Good morning, RVA! It's 70 °F, and today looks slightly less steamy-hot than the last couple of days. Get out there and enjoy it (while staying hydrated)!
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 972↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 2↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 75↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 27, Henrico: 31, and Richmond: 17). Since this pandemic began, 270 people have died in the Richmond region. The last time the Commonwealth reported more than 972 cases was back on June 7th, one of just a handful of days ever with over 1,000 reported positive coronavirus cases. We'll see what today's numbers bring, but if Virginia starts reporting 1,000 cases per day on the regular I have to think the Governor will implement some changes. Maybe changes to Phase Three? Maybe regional changes? If you've got a second, tap through the Number of Cases by Date of Symptom Onset graphs filtered by region. Almost every region (except Central Virginia) has seen an increase in cases, but Eastern Virginia is really driving a lot of the change we're seeing in the statewide numbers. I'd love to know what's different in each of these regions and what we can learn from each other over the next couple of months.
The Commonwealth Times's Hannah Eason spent some time at last night's peaceful protest Downtown, and she's put together some pictures and videos from the event. This is the second night of peaceful protests that start at MLK Middle School and make their way to City Hall to hang out, demonstrate, and listen to speakers. Unlike a couple weeks back, police did not show up—Richmond Police or Virginia State Police—and gas everyone to get them to go home. Related and totally worth your tap: NPR talked to Regina Boone, a Richmond Free Press photographer, about her work capturing images from the last month and a half of protests.
Yesterday, I put together a bonus piece explaining the five pieces of police reform legislation currently sitting on various City Council agendas. I think that legislation, along with the Mayor's Task Force to Reimagine Public Safety, make up the first steps towards the actual police policy reform only made possible through the work of longtime advocates and, more recently, protestors. If you're too lazy to tap, on the docket we've got: Creating a civilian review board task force, creating a Marcus Alert work group, asking the Richmond Police Department to stop using chemical and other less-than lethal weapons, reporting on the RPD's use of funding for mental health services, and reporting on the status and use of various asset forfeiture special funds in the City's budget. The headlining item out of this small stack of papers is definitely ORD. 2020-155 which creates the CRB task force (and is the only true ordinance of the bunch). Councilmember Addison, chair of the Government Operations committee, says that committee will discuss ORD. 2020-155 on July 23rd, and you can submit public comment to the City Clerk at any point before July 21st at 10:00 AM (<cityclerksoffice@richmondgov.com data-preserve-html-node="true">). Also, in a public engagement move that makes my heart sing with gladness, Addison has put together a Google Doc of the ordinance that you can mark up however you like. I realize that the set of people who want to leave a public comment on an ordinance about civilian review boards and choose to do so by reading and marking up legal text through Google Docs is probably pretty small. BUT STILL, this is a great way to collect smart and specific feedback—but, of course, in no way should be the only means of feedback. Anyway, I think the text of this ordinance is a little too prescriptive in defining the goals and purview of Richmond's potential CRB, but it's a place to start.
I mentioned it in the legislation explainer piece, but the Richmond Accountability and Transparency Project has demanded that Mayor Stoney disband his Reimagining Public Safety Task Force before it even gets started. RTAP's press release calls the Mayor's task force "a distraction from the formation of a real independent civilian review board" and they "demand that Mayor Stoney disband his task force and defer to the one proposed in...ORD. 2020-155". First, RTAP are and have been the folks leading the conversation on creating a Civilian Review Board in Richmond. Without their work and expertise over the last several years, we wouldn't even be talking about CRBs today. Second, the makeup of the Mayor's task force has already been criticized for lacking Latinx voices, and, while I don't personally agree, I do think you can make an argument for not including any law enforcement at all on this particular task force. Third, unless I misunderstood entirely, the Mayor's task force is not intended to duplicate the work that will be done by the Task Force on the Establishment of a Civilian Review Board set up by ORD. 2020-155. The Mayor's task force has a broader charge of "reviewing the police department’s use of force policies, exploring an approach to public safety that uses a human services lens and prioritizing community healing and engagement." So the way I understood it—and I'm often extremely dense, so grain of salt—was that the Mayor's task force would deliver very high-level public safety recommendations within the next 45 days, one of which probably would be to "support the existing legislative process of creating a CRB as defined by ORD. 2020-155." Fourth, and finally, these are complex, emotional, and important conversations, and like most complex, emotional, and important conversations, folks can have legitimate reasons for standing on either side—or right in the dang middle!—of the issue. Is gathering 20+ smart folks, many of whom are dedicated to serving communities impacted by over-policing, in a room for a month and a half the best way to reimagine public safety? Would we have been better off to slow the process down and involve the folks actually impacted by over-policing? These are a good questions that I do not know the answer to.
Ali Rockett and Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch sat down with the new RPD Chief Gerald Smith and have a bunch of interesting quotes that you should go read. Chief Smith says "Can the department be effective with less funding? No, it cannot. ... The question is not defund the police; it's fund the change." I mean I get it, no department head is ever going to ask for less money in their budget. But, that said, if we change what we expect of the police in our communities, it may require less funding for them to be effective at it. Also, and maybe it's time to start endlessly repeating this again ahead of elections, but: Raising the real estate tax is the only way to meaningfully fund change in Richmond.
Tonight at 6:00 PM, the Richmond School Board will meet again and potentially vote on a school reopening plan. Your homework: Read Superintendent Kamras's email before the meeting. It's got descriptions of the five plans up for consideration, as well as some feedback he's gotten from families and teachers/staff both for and against reopening schools. It's nice to read through four sides of the same issue. To quote Kamras: "I share these quotes not to persuade anyone one way or the other. I share them only to demonstrate that there are very legitimate and very passionate feelings on all sides of the reopening debate."
Don't forget! The Henrico/Richmond City Health District hosts free COVID-19 testing events on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You'll find them today at the Broad Rock Community Center (4615 Ferguson Lane) and on Thursday at Tuckahoe Middle School (9000 Three Chopt Road). Make sure you give the hotline a ring before you head out (804.205.3501).
This morning's longread
Why Bus-Loving Rep. Ayanna Pressley Wants Transit to Be Free
A huge federal win for transit would be to just stop funding massive road-building projects. We've got enough roads. We're good.
The caucus’ first major win is a massive surface-transportation bill that passed the House yesterday. The Moving Forward Act is a $1.5 trillion infrastructure package aimed at shifting the country’s spending paradigm away from what Pressley calls “antiquated” policies that favor car dependence and highways and toward streets and cities that prioritize the safety of people biking, walking, and riding buses. “Investing in sustainable transportation options, like bikes and mass transit, is not only imperative to the health of our planet but to the equity of our communities,” says Representative Earl Blumenauer, Pressley’s Congressional Bike Caucus co-chair. “With this legislation, Congress has the opportunity to meaningfully invest in initiatives that serve people who have been consistently overlooked.”
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