Majority of board expresses support for civilian review board

A four-and-a-half-hour Henrico Board of Supervisors’ public meeting Monday night produced raw emotion, thoughtful discourse, pointed commentary, detailed (and speculative) math and – seemingly – consensus about the possible formation of a civilian review board for the county’s division of police.

After supervisors heard from several county officials and 30 citizens (most in person, some virtually), three of the board’s five members – Tyrone Nelson (Varina District), Frank Thornton (Fairfield) and Tommy Branin (Three Chopt) – publicly expressed support for the concept of a CRB. The other two (Brookland’s Dan Schmitt and Tuckahoe’s Pat O’Bannon) opted not to make their views public yet. A majority vote is all that’s needed to establish a review board.

The board reached an unofficial consensus to direct county staffers to study several bills related to CRBs that are currently making their way through the General Assembly and to prepare possible next steps based upon the actions state legislators take during their ongoing special session.

The meeting took place on the same day as Henrico introduced its new police chief, Eric English, who also will become its first Black chief when he takes over Sept. 14. English comes from Harrisonburg, where in two years, he put in place a number of new initiatives, committees and policies and demonstrated a willingness to seek out community review and input.

Supervisors plan to meet with him in the coming weeks to gauge his thoughts about a review board, though they said ultimately the decision is one they’ll make themselves.

As with the other publicized methods by which the board has solicited citizen input about the topic – a dedicated email address and a public forum last week hosted by Schmitt – a majority of Monday’s speakers (22) expressed support for a review board. Four others opposed, while the other four didn’t express a position.

Nelson, who proposed the idea in early June following the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd and in response to concerns he’s heard from constituents during his time in office, said that while he believes Henrico Police is a good-to-great agency, there are still many in the community who have had negative experiences with officers. Creation of the review board, he said, would help provide transparency and the sense that all citizens can expect to be treated fairly.

“We have a good police department, and I continuously say that,” he said. “This is not personal. I don’t think it makes me or anybody else a bad person because we’re asking questions about the people who should be protecting us.

“The numbers [of police misconduct cases] may be low, but they are real people out there with real stories. I don’t see anything wrong with taking transparency to the next level.”

Last year, the four-member Henrico Police Internal Affairs unit investigated 122 internal and external complaints about possible officer misconduct and determined that 30 were “sustained,” meaning that the allegations were supported by sufficient evidence. Seventy-eight of the cases were exonerated, meaning no wrongdoing was found.

Henrico Police Lt. Col. Linda Toney told supervisors that Henrico officers had responded to more than 157,000 calls for service and separately had issued more than 49,000 summonses. Figuring in thousands of other various public engagements each year, Schmitt estimated that police could have as many as 400,000 interactions annually.

But those numbers lack perspective, Nelson and several speakers said, because they are not broken out by magisterial district, race and ethnicity or other subcategories that could provide more context.

“I’m certain that we are recording [that data] anyway, we’re just not doing anything with it,” Nelson said. If that information had been shared previously, he said, “maybe we wouldn’t be here today.”

He added that many minorities don’t report cases of police misconduct because they don’t believe any discipline will occur.

'Oh my god, what did I do?'
The evening’s most powerful moments came when speaker Eric Harris, a Black man, addressed the board, recounting the day he was pulled over on Parham Road and turned into the county’s government center. At the time, he was working as a probation officers and state criminal investigator with pretrial services in Richmond.

As he moved to get his wallet for the officer, he turned and saw a gun pointed at his head.

“The first thing I said that came out of my head was, ‘Oh my god, what did I do?’” he recalled.

Once the officer realized he was in law enforcement too, his tone changed. But for Harris, the damage was done. He had arrived in Richmond from Detroit to attend Virginia Union University, where he earned a criminal justice degree. Subsequently he had started a nonprofit to work with disadvantaged children and began coaching football, both endeavors for which he earned local and national acclaim.

But in that moment when he was facing down the barrel of a police gun, Harris said, “a part of me died.”

“I did what I was supposed to do [in life]. I was told to go to school, I was told to get a degree. . [But] no matter what in the eyes of some, I’m a ni---r. To have a gun put to your head for nothing else than being Black?

