• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

RVA Mag

Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

Menu RVA Mag Logo
  • community
  • MUSIC
  • ART
  • EAT DRINK
  • GAYRVA
  • POLITICS
  • PHOTO
  • EVENTS
  • MAGAZINE
RVA Mag Logo
  • About
  • Contact
  • Contributors
  • Sponsors

Gassed, Stripped, & Thrown in the Hole

Henry Clayton Wickham | November 5, 2020

Topics: Angelo Long, coronavirus, COVID-19, Gilberto Dejesus, petitions, Richmond City Jail, Richmond City Justice Center, richmond sheriff, Richmond Sheriff's Department, Solitary Confinement

RCJC deputies gassed a man and left him naked in a cell for four days — but can anyone hold the Sheriff’s Office accountable?

There is only one Richmond City entity institution that wields a near-absolute power over people’s lives – only one tasked with clothing, feeding, caging, controlling, and providing medical care for hundreds of people, with no effective governmental oversight. This institution, the Richmond City Sheriff’s Office (RCSO), manages a jail that contains some 700 people. Whether through incompetence or by design, its COVID-19 response has been, effectively, to punish the people whose lives the law has placed in its hands. 

Gilberto Dejesus probably knows this better than anyone. After being tear-gassed and maced on Saturday, August 29th, deputies took him to the “drunk-tank,” ordered him to strip, and locked him in a isolation cell with no sleeping mat, running water, sink or toilet – only “a hole in the floor that smelled from past odors of other people” – according to his account. Someone had covered the window in his door with a mat, preventing him from seeing outside. His skin burned from the mace and tear-gas; his penis burned. He pressed the distress button in his cell repeatedly… No one came. 

Dejesus would spend four more days naked in a cell with no amenities and more than a week in isolation total. “They put me in a cell that they knew I was not supposed to be in,” Dejesus told RVA Mag. “I told one of the highest majors, Major Lawson. I been telling Major Aines, Internal Affairs. But nobody’s trying to talk to me, and every time I write a grievance, my grievance is going straight to the people that did it to me.”

Unchecked Power

Amid recent calls to defund the police and legislative efforts to increase police accountability in Virginia, no clear policy demands have materialized to address the lack of oversight on local sheriffs. The pressures and scrutiny brought on by recent COVID-19 outbreaks in jails, however, reveal just how much power we place in the hands of our sheriffs when we elect them every four years. 

Almost every jail in the Richmond area has experienced a significant outbreak since the pandemic began in March. The Chesterfield County Jail reached a 16 percent infection rate in June; 200 people in Henrico Jail tested positive for the coronavirus in July; RCJC and Pamunkey Regional Jail reported over 100 COVID-positive test results in September, and, in August, RVA Mag received unconfirmed reports that an RCJC inmate contracted COVID and died shortly after being released.

Since then, reported infection-rates in RCJC and Pamunkey have decreased dramatically — zero people in RCJC are now COVID-positive, according to an RCJC spokesperson — but incarcerated people and advocates say containing RCJC’s outbreak came with a high cost. Throughout the jail, people have faced lockdowns intended to combat COVID and address chronic understaffing. Many have been confined to small cells, alone or with a cellmate, 23 hours a day for weeks at a time.

These harsh quarantine measures — some of which may meet the UN critiera for torture — fit into a larger pattern. Reports from incarcerated people and advocates suggest the Richmond City Sheriff’s Office (RSCO) has failed to consistently implement low-risk safety procedures, such as releasing pretrial detainees or sanitizing commons spaces multiple times daily. Instead, RSCO has relied on harmful, even life-threatening, measures to reduce COVID’s spread and maintain order inside RCJC.

“They honestly tried to break me”

Gilberto Dejesus had two reasons for refusing to enter his cell on August 28th. First, he was having problems with his cellmate — he worried they would end up fighting — and, second, he had been moved to pod 5G from a COVID-positive pod and believed he was infectious. Rather than comply with deputies’ orders, Dejesus chose to remain outside his cell for 24 hours, preferring to be charged with misconduct. 

