April 20 22, 2017 issue

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Meet Personality Sandee Smith

Prince’s death 1 year later B2

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Richmond Free Press © 2017 Paradigm Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

VOL. 26 NO. 16

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

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c e l e b rat ing o u r 2 5 t h A nniv e rsar y

April 20-22, 2017

A federal case U.S. Dept. of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to investigate unequal discipline in Richmond Public Schools By Holly Rodriguez

He said steps are in the works regarding Mosby and other areas where violence has become more of a problem. For example, he said Richmond Police Chief Alfred Durham is considering creating a police unit that would focus solely on public housing communities. The mayor also said that he, Chief Durham and officials at Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, which manages the city’s six major public housing communities, was discussing other possible steps. There is the possibility of issuing photo IDs to public housing residents to show they belong there and requiring them to register and place decals in their vehicles so police can easily determine which cars belong to residents, he said. Mayor Stoney said it’s commonplace for private apartment complexes to require renters to register their vehicles and have an identification decal. However, he would not say whether such propos-

The pursuit of justice for two Richmond Public Schools students has resulted in a federal investigation of the school district’s disparity in disciplinary procedures for AfricanAmerican students and students with disabilities. According to the Virginia Department of Education data for the 2014-2015 school year, African-American students with disabilities attending RPS were 12.91 times more likely than white students without disabilities to be put on shortterm suspension. The Legal Aid Justice Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia announced on Monday that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights would investigate claims outlined in a 28-page complaint filed by the organizations in August 2016. The Richmond Branch NAACP also is a partner in the complaint. “We had two students interested in moving forward with the investigation and our hope is that we will get to the root cause of this,” said Leslie C. Mehta, legal director of the Virginia ACLU. “We are hoping this is a step toward eradicating the schoolto-prison pipeline and ensuring equal access to education for all students.” State Education Department data indicates that during the 2014-15 school year, AfricanAmerican students made up about 76 percent of the total student population in Richmond Public Schools, but were issued 93 percent of short-term suspensions under 10 days, 98

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Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press

Virginia Commonwealth University students hold a candlelight vigil last Friday for 20-year-old electrical engineering student Samuel Kwarteng, a senior from Alexandria who was shot and killed Thursday, April 13, during an altercation on the front porch of a home in the 1200 block of West Moore Street in the Carver neighborhood.

Mayor Stoney, city officials mulling options to reduce crime in public housing By Jeremy M. Lazarus

The Mosby Court public housing community — particularly the area around Redd and Accommodation streets — could be considered the epicenter of Richmond’s spike in homicides. Of the 13 people slain in Richmond since February, six of the deaths occurred in that section of Mosby Court or in apartments adjacent to the public housing community. Some residents and community advocates are calling it a crisis that warrants a strong response from City Hall, such as having police block the streets to create a kind of gated entry into the community. “That would send a strong message that killings will not be tolerated,” said Art Burton, founder and director of the nonprofit Kinfolk Community that works to improve life in Mosby. “We’re talking about a 30year culture of drugs and violence. And this would be very disruptive to business as usual.” However, Mayor Levar M. Stoney does not sup-

Regina H. Boone/Richmond Free Press

Mayor Stoney

port such an extreme measure. “I don’t believe in locking down a community,” he said last week during an interview at the Richmond Free Press. “If we treat people that way, we’ll get a reciprocal response.” Short of that, he said, “We’re going to use every tool in the toolbox to keep neighborhoods safe.”

Crusade votes to back city charter change to fix school buildings

City officials plan to dedicate the new Maggie L. Walker statue Downtown on July 15, the 153rd birthday of the Richmond businesswoman and great. Richmond Mayor Levar M. Stoney confirmed the date on a visit to the Free Press last week. He said that was the most “appropriate” date to unveil the long-awaited statue at the new memorial plaza at Broad and Adams streets.

pay more attention to a problem that is not going away. The city’s oldest and largest AfricanAmerican political group voted unanimously Tuesday night to support political strategist Paul Goldman’s campaign to put a charter initiative on the November ballot to do just that. If approved by voters and the General Assembly, the proposal that Mr. Goldman has drafted would give the mayor six months to “formally present to the City Council a fully funded plan to modernize the city’s K-12 educational infrastructure consistent with national standards or inform City Council that such a plan is not feasible.” The mayor’s plan, according to the

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By Jeremy M. Lazarus

In his first budget, Richmond Mayor Levar M. Stoney essentially sidelined the issue of modernizing the aging and increas-

ingly obsolete school buildings that most city public school students attend. The Richmond Crusade for Voters now wants to send a message to the mayor and Richmond City Council that they need to

Maggie Walker statue to be dedicated on her birthday July 15 By Jeremy M. Lazarus

Sen. Warner on Trump and Russia: ‘We have to find out the truth’ By Warren Fiske Special to the Richmond Free Press Regina H. Boone/Richmond Free Press

In her Easter bonnet Laniyah Massenburg shows off her custom-made balloon bonnet crafted at the annual Easter on Parade celebration last Sunday on Monument Avenue. The 3-year-old was right at home with the bright flowers and painted eggs adorning her bonnet. Please see more photos, B3.

U.S. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is in a high-profile position this spring as the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The committee began hearings in January and, after a short break, plans to resume them after the Senate’s spring recess ends Saturday.

Although most of the hearings have been behind closed doors, the panel has publicly interviewed six national security experts and academics and is expected to interview several key current and former aides to President Trump. The Richmond Free Press posed questions to Sen. Warner about the importance of the probe, its progress and whether the national attention he is drawing might encourage him to make a Please turn to A4

Sen. Warner


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