FOIA Friday: New effort to shield UVA shooting report, Portsmouth’s severance payouts

File cabinets. (Getty)

One of the less noticed features of the Virginia Way is the long-running tendency of the commonwealth’s leaders to conduct their decision-making behind closed doors. While the Virginia Freedom of Information Act presumes all government business is by default public and requires officials to justify why exceptions should be made, too many Virginia leaders in practice take the opposite stance, acting as if records are by default private and the public must prove they should be handled otherwise.

In this feature, we aim to highlight the frequency with which officials around Virginia are resisting public access to records on issues large and small — and note instances when the release of information under FOIA gave the public insight into how government bodies are operating. 

Albemarle commonwealth’s attorney tries to block UVA shooting report’s release

In an ongoing legal dispute between a Charlottesville newspaper and the University of Virginia over the school’s refusal to release an investigative report about a 2022 shooting that left three student athletes dead and two others wounded, a judge this week granted a 10-day delay to consider Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley’s motion to block the document from being shared with the paper, victims’ families and public.

The Daily Progress sued UVA in February, after the university reversed its earlier promise to release the report, which the newspaper said cost the public $1.5 million to produce. Hingeley’s motion insists that “the pending criminal proceedings against accused murderer Christopher Darnell Jones Jr., would be jeopardized by releasing the report,” the Daily Progress reported. University president Jim Ryan testified in court that the school didn’t want to release the report out of concern for how it would impact the loved ones of the deceased students. On June 25, Judge Melvin Hughes opted to recess the trial for 10 days to give him time to mull over Hingeley’s request. The matter will continue in court next month. 

The Mercury’s efforts to track FOIA and other transparency cases in Virginia are indebted to the work of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, a nonprofit alliance dedicated to expanding access to government records, meetings and other state and local proceedings.

Portsmouth’s frequent severance payments

Amid a spate of top employee departures, documents gathered through an open records request show the city of Portsmouth has shelled out nearly $900,000 in severance payments to officials and leaders who left their roles with the city.

The Virginian-Pilot reported June 21 that Portsmouth “authorized $896,318 in severance payouts to 11 top city employees who have left employment with the city since 2019.” In two instances, officials “received severance twice after leaving city government, then returning.”

The locality’s policy allows the city manager to offer severance payouts to department heads and deputy city managers at their discretion, the paper said. The city manager, among other official roles, is appointed by the city council.

“It’s a political arena,” former City Manager Mimi Terry told the paper. Terry was replaced by Steven Carter, whom the council appointed as city manager in March, the fourth person to inhabit the role in four years. “So anytime you get a new council where the majority can make the determination of who comes and goes, you put that person’s career in limbo,” Terry said.

Video shows Chesterfield man in mental health crisis shot, killed by police

A video of a mentally ill Chesterfield man’s fatal encounter with police in July 2023, wherein he held a hatchet near his knees and did not comply with officers’ commands before being shot multiple times, shows him backing away from officers, appearing to contradict officers’ accounts that said he was advancing on them. 

Chesterfield Police had repeatedly declined requests from Richmond TV news station WTVR and the family of the deceased man, Charles Byers, to release the video. 

“For months, Byers’ parents have pushed for transparency surrounding the events leading up to their son’s death and were critical of the police department’s resistance to releasing the video,” WTVR reporter Tyler Layne wrote.  

The station reported on June 25 that it had obtained the video when it was posted online Monday in the federal court documents. The 45-second clip shows what happened when officers — who were responding to 911 calls from residents in the area who reported Byers had been trying to enter neighborhood homes — confronted the man, who was under a 72-hour involuntary psychiatric hold court order at the time of the encounter. 

First one and then a second officer arrived, drew their weapons, and ordered Byers to drop the hatchet. Byers then walked into the street from a yard where he’d been standing, “passing an officer in doing so,” Layne wrote, who added that “Byers then backed away from the officers throughout the rest of the exchange,” including when one of the officers tased him, to no effect. One of the officers then shot him five times, as he backed away. Byers then started running away, still holding the weapon, and an officer shot him twice more, in the back. Byers can be seen falling to the ground; he was later pronounced dead at the scene. 

Chesterfield Police had said in a statement on the day of the shooting that Byers “continued to advance on the officers, leaving them no choice but to shoot him.” Spokeswoman Liz Caroon this week “maintained that Byers did in fact advance on officers – just not at the time of the shooting,” Layne reported.

Have you experienced local or state officials denying or delaying your FOIA request? Tell us about it: info@virginiamercury.com

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