities is “a lot, frankly, and it’s a lot to navigate,” he said.

Spinks said that while he loves his district’s open-mindedness, he’s also aware that “just 30 minutes” from where he now lives and is running for office, just “trying to exist … I’d have a very different story to tell” about living as a Black man and a member of the LGBTQ community.

“[That’s] one of the reasons why I am politically active, because of knowing how much of my liberty and freedom immediately has an effect in legislation at all levels,” Spinks said. “It made me certainly aware of ‘Who’s in power, how that power is being used, and who is it being used for? And who is it being used against?’”

That issue of which groups have power over minorities has even followed Spinks into his political work, he said. While out canvassing, he was stopped by police officers and asked what he was doing, with the suspicion that he was “up to something.”

“And I was ‘up to’ trying to get people to vote,” Spinks said. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had encounters with police, or interactions with police, that I think were unnecessary.”

Spinks is advocating for a “reimagining” of public safety and law enforcement, he said, and supports reforms that focus on the scope and budget of law enforcement. He said he believes  in returning to “core policing functions” and confronting “systemic dysfunction and racial bias within the department.” Spinks is also calling for the implementation of a citizen review board with subpoena power to oversee the Richmond Police Department. 

Often, Spinks said, law enforcement training doesn’t give officers the tools they need to handle many of the situations they’re asked to. 

“Let’s say we already lived in a place without police,” Spinks said. “And let’s imagine what it would look like for police to exist, and what their roles and functions would be, and their relationship with the people that they’re policing.”

Spinks is also reimagining what the City government’s transparency should look like, he said. He wants to “keep the government accountable and responsive to people.” Citizens shouldn’t have to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to learn about the inner workings of Richmond, Spinks said. Instead, he wants every file to be freely accessible on websites. 

“People need to know why something’s not working, where the money’s going,” he said. “You need to do that, because it’s trust. So much of the City government has lost the trust of the people.”

Spinks has seen much change during his lifetime in Richmond — but he calls it growth, for the most part.

“I want to be a part of helping to guide that growth, and making sure that folks don’t get left behind,” Spinks said. “We should build a better city for everyone.”

Photo via Joseph S.H. Rogers/Facebook

Joseph S.H. Rogers, 7th District

Running for the city council seat in a district against a 12-year incumbent inherently involves “running on a platform of change,” said Joseph S. H. Rogers. While he’s a new candidate for the 7th district, which has been represented for the past 12 years by Cynthia Newbille, Rogers has old ties to Richmond.

As a historian and museum educator, Rogers tends to frame most things with historical context. One example is his family’s connection to Richmond — which is brief, but significant — through Rogers’ ancestor, James Apostle Fields, in the 19th century. “The routes that my family take through the city of Richmond is very interesting,” Rogers said.

Fields was an enslaved man that made his way to freedom from Hanover to Richmond in 1863, where he stayed with his brother John. After almost being captured into slavery again, Fields made his way to Roanoke, Virginia. That’s where Rogers was born, and where his family has been based since the 1860s. 

“I think that we have a tendency in the modern age to believe that everything is new,” Rogers said. “And that we are coming up with radical solutions, innovative and radical solutions to problems, when a lot of those solutions have already been applied. They’ve happened in the past, they have examples that we can refer to from the past. But also in some of those places where those solutions have not yet existed, it’s good to have a historical lens.”

Rogers moved to Richmond in 2014, and he’s been politically active in the city since he became a resident. He said he’s been an advocate for a Marcus Alert and a civilian review board, and part of a lobbying effort on City Hall with the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality since 2017 to “make those changes be taken seriously, as well,” he said. “And I realized that we’ve been, more or less, right. We’ve been right this entire time.”

His decision to run for city council in the 7th district stems from Rogers’ observations of “rallying calls” being made for political action after George Floyd’s death, he said. But his decision wasn’t “just about George Floyd.”