On Saturday evening, over a dozen people joined Dejesus in protest. The protesters refused to lock down and asked to speak with the jail’s management. They were concerned that deputies were transferring exposed individuals on to 5G, which was COVID-negative at the time. In response, the jail cut off the water and ventilation and tear-gassed the entire pod — over 50 people, including bystanders with asthma, bronchitis, and other pre-existing conditions — using gas grenades intended for outdoor use only. Some inmates received medical care shortly after the incident and were allowed to shower within 24 hours. For Dejesus, however, the real nightmare was yet to begin. 

“After a while,” said Dejesus, “they came back, cuffed me alone, and dragged me out of my cell. I couldn’t see nothing but only could remember the Captain Richardson telling me I was never going to get out of the hole for this incident. I sat in a room in medical burning for a while … I cried for so long.”

No nurse ever came to help him, Dejesus says. Instead, deputies allowed him to rinse his eyes with a bottle of Dasani water. He told them his penis burned and his hands were “on fire.” After this, he says, six deputies escorted him to a pod known as the ‘drunk tank’ and locked him in an isolation unit with no mattress, toilet, or sink. His face and eyes had started burning again; he begged for a shower. The deputies ignored, he says, his request and left.

It wasn’t until shift change at 7pm on Sunday, Dejesus says, that a deputy named Mutagh finally took him to the nurse. He told her he was “burning, couldn’t breathe, had shortness of breath and chest pains.” According to Dejesus, a deputy named Woods “cussed [Mutagh] out for taking me to shower, showing obvious reasons for me to believe he had orders to punish me excessively.” The following morning the same Deputy Woods denied him food at breakfast, Dejesus says. After that, Dejesus remained in the cell naked without a sleeping mat or other amenities for two more days, until Tuesday evening. When he emerged from solitary days later, he says, he had lost all his possessions and his $300 of commissary funds had mysteriously disappeared.

In the end, Dejesus’ concerns about spreading COVID to 5G seem to have been justified. While he was in the hole, RCJC employees tested him for COVID-19. Though he has since recovered, the results came back positive.

RCJC interior. Photo via CGL Companies

“Either you go in your cell or I’m going to put you in your cell”

Not long after Dejesus was released from solitary, RCJC deputies used chemical agents on inmates yet again. Angelo Long, an inmate on pod 6G, says deputies sprayed mace through the slot of his locked cell before taking him to the hole. Skin burning, he sat in isolation for two days before receiving medical attention or a shower, he says — “Two days with whatever that was sitting on my skin. I had these big black spots on my arm. You got to lick your lip because your lip dry or something, you can taste that spray on your lip.”

The trouble in 6G started around 4pm on September 16th, when deputies initiated an unexpected lockdown. Frustrated by this change, a group of inmates refused to enter their cells until jail staff provided an explanation for the order, according to a petition signed by six incarcerated people present. “Me personally, I got an open case right now,” said Emanual Crawford, one of the signatories. “I’m still fighting. Do you think I was able to reach out to my lawyer? No. Then you got some people who’s trying to bond out. Can you bond out? No. Give me a reason so I can understand what’s going on. Show me the routines so I can get on track and know how to call my peoples or call my fam.”

Instead of explaining the order, Crawford said, jail higher-ups sent in dozens of deputies in riot gear, some equipped with glass shields, mace canisters, or bean-bag guns. “Either you go in your cell or I’m going to put you in your cell,” he recalled Major Hunt, a high-ranking RCJC official, telling the inmates. According to Crawford, the pod did not learn the reason for the lockdown — to increase social distancing — until days later. 

Faced with RCJC’s show of force, Crawford and others began returning to their cells. But this didn’t save them from the pepper spray fumes which, Crawford says, spread quickly through the pod. (“Everybody coughing. You could hear coughs come from damn near like twenty cells.”) The water had been turned off in the pod, according to Crawford, so he was unable to drink water or wash his eyes out. Half the people who requested medical attention were seen shortly after the incident, according to Crawford. The other half, Crawford included, never received care.