“I respect you but I have to tell you. . . you don’t know this,” he told supervisors while slapping his chest to emphasize his pain. “Everywhere you go [as a Black man], people are looking at you. You gotta be better. Black kids have to be great – we can’t be good, they have to be GREAT [in order to avoid stereotypes.] I did everything right. This board needs to happen. It needs to happen.”

Among other speakers who advocated for the creation of a CRB were:

• Kenny Ragland, the executive director of the Henrico Police Athletic League and retired Henrico Police official, who told supervisors that “law enforcement agencies are not capable of policing themselves;”

• Atasha Christian, a licensed professional counselor, who described a national study showing that many young black males have developed trauma from repeated interactions with law enforcement;

• Monica Hutchinson, who described being pulled over by police who drew their weapons on her because she had a disabled sticker in her window and told supervisors “I shouldn’t have to pray that I have a Black officer come approach my car if I am pulled over;”

• Tuckahoe District resident Toni Schmiegelow, who said, “There’s no question that people of color do not trust the police. There’s a total lack of transparency.”

• Glen Allen resident Bruce Richardson who praised the police in general – his son participated in Henrico PAL through his high school graduation this spring – but said external review is critical. “"All [officers] want to do is go home at night,” he said. “But the reciprocal of that is we want our kids to come home at night.”

'A Monday morning quarterback review panel'
Former Henrico Assistant Police Chief Jim Fitzgerald told the board that creating a CRB “just to say you have a board certainly will not help this county.”

He explained that the division – one of only 18 in the nation to hold TRI-ARC accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies – already must meet more than 450 rigorous standards in order to maintain its elite status and that its officials take their roles seriously. He cited a policy that requires any officer with three preliminary or formal complaints of any type within a 6-month period to be entered into the Internal Affairs review system for evaluation.

In one case he recalled, an officer had been accused of being rude to citizens. When officials brought him in for a discussion, they learned that his mother was dying of cancer.

“We were able to get this officer help,” Fitzgerald said.

Speaker Mark Crean suggested that a CRB was unnecessary because of the existing oversight and worried that its creation could cause officers to hesitate to do their jobs the way they otherwise would.

“I think the civilian review board is just going to be another avenue for a Monday morning quarterback review panel,” he said.

Lifelong Henrico resident Tricia Bahen told supervisors that the creation of a CRB should not be a political or emotional act, and she suggested that they should take racial considerations out of the decision lest they make it too emotionally charged.

That didn’t sit well with Nelson or Thornton (both of whom are Black), who later pushed back at the thoughts.

“I heard someone say, ‘Take race out’ – you can’t take race out,” Thornton said. “We live in a racialized society.”

Said Nelson: “There is a certain level of privilege, of white privilege, when somebody stands up and tells me to take race out of the conversation and not get emotional.

“The struggle is there is a lack of trust with Black and brown people when it comes to police.”

One speaker said he’d learned much from listening to others during the meeting, adding that he didn’t oppose a CRB but did oppose the concept of it holding any power to subpoena or fire officers.

Thomas Crotts, a Dinwiddie resident and former Henrico and Richmond police officer who said he also had worked in courts, corrections and taught college criminal justice courses, said that the effort to create a CRB was misguided.

“Henrico is professional and has been for some time,” he said, urging supervisors not “to fix something that is not broken.

Citizens, he said, must comply with officers if pulled over or approached.

“On the side of the road is not the place to get in a debate with a police officer,” he said. “If you do not comply with those instructions, then the situation becomes another issue – only because you did not comply. Is it too much to ask to comply and then there is an issue, complain later?”

But speaker Greta Randolph later challenged that belief.

“What happens when you comply, and you still don’t make it home?” she asked.

Addressing Bahen’s comment, Randolph said that Blacks don’t have the option to take the emotion of race out of the topic.

“When our kids leave home, they don’t get the option to not be Black,” she said.

Only 7% of the division’s officers are Black – a percentage that is too low, Thornton said.

“We will do better,” he said.