“Here in the City of Richmond, it was about statues, monuments, and Marcus-David Peters,” Rogers said. “And as I listened to everything that was happening, I realized that there was a lot of anger there. But there was a lot of love that was underlying these messages. There’s also just that need for people to feel heard, and for action to be taken. And I recognize that in myself — I had been at the forefront of those issues.”

Rogers’ desire to be part of that movement came from his struggle to bring issues of reform up to the City Council. He said the lack of response led him to think “maybe we need a different City Council.”

“[Or a] councilperson who will listen to the people, before the city is actually on fire,” Rogers said. 

Rogers said he wants to try to be “that voice that works with the people in the city who are voicing these concerns, before they get to a boiling point.”

In addition to calling for the removal of Confederate statues, one reform that Rogers’ is calling for is the defunding of the Richmond Police Department. His campaign is advocating for a citizen review board, and for the City to invest in building up services that will address the tasks that police are asked to do outside of solving crime “that’s stretched them thin,” like wellness checks or responding to mental health crises. Rogers wants to “divest from the policing model, invest in the community first model.”

“Defunding the police is not even talking about a decrease of civil servants,” Rogers said. “Just different civil servants involved in these areas.”

Rogers’ perspective as a historian is once again informing his ideas for policy. His understanding of the history of crime in the 1980s and ’90s, and the police response to that, has shaped his understanding of the current issues with police departments in the U.S.

“We were told that the way to address crime was to punish criminals,” Rogers said. “Ultimately, that led to increases in funding in police departments across the country. And it led to the demonizing of the ‘criminal,’ ultimately seeing them as other. The problem is that primarily the people who they were claiming are criminals were Black people. And so disproportionately Black people were affected by these policies.”

Being a Black man and a member of the Black community, Rogers said he recognises “that these are things that we need to uplift. These are people that we need to uplift.”

Being a member of Richmond’s LGBTQ community has also led him to recognize issues he plans to pursue while on City Council. 

“I identify as bisexual. That is part of my identity. So in the same way that I bring my being a Black man, also being a bisexual Black man is a part of that conversation as well,” Rogers said. “I also want to acknowledge [that] how I plan on helping the LGBTQ community isn’t just by being bi on the council.”

He said he has plans of “putting forward policy that addresses a wide state of things” that affect the LGBTQ community, such as the high rate of homelessness for the trans community. Richmond’s high rate of homelessness in the trans community and in the larger population is “no different” than other cities, Rogers said. 

Looking at Richmond’s past, Rogers said that the problem he’s seen isn’t that the city has changed, but that “we’ve seen the ways in which it hasn’t changed, and hasn’t done better.”

“It doesn’t look like change from the outside, perhaps because we live in this big world where everything else in the nation is changing so rapidly,” Rogers said. “But then, Richmond is still struggling in those same ways that we thought we were gonna be able to move away from.”

Top Photo via Tavarris Spinks/Facebook & Joseph S.H. Rogers/Facebook

In Richmond Mayor’s Race, Math Matters

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Richmond’s mayoral election is more like nine mini-elections, making the path to victory complicated for both incumbent Mayor Levar Stoney and his four challengers. Rich Meagher breaks it down for us.

As Richmond’s mayoral race heats up, it’s worth remembering that this is more than just an election. For incumbent Levar Stoney and his four challengers – Kim Gray, Justin Griffin, Tracey McLean, and Alexsis Rodgers – it’s also a math problem.

What many people don’t realize is that there is not one single mayoral election. Thanks to the city’s arcane election rules, there are actually nine mini-elections, one in each City Council district. To become Mayor, a candidate needs to get a plurality of votes (more than anyone else, not necessarily a majority) in five of the nine districts. If this does not happen, the top two candidates citywide move to a December runoff, where one of them should be able to win the five districts they need.

What’s with the weird election setup? Well, like everything in the former capital of the Confederacy, it’s all about race. 