“I was sick for a month and I didn’t get nothing for nothing,”

Angelo Long, the man put in solitary after the macing, says he was targeted by officers for criticizing the jail’s COVID-19 response. 

Back in July, Long says, he contracted coronavirus while cleaning COVID-positive pods without proper protective equipment: “This ain’t one of them COVID-positive pods, is it?” he recalled asking a deputy jokingly. “The sergeant looked at me and was like, ‘Yes, it actually is.’ I said, ‘Whoa, why the hell you bring us to clean these COVID-positive pods? We don’t have no biohazards suits, no nothing. Why they ain’t call somebody professional from the outside?’ ”

Three days after cleaning that first pod, Long started feeling sick. “All my food, like a honey bun or something, it’d smell like ammonia or bleach,” he said. “I just knew something weren’t right. Sometimes I go and I spit out blood.” Severe headaches, diarrhea, and cold-like symptoms shortly followed. According to Long, he cleaned at least four more pods before being diagnosed with COVID. His janitorial work, he believes, helped spread COVID-19 throughout the jail. “I was sick for a month and I didn’t get nothing for nothing,” Long said. “I got a Tylenol probably like a month later for my back pain that was I was still having.”

During the confrontation on September 16th, as he walked back to his cell, Long criticized the deputies for their irresponsibility. “You put me and a couple more people on those COVID-positive pods, and we cleaned those pods and brought that shit back and got everybody else sick,” he recalls telling them. 

After this exchange, he locked down in his cell. Five or ten minutes later, two deputies came to his cell to take him to “the hole.” While one deputy was speaking to him, the other sprayed a chemical agent, likely mace, through his cell’s tray slot, he says. “Immediately I started coughing. My eyes got real teary, I couldn’t breathe anymore, I had to get up out that room,” Long said. “My chest started hurting like hell. It burnt my skin.” Afterwards, Long says, even the first deputy objected, telling his co-worker that the macing had been “unnecessary.”

With the mace still burning his skin, Long was placed in solitary confinement. Two days went by before he got a shower; he spent a week in isolation but was never charged with any misconduct. Long, who has spent over year in pre-trial detention for a non-violent felony charge, says he feels his actions have turned him into target inside RCJC. “I guess because I’m always speaking up for the whole pod, or I stand up against them -– not even in a violent way, just speaking my mind -– it’s like I’m a threat,” said Long. “Seems like every time they come down on me now, they always come down on me to hurt me, man.”

“All I want now is accountability”

After being released from solitary, Gilberto Dejesus filed a grievance form. It cited the RCJC handbook’s “Conditions and Limitations on Punishment” and described how deputies denied him medical care and locked him naked in a cell for days. When he received a response to the grievance some days later, it came from the very same deputy who dragged him to the ‘drunk tank’ in the first place: Captain Richardson. In his reply, Richardson accused Dejesus of inciting a riot, refusing to lock in, refusing to stand down, and “threatening to go to the Sheriff’s home and harm her.” 

Otherwise, Dejesus says, his complaints have largely been ignored. 

Gilberto Dejesus’ mother, Claudette Archer, used to work in corrections at a juvenile facility. After her experience as a corrections officer, she said, she is not surprised by anything that happens in the system. “At the end of the day, they’re going to stick together. They’re going to cover their tracks,” she said. Still, Archer can also see things from the law enforcement perspective: “You have all these riots going on around the city, protesting and everything, and they’re tired,” she said. “But then you have some that’s just point-blank nasty and rude, and they enjoy mistreating the inmates. Some people just enjoy being brutal.”

All Dejesus wants now, he says, is accountability for the brutal treatment he endured. “I’m getting held accountable for what I’m doing, but are you?” said Dejesus, who is incarcerated for failing a drug test in violation of his parole. “I keep coming down here for minor mistakes, as far as my addiction. I don’t ever get no break, just because I’m a young black man with tattoos.”

According to Archer, trouble and racial profiling have plagued Dejesus ever since he was a boy, when officers classified his group of friends as a gang. “Chino has always looked out for people,” Archer said, using his nickname. “But I guess the officers see it as something different. They feel that he’s starting trouble. At the end of the day? You have to stand for something, or you’re gonna fall for anything.”

