Transparency News, 6/1/2022
Wednesday
June 1, 2022
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state & local news stories
"It is shockingly offensive to consider that just because a person is a police officer, that person cannot be a ‘victim’ of a crime."
A vote to replace fired Portsmouth City Manager Angel Jones with the city’s former police chief failed Tuesday evening when a council member broke ranks from a council alliance. Council members met in closed session to discuss Jones’ replacement Tuesday before publicly voting in the city council’s chambers, which was filled with dozens of residents. After one council member’s failed attempt to postpone the vote, the council ultimately rejected council member Mark Whitaker’s motion to appoint ex-Police Chief Tonya Chapman as the new city manager, thanks to council member Chris Woodard’s decision to break from Whitaker’s camp and cast the tie-breaking vote against Chapman. Some in the audience — who weren’t in favor of Whitaker’s push to hire Chapman — voiced their criticism of council members believed to be in Whitaker’s camp, forcing Glover to call for decorum several times amid boos and insults like “sellout” and “get rid of them.” Woodard was on the receiving end of the criticism too, until it became clear that he wasn’t voting with Whitaker. Council member Paul Battle, who voted with Whitaker to hire Chapman, told the audience he wouldn’t tolerate disrespect and that his vote to appoint Chapman was for the betterment of the city. Mayor Shannon Glover said he had only learned of the candidate’s name during the closed session discussion. Glover said he contacted Whitaker last week to ask about the meeting, but Whitaker didn’t call him back.
The Virginian-Pilot
Newly released video captures the moment in 2016 when Roanoke County police officers fatally shot 18-year-old Kionte Desean Spencer as he turned toward them holding a broken BB gun. In March, Virginia’s General Assembly repealed a 2021 state law that made old police investigative files open to the public. But before the repeal takes effect next month, The Roanoke Rambler requested video, 911 calls and police reports related to the Spencer case. All told, Roanoke County charged The Rambler more than $1,000 for the records. In the records, the county redacted the names and blurred the faces of the officers involved in the shooting, citing a section of state code that prohibits law enforcement from identifying the victims of crime. Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, said law enforcement officers were not intended to be characterized as victims under state laws dealing with access to public records. It is shockingly offensive to consider that just because a person is a police officer, that person cannot be a ‘victim’ of a crime,” Rachel Lower, a senior assistant county attorney wrote in a March letter to The Rambler.
Roanoke Rambler
editorials & columns
"It creates friction between two foundational American institutions: a fair, independent judiciary, and the Bill of Rights’ guarantee of the people’s right to peacefully assemble and 'petition government for a redress of grievances.'"
It was a relatively minor news story when abortion rights demonstrators gathered outside the Fairfax County home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to protest the leaked draft majority opinion he wrote that would end federal legal protections for abortions. But then the governor moved to quell any further such protests, setting off a conflict over free speech and its limits. He co-wrote a letter with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) imploring Attorney General Merrick Garland to have the Justice Department to enforce 18 U.S. Code § 1507 and prosecute future protesters outside justices’ homes in their states. The statute, which dates to 1950, defines “pickets or parades” or other demonstrations near a building or residence occupied by a judge intended to interfere with or impede the administration of justice as obstruction of justice. Violations are punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and a year in prison. Many assert that enforcing the law is not optional, a point Hogan and Youngkin made in their appeal to Garland. But it creates friction between two foundational American institutions: a fair, independent judiciary, and the Bill of Rights’ guarantee of the people’s right to peacefully assemble and “petition government for a redress of grievances.” Each side has important perspectives to consider.
Mark Rozell, The Washington Post