Richmond has for a long time been a “majority-minority” city, where Blacks outnumber whites. But poverty rates and educational levels work to skew the electorate towards whites. When the current city government structure was set up two decades ago, some were concerned that a citywide election would be dominated by Richmond’s white power structure.

Map of Richmond, with 1970 annexation territory in dark green. By DIT_Richmond, Via Church Hill People’s News.

This was not an idle concern. Richmond actually did not hold elections for much of the 1970s because the federal Department of Justice (DOJ) shut them down. The 1970 annexation of majority-white south side districts from Chesterfield County was rightly interpreted by the DOJ as an attempt to dilute the power of Black voters and maintain white control of the city. The Supreme Court eventually allowed the annexation, but only so long as the city government was divided into districts that protected minority representation.

So when former Governor Doug Wilder and former Mayor Tom Bliley rewrote the city’s charter, they added the “5-of-9” rule to protect Black voters’ voice in determining who leads the city. 

But this rule has many unintended consequences for the 2020 election. Here’s a few:

  • Like the Electoral College nationally, the “5 of 9” rule eliminates the need to win the citywide popular vote. In 2016, Levar Stoney narrowly edged out Jack Berry in overall votes, winning 36 percent to Berry’s 34 percent. But it is entirely possible for a candidate to put together narrow wins in five districts, but lose big in the others, coming in second citywide to another candidate. The popular vote only really matters in determining which two candidates go to a runoff; but even in that runoff, the second place candidate citywide could still take 5 of 9 and become Mayor.
  • The 5 of 9 math creates all kinds of implications for campaign strategy. Rather than trying to win the race outright, the goal for many candidates might be to win a district or two and force a runoff. For example, I would probably handicap Alexsis Rodgers as currently running in third place to Stoney and Gray. But Rodgers could focus her efforts on stealing a district or two, denying the other two a victory; and then use her progressive base to squeak into second place – and the runoff.
  • A runoff election could reset the race entirely. Runoffs are notoriously low-turnout affairs, as voters exhausted by campaigns demonstrate waning interest into the winter. Dedicated core constituencies might matter much more than fundraising or incumbency. Mayor Stoney, who probably has the best shot at winning the November election outright, would surely like to avoid a runoff where his campaign’s advantages are considerably weakened.
  • Multiple candidates complicate the race as well. What if local attorney Justin Griffin and Council member Kim Gray end up competing for votes in the city’s more conservative West End, denying either a shot at the runoff? Griffin and Tracey McLean are probably running considerably behind the other three candidates, but they can still play spoiler by winning a district or at least denying a district to another candidate.
  • Runoffs not only add to election fatigue, but are expensive. (In 2016 the city’s registrar suggested that a runoff might cost the city $160,000.) There’s been a lot of buzz statewide about the possibility of implementing Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), which allows citizens to indicate their preferences among multiple candidates on a single ballot. In an RCV system, if no one wins a plurality, people’s second choices are used to automatically determine a winner without the need for a costly second election. Expect to hear more about RCV in Richmond, especially if we do go end up with a runoff this year.

Behind all of these permutations is, ironically, the question of legitimacy. The current system was put in place to counter a rigged history that favored white interests at the expense of minority rights. But in order to ensure a fully participatory system, we may end up with a leader who lacks a popular mandate. A mayor who does not command a majority – or, as I suggest above, might have been elected without even a plurality – could have trouble getting the city to support their policies.

Mayor Levar Stoney

Levar Stoney, who came out of a give-way race in 2016 with barely a third of the vote, certainly has been criticized; but the legitimacy concern has not dogged him as much as it might have seemed after his election. Still, his lack of a mandate might finally be catching up to him. If Stoney loses this election, it is likely because his advantages of incumbency, fundraising, and powerful friends in city and state government still could not generate enough support in the electorate. If he does lose, maybe his real problem was that he never had that many supporters to begin with.

Top Photo by STEPHEN POORE on Unsplash

Opinion: What Is the RPD Trying to Hide?