Top Photo via CGL Companies

The Richmond City Jail’s COVID-19 Response? “Torture.”

Henry Clayton Wickham | September 22, 2020

Topics: coronavirus, COVID-19, Incarcerated Lives Matter, Legal Aid Justice Center, petitions, Richmond City Justice Center, richmond sheriff, RVA26, Solitary Confinement, Theron Moseley

People incarcerated at Richmond City Justice Center say a recent tear-gassing by law enforcement endangered their lives.

On August 29th, Tobias Hill was sitting in his cell at the Richmond City Justice Center (RCJC) when the gas began to creep beneath the door. He didn’t know what was happening outside, but as the tear gas burned his eyes and burrowed into his lungs, he did reach one conclusion. He was going to die.

“I’m screaming, ‘Help! I’m ready to pass out, I’m ready to die! Can you please help?'” said Hill, who has multiple pre-existing conditions and mild claustrophobia. “Three of the deputies look at me and just kept walking. I tell them I have asthma, I can’t breathe, I have bronchitis. They just kept going. Didn’t pay me no attention.”

Hill is one of about fifty people who sheriff’s deputies gassed with weapons intended for outdoor use, after cutting off his ventilation and water. Accounts from eyewitnesses suggest the gassing was an act of excessive and unprovoked aggression, one designed to inflict maximum physical and emotional harm on Pod 5G’s inmate population, many of whom were trapped inside their cells.

“I think the guards feel like, because we in cells that mimic a cage, we supposed to be animals or something,” said Theron Moseley, who authored a petition and letter on behalf his fellow inmates in 5G. “We not. We human just like them. We got nieces, we got nephews, we got kids, we got mothers. We human.”

According to Hill, the gassing was the worst thing that has ever happened to him in his life. “I was stuck in this little-ass cell not knowing what the fuck was going on,” he said. “I’m traumatized, to be honest with you. I thought I was going to die.”

After a moment, he reconsiders: “I knew I was going to die.”

The first page of 5G’s petition, titled “Incarcerated Lives Matter!”

“Legitimate questions”

The conflict that would leave Tobias Hill locked in his cell, screaming for his life, began with a level-headed conversation, says Moseley. At around seven that evening, he and about ten others were asking about the coronavirus protocols at RCJC, where over 100 people (13.5 percent of the jail’s population) have recently tested positive for COVD-19.

The group had two primary concerns. First, they were upset about the handling of recent fever on the pod — the individual with the fever had been moved to quarantine, but his cellmate continued living among the general population, according to Moseley. And, second, they did not understand why people from pods with COVID cases were being transferred to their pod, 5G, which had zero reported cases. Such transfers had occurred multiple times in recent weeks, and at least one of the individuals transferred tested positive for COVID-19 ten days beforehand. He did not test negative until after his arrival in 5G, an anonymous source confirmed.

According to Moseley’s letter, in the lead-up to the gassing, protesters informed Sergeant Brown and Lt. Branch that they would lockdown “as soon as the administration start following proper quarantine protocols” by removing individuals coming from pods already exposed to COVID-19. When Branch and Brown were unable to address these concerns, the group demanded to speak with their superior, Major Hunt. Hunt did come to the pod, but he refused to discuss the jail’s COVID-19 protocols; instead, he ordered the protesters to lockdown in their cells and left. A little while later, a deputy came on the intercom and ordered people to stand by their cells. Everyone complied, according to Moseley.

Then the ventilation cut off.

“Man, we’re going to have to take this now because they don’t want to answer our questions, legitimate questions,” Moseley described thinking as they waited.

A slot beside the door to the sally port opened. A tear-gas grenade flew into the pod, spraying smoke. It was quickly followed by two more, according to Moseley; then Sheriff’s deputies in riot gear entered, and soon it was almost impossible to see.

“The entire pod was smoked out,” Moseley said. “It went from a casual conversation, us asking questions, to all chaos.”

