Richmond’s homicide rate on pace to reach 37-year low

With less than one month to go, 2008 is on track to be the least-deadly year for Richmond since the early 1970s.

If 2008 ends with fewer than 51 slayings, it would be the lowest homicide count since at least 1971, the earliest calendar year for which authorities have figures.

Richmond police report 33 homicides so far in 2008. And though a year-to-date total of 33 violent deaths is nothing to celebrate, there has been real progress in a city that once earned the nickname "Murder City." Richmond led the nation in per capita homicides in 1994, with 160.

"Finally, within the last four to five years, we've made some real, honest-to-God progress," said Learned Barry, a veteran Richmond homicide prosecutor. "We're no longer the violent, murder-plagued community."

Should 2008 see another year-over-year decline in homicides, it would mark the fourth consecutive annual drop. This year also is shaping up to be at least the fourth straight year to see a decline in overall crime and violent crime in Richmond.

Prosecutors and police officials credit a stronger working relationship between themselves and their federal counterparts, along with aggressive targeting of violent offenders and a cultural change in the city's neighborhoods that favors stronger cooperation with police.

Officials also attribute the success to a community-oriented sector-policing strategy put in place by former Police Chief Rodney Monroe; a drastic increase in police manpower; and targeted efforts to curb blight in specific areas, which has changed the face of some troubled neighborhoods.

"We still have to give so much credit to the community. For so long in the community, people were just mum, afraid to say anything," said City Council member Delores L. McQuinn, who heads the council's public safety committee. "It's been so many things that have gotten us to this

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Law-enforcement officials say one reason homicides are down is because prosecutors are hammering violent drug dealers and other offenders by asking for tough sentences, keeping them locked up where they can't threaten the city's neighborhoods.

On the streets, people use the phrase "football numbers" to describe the trend, comparing long prison sentences doled out in Richmond courts to the high numbers on a football player's jersey, said city police Maj. John Venuti, who has supervised major crimes for more than five years.

"These people aren't joking on those football numbers," Venuti hears people say.

Richmond prosecutors have raised the average sentence for people convicted of selling the hardest drugs by more than 30 percent during the past year -- mostly by more consistently charging repeat offenders as such and by charging suspects as secondor third-time offenders when warranted.

Commonwealth's Attorney Michael N. Herring, who took office in 2006, ended his predecessor's practice of reducing felony cases of simple possession of a small amount of drugs to misdemeanor charges.

Also, Richmond authorities say they are working in lockstep with probation and parole officers, Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority police, and with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and with federal marshals and prosecutors, meeting regularly to compare notes.

The relationship with federal authorities is important. For example, if a Richmond detective knows who committed a homicide but doesn't have enough evidence to charge the killer with murder, he might work with the DEA to build a case that puts the suspect away on drug and gun charges with a tough federal sentence.

When police have a suspect, they try to pick him or her up quickly, even if it is only on something as minor as a simple drug-possession charge. As soon as a killer is in custody, witnesses become more cooperative because a threat of retaliation has been removed, officials say.

Venuti also says his detectives aggressively pursue investigations of nonfatal shootings, even when some victims refuse to cooperate.

All but five of this year's 33 homicide cases -- or 84.8 percent -- have been cleared by arrest. Investigators also have cleared 13 cold homicide cases this year, boosting their overall clearance rate to 124.2 percent.

Prosecutors have gotten convictions in 51 of the 54 murder cases that have reached trial or resulted in guilty pleas in 2008. That does not include cases in which charges were withdrawn.

A lot of the success has to do with better resources, officials say. In 1994, when the city reported 160 homicides, the city had only eight homicide detectives and three prosecutors who handled murder cases, Barry said. Now, Richmond has 19 detectives and 10 prosecutors working on homicides.

Joan L. Neff, a criminologist at the University of Richmond, said it is doubtful that a would-be killer would be deterred by high clearance or conviction rates. She also pointed out that a souring economy could contribute to financial frustrations that lead to more violence.

But by going after suspects who have a history of violence, she said, police likely are preventing further bloodshed.

"Nothing predicts the future like the past," Neff said.

