New U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions will be in town Wednesday working on one of his top priorities — fighting violent crime.
According to the Department of Justice, Sessions will “speak with federal, state and local law enforcement about efforts to combat violent crime and restore public safety.”
Not invited were Brian J. Moran, Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s secretary of public safety and homeland security, and Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring, both Democrats. Herring’s office, the state government’s law firm, works closely with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
Moran, head of agencies that include the Virginia State Police and the Department of Corrections, said Tuesday there was a slight increase in crime last year, but, “with all due respect for the (U.S. attorney general), public safety does not need to be restored in Virginia. We do a damn good job already.”
Herring’s office said it was surprised the attorney general was not contacted.
The meeting will be at 10 a.m. at the SunTrust Building at 919 E. Main St., Richmond.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, said invitations for the event went to police chiefs, sheriffs and top federal agency special agents in central Virginia. Sessions’ remarks “will build on his recent actions highlighting the disturbing rise in violent crime in our nation,” Carr said.
Criminologist William V. Pelfrey, an associate professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, said Tuesday that “crime, particularly violent crime, in Virginia, and nationally, has experienced a downward trend of historic proportions.”
He said there are exceptions elsewhere, such as in St. Louis, Washington and Chicago — cities that are experiencing rising violent crime. However, “these increases tend to be concentrated in dense urban areas with serious economic and police/community relations issues.”
“Richmond police ... work extremely hard to maintain a high degree of police/citizen cooperation,” Pelfrey said. “Police who work hard to treat citizens with respect may not appreciate being told that public safety needs to be restored. Instead, public safety could be enhanced or further developed.”
Alfred Durham, Richmond’s chief of police, is among those set to attend. Violent crime in Richmond dropped steadily for 12 years to 2015, which was a 45-year low. However, last year violent crime was up 17 percent in the city and homicides have shown a recent uptick.
The number of killings peaked in Richmond in 1994 at 160, and then dropped steeply in 1998. Since 2008 the annual toll has been generally in the 30s and 40s. But homicides spiked last year to 61 slayings — the most in a decade. There have been 14 killings in the city so far this year, putting the city on the same pace as last year.
Others set to attend the meeting on Wednesday are Col. W. Steven Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police; and Lt. Colonel Gary Settle, director of the state police’s bureau of criminal investigation.
According to statewide figures from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, in 2015, Virginia’s violent crime rate ranked 48th out of the 50 states in the U.S. Only Maine and Vermont reported violent crime rates lower than Virginia’s.
Virginia’s number of violent crimes decreased by 28 percent from 2006 to 2015, and the rate of violent crimes — per 100,000 population — decreased by 34 percent. The drops occurred during a decade when the state’s population grew by almost 10 percent from 7.7 million in 2006 to 8.4 million in 2015.
Last month, the creation of the U.S. Department of Justice Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety was announced in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump.
The department describes the task force as “central to the attorney general’s commitment to combating illegal immigration and violent crime, such as drug trafficking, gang violence and gun crimes, and to restoring public safety to all of the nation’s communities.”
“The president issued an executive order, and I feel strongly about it,” said Sessions in a news release.
“Turning back our nation’s recent rise in violent crime is a top priority for the Department of Justice, and it requires decisive action from our federal prosecutors,” he said. “I’m urging each of them to continue working closely with their counterparts at all levels, and to use every tool we have to put violent offenders behind bars and keep our citizens safe.”
Carr said Sessions’ remarks on Wednesday “will build on his recent actions highlighting the disturbing rise in violent crime in our nation.” He said Sessions’ opening remarks will be public but a following discussion with officials will be closed to allow the participants to convey “law-enforcement sensitive information.”
Michael Kelly, a Herring spokesman, said he thought the attorney general’s office would have been invited. “We’ve worked extremely well with (the Department of Justice) on gun crimes, heroin traffickers and more,” Kelly said.
He said the attorney general’s office “has been working throughout Virginia to reduce violent crime, prevent gun crime, and address the heroin and opioid epidemic.”
Two weeks ago a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operation led to dozens of arrests in the Hampton Roads area. The ATF worked with Norfolk police, the Virginia State Police and prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Virginia Attorney General’s Office, and the Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.