RCJC interior. Photo via CGL Companies

“There was no reason for all that they did”

While Hill banged against the door of his cell, screaming for help, Moseley and the other protesters attempted to comply with the deputies’ orders and enter their cells. (“I’m standing in front of my cell, waving my hands with a couple of other guys that weren’t even protesting,” said Moseley.) When the door did not open, he ran to the second floor of the pod, searching for an open cell where he could evade the gas. Soon after, he found himself crammed into cell #26 with at least five other people. (One of the men in the cell had severe asthma and later went to medical to use an oxygen mask, multiple sources confirm.)

Once in the cell, the men found the water had been shut off. According to Moseley, he and others had to dip their t-shirts in the toilet in order to soothe their stinging eyes, and one person drank water out of the toilet to clear his airways. As if this weren’t enough, a deputy outside also sprayed mace beneath the door, according to both Moseley and Travis Brown, the man assigned to the cell.

“There was definitely no reason for them to come and shoot more gas in there or none of that,” said Brown, who was outside cleaning the pod during the conversation that led up to the gassing. “It wasn’t even no threat inside the jail. Usually when you use tear gas and mace, it’s a problem with a riot. There was no reason for all that they did.”

In the midst of the chaos, Moseley and Travis Brown attempted to leave cell #26. On stepping outside, however, they were greeted with a face full of pepper spray by Lieutenant Brown and Sergeant Branch, despite Travis Brown’s attempts to de-escalate the situation.

“As soon as I came out the cell, I tried to go down on my knees like you usually do in any situation in prison to let them know you’ve basically given up or let them know y’all got the authority,” he said. “I tried to go down on one knee but they still maced me anyway.”

“We had to sleep in tear gas and pepper spray”

What angers Tobias Hill even more than the gassing itself, he said, was the way staff abandoned inmates in its aftermath, leaving people gasping and burning in their cells for at least fifteen minutes. (“They literally left us,” he said. “Couldn’t see no one in sight.”) Once staff did return, Hill said the two guards walked right past him, ignoring his cries for help.

After a while, the guards let people access an open-air rec area in order to air out the pod. Though people were given clean sheets to sleep on that night, according to Moseley, they were not allowed to clean the vomit from their cells or take showers for 24 hours afterward. Hill said his wait to shower was even longer — three days — and that his skinned burned the entire time.

“Basically,” he said, “we had to sleep in tear gas and pepper spray.”

Label of the tear-gas grenade model used in the gassing. It was found on the ground afterward and provided by an anonymous source.

After the gassing, someone in 5G found a sticker on the floor with the name of the grenade used. According to a description provided by a retailer, the weapon used — a 5231 Triple Phaser CS Smoke Grenade — is “specifically for outdoor use.”

As many experts have pointed out in the wake of Black Lives Matter uprisings, tear gas is far more dangerous than most law enforcement agencies let on. Even when used outside at protests, chemical agents can have long-term health consequences for anyone in the vicinity, including individuals in nearby houses. In addition, deploying corrosive, inhalable chemicals can raise the risk of coronavirus spread, compromise the body’s resistance to infection, and increase the severity of mild infections. Even outdoors, tear gas and COVID are “a recipe for disaster,” medical researcher Sven Eric Jordt told NPR.

A punitive approach to quarantine

The gassing and medical neglect that Hill, Moseley, Brown, and others experienced are not isolated problems. They are consistent with numerous reports of disorganization, repression, and medical irresponsibility that incarcerated people, activists, and local lawyers have described taking place inside the jail in recent months. Before the outbreak, according to Yohance Whitaker, an organizer with Legal Aid Justice Center, the jail’s COVID-19 protocols were “almost nonexistent.” Now, RCJC’s primary strategy for containing the virus is to put infected or exposed individuals into solitary confinement, often for twenty-three or even twenty-four hours a day. “Just being in isolation is a horrible experience,” Whitaker said. “It’s taxing psychologically and emotionally and physically.”

Those who resist such measures have been subdued by force on multiple occasions. Most recently, on Pod 6G, people were pepper-sprayed for refusing to enter lockdown. The details of the macing incident, according to Julea Seliaviski of RVA26 — an activist in close communication with an eyewitness — are disturbingly similar to the gassing of 5g.