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“Instead of spending countless millions on a police force that treats their citizens like enemy combatants, the city should be funding social, economic, and mental health programs that actually prevent crime,” writes Landon Shroder.

Once again the Richmond Police Department (RPD) has attempted to mislead the people of Richmond. This time by reporting an incomplete picture on their monthly “use of force” statistics — conveniently omitting the bulk of police violence which took place against citizen protesters in June. Reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch (RTD) over the weekend, the Times-Dispatch analysis not only found the omissions, but also that use of force by the RPD against Black people was five times higher than against white people.

The RTD noted, “Officers reported using force against Black people in five times as many cases as they did against white people, according to a review of the reports that include 2018, 2019 and the first half of 2020.”

This should come as no surprise to anyone in Richmond, and certainly not to those who have been advocating for greater police accountability, oversight, and reform. The racist legacies of Richmond and Virginia’s law enforcement history are well known and well documented. Yet the intentional misreporting of statistics highlighting their own misconduct is a deliberate attempt at deception, and cuts to the core of the national reckoning we are having over law-enforcement. As City Councilman Dr. Michael Jones told RVA Mag in an interview last week, “I’ve always believed the police cannot police the police.”

Jones is correct. This is the job of the Mayor and Richmond City Council. 

The RPD eventually updated their statistics three days later, but only after the RTD inquired about the omissions. Naturally the RPD attempted to counter this narrative, with their spokesman, Gene Lepley, saying, “We don’t wait until it’s all complete to post [the statistics]. What’s posted on the first of the month, it’s a snapshot of where we are.” He added, “We’re way behind… It’s been an extraordinary time.”

Indeed, it has been an extraordinary time for two reasons: Firstly, our citizens were brutalized by a police force which clearly made confrontations with protestors personal. And secondly, the city’s elected leadership — with the exception of Councilpersons Jones and Stephanie Lynch — abdicated all responsibility in demanding accountability from local and state law enforcement agencies, which acted without any decent restraint. 

Protesters in June. Photo by Landon Shroder

Councilwoman Kim Gray was even quoted last week in an NBC 12 interview spinning blatant falsehoods about the community project at Marcus-David Peters (MDP) Circle. Reaching a new low, she demanded the police have a plan for “restoring peace” and to keep people from apparently “defecating on the sidewalk” and “having sex on cars.” Anyone who has spent any amount of time at MDP knows this narrative is absolute rubbish.

The only thing not extraordinary about this situation is just how obviously mediocre the RPD and the city’s elected leadership has been. Especially when stacked against the responsibility of providing for the safety and well-being of the city’s citizenry, which includes space to demonstrate without fear of state-sponsored violence. According to the crowd-sourced 2020 Police Brutality Monitor (a GitHub repository), Richmond ranks eighth nationally in the most reported incidents of police violence since May 26th — hardly a marker of the progressive city Richmond likes to position itself as.  

As a result, Mayor Levar Stoney has just announced a 24-member task force to “reimagine public safety.” But this feels like another political stall tactic, much like the ten-member Monument Ave Commission, which met for a year before presenting a list of recommendations that the city failed to action. It is equally naive to believe that a 24-person task force will be able to reach a consensus on a progressive road map that will be able to restore community trust and legitimacy to the RPD. Furthermore, a commission that is allowing police officers and the Commonwealth’s Attorney to sit as task force members undermines the very foundation of what Stoney wants to reimagine.

What should be obvious is that this task force is a politician’s strategy to run down the clock in the direction of the mayoral election in November. A veritable death by committee, and a cynical attempt for Stoney to have it both ways. On one hand, he allowed his police force to commit egregious acts of violence with no accountability, while on the other hand positioning himself as the champion of police reform. This should fool no one. 

