Richmond Free Press July 15-17, 2021 edition

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Richmond Free Press © 2021 Paradigm Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

VOL. 30 NO. 29

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

www.richmondfreepress.com

School fight

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Can you spell ‘historic?’ B2

JULY 15-17, 2021

Students, parents and community members plead for speedy replacement of George Wythe High School regardless of who is in charge. Two-hour public hearing reveals deplorable rodent, structural problems.

By Jeremy M. Lazarus and Ronald E. Carrington

Richmond can build and open by September 2024 a new George Wythe High School and two other school buildings that also are top priorities if City Hall would just begin cooperating with the School Board instead of throwing up roadblocks. That is the view of School Board Vice Chair Jonathan Young, 4th District, a key leader of a five-member School Board majority that took back control Please turn to A4

Regina H. Boone/Richmond Free Press

Petersburg jury awards $300,000 to woman injured by officer Free Press wire report

A Petersburg jury has awarded $300,000 in damages to a Black woman who sued a police officer for excessive force and false arrest after she was forced face-down onto the pavement during a traffic stop. The case began on Feb. 12, 2015, when Monica Cromartie, then 54, was stopped for speeding. Ms. Cromartie said she got out of her car to protest the traffic stop, but obeyed a command from Petersburg Police Officer Brian Lee Billings when he told her to get back in the car. According to Ms. Cromartie, after Officer Billings asked her to roll down her car window, she told him to leave her alone as she complained to someone on her cell phone about the traffic stop. Seconds later, she said, he pulled her out of her car, forced her onto the ground and placed his weight on her back, injuring her forehead, lip, teeth, right eyebrow and both knees before she was handcuffed and put in leg shackles. Most of the encounter was captured by police body camera and introduced during two trials. Officer Billings said during a deposition that he removed Ms. Cromartie from the car to arrest her for obstruction of justice. In 2017, a jury awarded Ms. Cromartie $23,499 in damages for state law claims after finding that Officer Billings assaulted, falsely imprisoned and maliciously prosecuted her on a charge of obstruction of justice. However, the trial judge granted a defense motion that the jury would not be allowed to decide Ms. Cromartie’s claims that Officer Billings violated her Fourth Amendment rights against excessive force and false

arrest, and for an illegal search of her car and her purse, finding that the officer was entitled to immunity on those claims. Ms. Cromartie appealed, and in 2020, the Virginia Supreme Court reversed the trial judge’s ruling and found that the officer was liable on all of the claims in Ms. Cromartie’s lawsuit.

Charlottesville removes Confederate statues that sparked bloodshed

On Monday, a jury in Petersburg Circuit Court awarded Ms. Cromartie $300,000 in punitive and compensatory damages. “She was very glad that after carrying this matter for six years of her life that she finally got the verdict on the constitutional Please turn to A4

Free Press wire report

Ms. Cromartie

Cheers erupted last Saturday as a Confederate statue that towered for nearly a century over downtown Charlottesville was carted away by truck from the place where it had become a flashpoint for racist protests and deadly violence. It was a day of palpable joy and immense relief for scores of residents and visitors who lined neighboring streets to watch the larger-than-life figure of slaveholder and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee as it was hoisted from its pedestal and taken — at least for now — to storage. The statue’s removal came more than five years after racial justice activists had renewed a push to take down the monument, an initiative that drew the attention of white supremacists, neoNazis and other racist groups, culminating in the violent and deadly “Unite the Right” rally in 2017. “I’m ecstatic that we’re here now. It’s sad that it’s taken so much to get us to this point. But this is an incredible day,” said Don Gathers, a local Black activist who long advocated for the statue’s removal. Work to remove the Lee statue, and one of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson shortly after, proceeded peacefully and without interruption. It was a project held up for years by a long, winding legal fight coupled with changes in a state law that protected war memorials. Also removed Saturday was a statue depicting Sacagawea, and explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, which has Please turn to A4

Barbers strike at Fort Lee and Fort Pickett after attempts to cut pay By Jeremy M. Lazarus

Military personnel at Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia are struggling to get haircuts. In an apparent first for the Armed Forces, the unionized cadre of mostly Black barbers who keep personnel groomed at the two Virginia posts have gone on strike. Their claim: The contractor hired two years ago to operate the on-base barbershops is trying to reduce their pay $1,000 a month. The barbers began the strike July 4 after Missouri-based Sheffield Barbers LLC made a final offer that fell far short of the barbers’ pay request.

The barbers do 200 to 250 haircuts a week and in past contracts have been paid 55 percent of the cost of a haircut, according to their union. The barbers walked out of the shops after the company made a final contract offer of a 47 percent share, said Kenneth C. “K.C.” Doggette, business agent for Local 572 of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, which represents the barbers and other employees at Fort Lee. He said that Sheffield this year boosted the cost of a basic haircut from $12.15 to $13.25. Under previous contracts, the increase Please turn to A4

Sandra Sellars/Richmond Free Press

Fun with Dad Rashe Peoples Jr., 6, takes on the challenge of climbing on playground equipment with the knowledge his dad, Rashe Peoples, has his back. The father and son enjoyed time together last Saturday at Abner Clay Park in Jackson Ward.

Misinformation, distrust keep Black vaccination rates low By Reginald Stuart

In the world of sports, winning the game in the homestretch sometimes seems the toughest part of the challenge. That certainly is the case with getting people immunized against the deadly COVID-19 virus, public health and government officials are finding. Civic and religious leaders are stumped as well, with all collectively pondering why it has been so hard to get some people to realize there is a growing risk of death from the virus, or one of its aggressive variants, absent twin doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson inoculation. It seems like a risk young Black and brown people are willing to take, much to the dismay of their older relatives, friends and mentors. “I think it is probably a distrust of government and authority figures in general,” said Richmond native Jonathan D. Davis, an advertising design teacher at the state Juvenile Justice Department’s Yvonne B. Miller High School and president of the Richmond Crusade for Voters. “If they are not out here getting vaccinated, we could have a whole type of (pandemic) wave in the fall,” he said, echoing the fears expressed by others of a repeat of 2020’s COVID-19

skepticism about the COVID-19 vaccines. Some people talk about government health tests and offer unofficial assertions that the vaccines are some form of “cocktail of unsafe drugs” or unknown medicines and raise red flags about whether the vaccine could impact pregnancy. Ms. Maben said she and her friends got vaccinated before taking Please turn to A4 Mr. Davis

Dr. Harris

Ms. Maben

shut down and gruesome death toll. It’s not just older adults like Mr. Davis, 60, who are voicing concerns about those reluctant to get COVID-19 shots. Anxiety also is being expressed by younger people, like 22-year-old Kayla Maben, a Norfolk State University nursing student from Goochland. “People are not educating themselves enough about the vaccine,” Ms. Maben said. “They are just believing the word on the street,” where unscientific speculation runs rampant both by word of mouth and via the internet, she said. Some websites revisit and enhance the tragic Tuskegee syphilis experiment conducted from 1932 to 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention targeting uneducated Black men in laying out their

Free COVID-19 testing, vaccines Free community testing for COVID-19 continues. The Richmond and Henrico County health districts are offering testing at the following locations: • Monday, July 19,1 to 2 p.m., Southwood Resource Center, 1742 Clarkson Road, #A, South Richmond. • Wednesday, July 21, 11 a.m. to noon, Mosby Resource Center, 1536 Coalter St., East End. Appointments are not necessary, but can be made by calling the Richmond and Henrico COVID-19 Hotline at (804) 205-3501 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, or by registering online at https://bit.ly/RHHDCOVID.

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