At around 4pm on September 16th, according to Seliaviski, a group of people on 6G refused to enter their cells because they wanted a superior officer to come answer questions about new lockdown procedures, which allowed people to leave their cells for only half the day. Rather than address protesters’ concerns, a team of officers in riot gear entered and sprayed mace from the second story balcony, spreading chemical agents throughout the pod. As in 5G, the water was cut off, according to Seliaviski. People could not wash the pepper spray off their skin until the water was turned on again, at around 10am the following morning.

When asked about recent uses of chemical agents, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Office, Stacey Bagby, told RVA Mag, “It is the policy of the Richmond City Sheriff’s Office to use the methods warranted for gaining compliance of resistant or aggressive inmates, especially during incidents when other inmates and/or staff may be at risk.”

Someone incarcerated in another pod in RCJC, who wished to remain anonymous, informed RVA Mag that the sheriff has implemented the same lockdown procedures used in 6G — half the pod out in the morning, half out in the afternoon. Initially, according to the source, the deputies told people the reduced mobility was a health precaution implemented because of an infection on the pod. Even after the infected individual was quarantined and the entire pod tested negative, however, the half-day lockdown was put back in place — this time for “security reasons,” the source was told by a guard.

“When we go in there at four today, we won’t be back out till four tomorrow,” said the source. “So that’s twenty-four hours straight that we haven’t talked to our families. And there’s a pandemic in the world right now.”

RVA Mag has also received unconfirmed reports that a man recently contracted COVID in RCJC and died. An anonymous source close to the matter said the deceased was about sixty, had pre-existing health conditions, and was a “poster kid” for COVID susceptibility. Though the individual was having difficulty with breathing and speaking, jail officers refused his lawyer’s complaints, according to the source, and later died in a hospital. On August 31st, Sheriff Irving told WTVR CBS 6 news that no one had died from COVID in the jail or while in RCJC custody, leaving open the possibility that someone may have died shortly after being released. According to the anonymous source, the deceased was a pre-trial detainee. This means, if these unconfirmed reports are true, he died without ever getting his day in court.

A spokesperson for the Richmond City Health District said the RCHD is not able to comment about reports of a recent death for confidentiality reasons.

Cameron Fobbs, one of the petition signatories, participating in BLM protest.

Seeking justice for “the voiceless”

A common theme among the people interviewed from 5g was sense of outrage and surprise at the degree of force levelled against them. Moseley, Fobbs, Brown, and Hill all insist the protesters did nothing to instigate violence. “We talk about our situation,” Moseley said, describing his pod’s relationship with RCJC deputies. “We don’t fight each other. We not doing all that. So I’m trying to figure out: If we give all that respect, why can’t we get at least some respect back?”

Rather than suppress resistance, the jail’s unwarranted aggression may have galvanized it. Moseley, Hill, Brown, and 32 others have all signed a petition accusing RCJC of excessive force and requesting legal representation in a lawsuit against the jail. The petition is entitled “Incarcerated Lives Matter!” and the letter, which describes the gassing as “torture,” is signed: “Theron T. Moseley and the Voiceless.”

“To say that the pain we all felt was excruciating will be an understatement,” the letter says. “The feeling of being helpless and not being able to control your breathing is terrifying. That pain was so unbearable at times that I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

Yasmin Sadrudin was on a call with her partner, Cameron Fobbs — one of the petition’s signatories — during part of the gassing. After the phone cut off, she didn’t hear back from him for 24 hours, and was left to imagine the worst. “It was infuriating because the jail kept acting like nothing happened, so then you’re not even given true information on the well being of someone you love,” Sadrudin said in a text. Fobbs was arrested and incarcerated in late July while protesting at Marcus David-Peters Circle; he was on probation for a prior offense at the time.

“His mistakes do not deserve the risk of catching a deadly disease by force,” she said. “All anyone is asking for is that human lives be valued.”