Photo by Landon Shroder

The RPD is a police force that is woefully out of touch with the citizens they are sworn to protect. Going through three chiefs in one month proves that the culture of law enforcement in Richmond is no longer compatible with the needs of this city. Look no further than the over-policing and use of force against Black communities at a rate of five times that of their white counterparts. When this is juxtaposed against the RPD’s assault on civil society, protected freedoms, and a default setting of violence, not de-escalation, we remain a city in crisis, not repair. This is unacceptable.

It is time for Stoney to demand accountability from the RPD. City Council should lead an independent and transparent investigation which can hold the RPD accountable for the police violence committed in June. Waiting on a 24-member task force working against a 45-to-90-day mandate accomplishes none of the things needed to repair trust in this city’s law enforcement. Simultaneously, the mayor needs to take the proposals of Council members Jones and Lynch seriously and explore ideas for defunding the RPD’s 100 million budget for 2021.

Instead of spending countless millions on a police force that treats their citizens like enemy combatants, the city should be funding social, economic, and mental health programs that actually prevent crime. Defunding a militarized police force who believes they need an abundance of crowd suppression weaponry — like tear gas, rubber bullets, 40mm sponge grenades, and armored personnel carriers — is not only good politics, but what “reimagining” public safety actually looks like.  

Top photo by Nils Westergard

Exclusive: Q & A with City Councilman Dr. Michael Jones on Police Violence

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Dr. Michael Jones has submitted a bill to ban chokeholds, tear gas, and rubber bullets in Richmond. In this exclusive interview, he talks to RVA Mag about what needs to be done to reform the city’s police force.

Given the ongoing police violence over the past month, RVA Mag wanted to better understand who was calling the shots on the ground. We turned to Richmond City Councilman Dr. Michael Jones, who has been demanding an end to police violence. Jones and Councilwoman Stephanie Lynch have been seen at protests, giving them a ground-level perspective on recent events.

Since his election in 2016, the councilman has written policy and led council efforts to remove monuments and effect stronger gun control within Richmond. However, firm public positions regarding police accountability and defunding represent new priorities for Jones, especially in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, and our local unrest. During our conversation, we talked about his pending legislation to ban chokeholds, tear gas, and rubber bullets, and the need for an independent investigation into Richmond Police Department violence toward protesters, as well as the shooting of Marcus-David Peters, an unarmed Black man killed by RPD in 2018.

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

RVA Mag: Hello, Dr. Jones, thanks for making time to chat with us. We’re assuming you’re burning at full steam with everything happening on the street?

Jones: How many times are you really a part of history? This is some dope shit, it just is. Regardless of where you sit with the monuments — 130 years. That’s ridiculous, right? 

RVA Mag: During this historical moment, we’ve witnessed numerous incidents during which the RPD has used force against protesters. Many citizens have described Richmond as a city in crisis. Are we a city in crisis? 

Jones: I would say we are a city that’s always been in crisis. You find out what you’re made of when pressure is applied. That’s the essence of a crisis. Other cities are handling the same things we’re going through differently. Richmond has its own demons. 

RVA Mag: The reason “crisis” feels apt is both parties have no intersection of understanding. The crisis is that the demands of the protesters are being met by endless police violence. 

Jones: You are expecting a dog to do something other than bite or bark. Our policing in America is based on a warrior mentality. We have to have some forward thinking with regards to law enforcement. You can’t beat us and protect us simultaneously. I think people are wrestling with this understanding and finally seeing what the African American community has been saying for fucking decades. We didn’t create this public perception of how the police is viewed — they have to own it. You have just enough white Americans now saying “this is bull.” Because I’ll say this, if it was just brothers getting tear gassed, white America wouldn’t care. They just now started caring about Blacks being killed by the police. 

RVA Mag: Let’s drill into some specifics. Do you know why Chief Blackwell stepped down so quickly?

Jones: I don’t know the timeline. Do I think he was the best hire? All you had to do was listen to what came out of his mouth… “We’re going to take back the city.” Really? That’s not what we need. 

RVA Mag: The timeline for hiring Chief [Gerald] Smith was peculiar given the job ad for a new chief in the Times Dispatch — two days after they had already appointed someone. Was city council consulted on the search? 