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The total number of homicides reported by Richmond police does not give a complete picture of how deadly this year has been.

Not included in the 2008 total are:

• The strangling of a man by another man while the two were having sex in a parked car. The defendant was charged with murder but pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
• The Aug. 25 killing of Jermaine Saunders on Hunt Avenue. Authorities ruled the shooting as justifiable homicide because Saunders first drew a gun on Troy Lee Powell, and Powell shot him in self-defense.
• The fatal shooting by a 10-year-old boy of his 5-year-old niece, also in August. Herring classified the shooting as involuntary manslaughter and decided not to prosecute the boy, believing he is too young to understand a court proceeding. His mother is charged with felony child neglect.

Like other law-enforcement agencies, the Richmond Police Department follows federal Incident-Based Reporting standards when compiling its crime statistics for the FBI. Under those guidelines, murder is defined as the "willful [non-negligent] killing of one human being by another."

The guidelines identify exceptions, such as accidental deaths, suicides, traffic fatalities and justifiable homicides.

The motive for a majority of this year's slayings -- 10 of them -- is an argument. Four of the deaths are said to be drug-related, and police assigned five of the cases a motive of drug-related robberies.

Four of the victims were white, and the rest were black.

Ten of this year's victims were slain in public-housing communities, down from 13 during the same period last year.

But plenty of people in each of the city's public-housing projects fear for their safety and that of their children, said Rick Tatnall, executive director of Citizens Against Crime. Turf disagreements between residents of public-housing projects in the city's East End sometimes spill into Armstrong High School, he said.

About 9,100 people live in the city's public housing, and more than half of them are children, according to the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority's Web site.

Brothers Willie and Nathaniel Mayo were found dead in their apartment Oct. 3 in Hillside Court in South Richmond. Three weeks later, in the same complex, a junior at Meadowbrook High School dressed in a suit for homecoming weekend was shot in the chest, but he survived.

In September, a 10-year-old fourth-grader at Fairfield Elementary School was wounded when shot in the head, apparently by a stray bullet, at Whitcomb Court in the East End.

"There's a definite fear, particularly with mothers and youngsters, of them being out in the evening," Tatnall said.

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Last month, Washington-based CQ Press released its new annual rankings that show Richmond as the nation's 49th most dangerous city based on 2007 data -- an improvement from its ranking of 29th in 2006.

Some credit the citywide drop in crime to an infusion of resources in the past few years.

City Council President William J. Pantele said that when he joined the council in 2001, the police department had about 630 sworn officers. The number has grown to about 760.

"That came with significant cost, but the city administration and City Council worked together and recognized they needed to improve the profile of the city," Pantele said.

He said the city began funneling federal Community Development Block Grant funds into neighborhoods that needed it most, instead of sprinkling the money throughout the city. Over time, this improved neighborhoods such as Carver, Jackson Ward and Church Hill and attracted significant private investment in them.

Outgoing Mayor L. Douglas Wilder agrees that curbing blight has had an impact on the city's crime rate.

He also credits Monroe, whom he hired. Monroe earned the community's trust and forged strong relationships with city prosecutors and federal authorities, Wilder said. He since has left to become chief of police in Charlotte/Mecklenburg County, N.C.

Richmond's new police chief, Bryan T. Norwood, said the downward trend in crime has created a positive environment for the city.

"The challenges are to continue the successes," Norwood said. "People always want to see a furtherance of those successes, so that's a challenge -- to continue to make it better."

Alicia Rasin, founder of Citizens Against Crime, says city residents simply are fed up with the violence. She also says that much of the public trusts Venuti, who attends almost every candlelight vigil for a homicide victim.

At a recent vigil for Marijuana Monzelle "Pimp" Thompson, 31, who was killed in a drug-related shooting Nov. 6 in South Richmond, police detectives handed out fliers offering a reward for help in the case. After the service, someone came forward with a name of a possible suspect.

"You can't beat an army," Venuti says. "The army consists of everybody that we come into contact with each and every day. We cannot clear a murder case without witnesses -- people coming forward, giving us information."
Contact Reed Williams at (804) 649-6332 or .