When asked to comment for this article, the Mayor’s Office referred RVA Mag to the Sheriff’s Office.

Top Photo via CGL Companies

Sheriff Candidate Carol Adams on Her Walk With God

David Streever | October 26, 2017

Topics: carol adams, politics, richmond sheriff, rva elections, rva politics

Local police sergeant Carol Adams is hoping that voters will write her name in on the ballot in the November 7 election for Richmond City Sheriff, a race she entered two weeks ago. The deadline to get on the ballot was June 13, nearly 4 months before the epiphany that led to Adams’s candidacy.

Supporters at Vagabond for a Meet and Greet

Adams, a devout Christian, talks about her candidacy as a call from God. “Saturday night, something got into me,” she says about the night of October 7th. “And Sunday, I go into work. I’m suppressing something, and I walk into a room and I see this book.”

It’s a cellphone photo of a coloring book for children, with a cover that reads “Meet Your Sheriff,” over a drawing of a black woman. “That was the moment,” she says, describing the realization that she could be the Sheriff. “My family has been asking me about it for years, but I never ran.”

She introduced herself to political supporters at a meet and greet held the Friday after her announcement and talked about the timing, invoking her faith. “This is just the way God wanted it to be. I have a wonderful life, I love my job, I have a nonprofit, but I felt I had to try this,” she said.

Adams might be best known for that nonprofit, the Carol Adams Foundation, started 10 years ago to help victims of domestic violence. It’s an issue that she’s personally familiar with. “My dad murdered my mom when I was 17 years old, and he went to jail. But when he left jail, he was still the same. He never changed.”

Helping inmates change is a key part of her platform, an issue-focused set of policies and ideas that doesn’t target any of the other candidates, who she won’t refer to as opponents. “It’s not about them,” she says. “It’s about what I can do to help people.”

The other candidates include two independents — Nicole Jackson, a former major in the Richmond Sheriff’s office, and local businessman Emmett J. Jafari — and Democrat Antoinette Irving. Irving is the most popular, having beat three-term incumbent C. T. Woody in the June 13 primary during her third run for office. Woody has faced criticism in recent years over inmate overdose deaths, and the revelation that he hired 10 family members to work in his office.

Adams is familiar with the issues around Woody, but doesn’t criticize him by name. “The safety and the security for the individuals there is number one,” she says. “Second is staff morale. People get hired or fired at will by the Sheriff right now. I’d create a transparent system for hiring and promotions, let people know that they can move up the ranks.”

Systems are one of her focuses both for HR concerns and for reentry, the third pillar of her platform. “We’d start preparing them on day one,” she says. “And not just the person in jail. We’d prepare everybody, the family, the community. People come out and have no support.” She envisions a program that builds on the already successful Recovering from Everyday Addictive Lifestyle (R.E.A.L.) program.

She’s confident that she can make the changes needed, citing her long experience in long enforcement. “I worked in the Sheriff’s office for seven years, and I worked as a police officer for 20 years. I’ve seen how the system works from two perspectives.”

Adams Speaking to Supporters

Some local clergy have endorsed her, and she cites widespread support in the city. A last-minute meet and greet held at Vagabond just a few days after her announcement drew nearly 40 supporters. “We need people to be at the polling places, we need people to knock on doors and make calls,” she told the small crowd packed into a downstairs room. The campaign doesn’t have a website yet, but supporters and the public can follow the official Facebook page to learn more or get involved. They are looking to find volunteers for the more than 60 polling places in the city.

Running for office required that Adams take early retirement, as city employees are barred from running for or holding office. She’s sad to leave the department, but has no regrets, even if she loses. “This is not about the win. This is a walk with God.”

“Either I’m going to be the Sheriff of Richmond or I’m going to go back to my nonprofit and run it 24 hours a day,” Adams says. “This is a win, win, win situation for everyone.”

*Photos by David Streever

sidebar

sidebar-alt

Copyright © 2021 · RVA Magazine on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Close

    Event Details

    Please fill out the form below to suggest an event to us. We will get back to you with further information.


    OR Free Event

    CONTACT: [email protected]