Jones: We’re not consulted with most searches. Honestly, I don’t believe in trying to micromanage the administration. I think council is shirking its responsibility in exercising their oversight. 

RVA Mag: Do you have the type of relationship with the mayor in which he seeks your counsel? 

Jones: I am a friend of Levar Stoney…But I am a politician. My people didn’t put me in here to fight the mayor. I pride myself on building good relationships — it is what I do. 

RVA Mag: Do you feel a more robust month-long national search could have revealed a more suitable hire and more diverse applicant pool? 

Jones: With what I know about how chiefs are handled, they go to “chief-makers.” They will go and talk to other chiefs and get recommendations on who they think is ready to be a chief.

RVA Mag: We’ve posted numerous shocking videos this month of police violence — do you think it is fair to say the RPD has gone rogue? 

Jones: This is what police do. You are expecting something different from the police… America is seeing what African Americans have experienced forever. There is a warrior, militaristic mentality within law enforcement all throughout the country. 

Stephanie Lynch and I were leaving [one of the protests]. The crowd dispersed. We were a block and a half away from Grace — literally — going towards our cars, roughly right next to the Jefferson. Tear gas canisters launched our way. A block and a half. What the hell? The crowd is dispersed. Why a canister a block and a half away? That is the wrong policy. 

RVA Mag: Some cities throughout America have now taken a progressive approach to police reforms. Even last night in Norfolk, they held a sleep-in at city hall, which did not end in egregious police violence. How did we get it so wrong? 

Jones: Richmond is the former capital of the Confederacy and we have lived that out. [Richmond] will uphold the Virginia way, and power is in the business of staying in power. That law enforcement entity is there to ensure this. They didn’t get twisted until protesters went out on Monument Ave…Next thing we know folks got tear gassed at 7:30pm, a half-hour before curfew. 

RVA Mag: You’ve now submitted your bill to city council to get rid of chokeholds, flash bangs, tear gas, rubber bullets — what’s your level of confidence in getting this passed?

Jones: I’m worried, and it is problematic. This should be a 9-0 vote, but I am getting “what-about-isms” on council and elsewhere. I think it is anti-American and wrong… I know Steph and I are there. But I also know we have people who are pro-police on council. It should come out of committee with a recommendation to approve. I don’t trust that it will.

RVA Mag: Are you aware of any disciplinary proceedings against the RPD? The mayor put it out there and the police are spinning a narrative which has been contradicted by the videos we’ve all seen. Who runs the police department if there is no accountability or oversight? 

Jones: No — I wish. If they are telling me they’re not using rubber-bullets — that’s why I went out there. I called the mayor while I was out there and told him “they’re popping shit back here.” The mayor called [the RPD] and said they’re not… I think [RPD] are giving some bad information, and some people are spinning some things, which shouldn’t be spun. And if the mayor’s not getting accurate information then someone should be fired…Unfortunately it is their MO to do whatever they want and spin the narrative. 

RVA Mag: Are you confident that RPD is working within legal boundaries when they declare unlawful assembly? 

Jones: You’re expecting blood out of a turnip. You’re expecting an apple to be anything other than crunchy. I’ve heard an amendment [to anti-tear gas legislation] saying: “Let’s ban it except for a riot…” They’ll deem it a riot if they want to!

RVA Mag: Do you support the disengagement of law enforcement from Marcus-David Peters circle?

Jones: When I’m working through back channels, I’ve said, “If you guys stand down it will be different.” And so, there was a night that it was. Some calls were made… [But] if you come in riot gear, they’re going to walk up to you. Because it’s an act of intimidation.

RVA Mag: Do you have a sense of how much the city has spent fighting protesters? 

Jones: That’s one of my asks. When we get it, I’m going to make it public. Tell the people how much it is. I want to know about asset forfeiture. I want to know what y’all are doing with that money. Where’s it going when you get the money from these dope boys?

RVA Mag: What’s the general atmosphere at City Council? We’ve seen a month of strife, and outside of you and Councilwoman Lynch, the bench has been pretty quiet. 

Jones: [Councilpersons] are saying they want it to end. “Stop tearing up our city.” You’ve got that side saying that. It’s still Virginia. We’re still moderate and conservative.

RVA Mag: Do you have the sense that the majority of City Council feels that it’s the protesters who need to stand down more than the cops?

Jones: I would say we have a lot of pro-police persons on city council. They’re terrified by the word ‘defund.’

RVA Mag: You tweeted about it a month ago, but what’s your stance on defunding?

Jones: I’m putting in the paper… I’ve seen firsthand how they go in and beef up their budget. The mayor did a good job of stopping this practice because a budget would be introduced, the department heads wouldn’t like the amount that was budgeted, so they would come back to Council and get five votes for this [extra] thing. You have the chief of police coming around saying, “Look, we’ve got this model, predictive policing, it’s going to make our streets safer, we can do these things…” And I didn’t know any better, so I thought, “OK, this is how it’s done.”  But it’s like, “You guys are inflating things. Do you actually need it?”

RVA Mag: Do you have a sense of what the chain of command is when things are happening in real-time at protests? Is the mayor involved in real time? The police chief?

Jones: I know [they] have [their] frontline guys. I know there are some sergeants on-hand behind them, and I know they’re on the phone with someone in some other place. That place could be five blocks away, it could be at the top of a tower. I don’t know. But I know this: if I were the chief of police, I’m going to try and make some calls. It’s going to be all hands on deck. We’re going to treat tear gas like it’s deadly force. 

RVA Mag: The RPD press release on the morning of June 27 stated there were no chemical agents used on demonstrators on June 26, except for one demonstrator who was pepper sprayed. However, several people were suffering from chemical exposure. Do you support an independent investigation into instances when it seems like the police have not been transparent?

Jones: With you putting me on the record for it, I think we’re going to get to that. We have been talking about the need for an independent investigation into what’s going on. There have been so many conflicting stories… you tear-gassed innocent civilians! We need to have an in-depth conversation. We need to investigate. I need someone coming from outside. I’ve always believed the police cannot police the police.

RVA Mag: I know it is not your domain as a Councilman, but do you support the re-opening of the Marcus-David Peters case?

Jones: Here’s what I think — the police do a shitty job of ministering and serving the families of the deceased. You can go back to 2002. I talked to the family.

RVA Mag: The family of the deceased victim of former Chief Blackwell’s shooting?

Jones: Yes. How they were treated is abhorrent.

RVA Mag: Can you speak to that in detail?

Jones: Nope. This is out of respect to the family. This is real talk. They don’t want any press from this.

RVA Mag: We’ve seen the family’s memo. They did release a public memo stating that they’ve been lied to.

Jones: What’s in that memo does not get to the heart-wrenching detail. So, if [Peters’ sister] Princess Blanding and the family of Marcus-David Peters is going through anything like what this other family went through, even though it’s already been investigated, it should be done.

RVA Mag: Do you have any plan to encourage the Commonwealth’s Attorney to re-open the case?

Jones: I would be willing to have a conversation with her and say, “What is it going to take?” This family has a hole in their heart that may never be filled. And I’ll say this: I don’t think I handled it as well as I could have as a Black male on City Council.

RVA Mag: What do you wish you had done better?

Jones: I wish I would have been more vocal. I wish I had persisted more. I wish I had conversations with the family sooner… I learned a lot. I sent out a tweet [about the killing of Marcus-David Peters]: “Naked. Unarmed. Waiting…” Can I tell you that Chief [Durham] called me? It wasn’t a pleasant conversation.

RVA Mag: Thank you for taking the time to chat with us. Good luck with everything. 

*Landon Shroder contributed to this interview. Top Photo: Dr. Michael Jones, via Twitter