In hopes of providing alternatives to incarceration, Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones and other officials traveled here last week to tour a former Flav-O-Rich dairy where drug offenders are treated and put to work. Richmond is looking at ways to prevent the planned new Richmond City Jail from becoming a warehouse for nonviolent criminals.

Bryan T. Norwood entered an awkward political environment when he started as Richmond’s police chief just over a year ago. Norwood, the former police chief in Bridgeport, Conn., had been selected by outgoing Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder, and he started as chief the day before the election of a new mayor, Dwight C. Jones, who had called for the appointment to be left to the new administration.

Prosecutor says there’s no evidence of “criminal or corrupt” action in the nearly $1 million purchase of 40 Ford Crown Victorias in 2007 that violated procurement rules.

A jury trial starts tomorrow for three Richmond police officers charged with obstruction of justice. Authorities have said that off-duty officer Ian McCloskey beat up a man in a bar in Shockoe Bottom on Jan. 22, 2008, and that responding officers Floyd T. Campbell II and William A. House tried to cover it up. McCloskey is accused of threatening a witness.

Richmond officials violated procurement rules when the city bought 40 police cars for nearly $1 million in 2007 without allowing vendors to compete for the business, according to a city auditor’s investigation.

Richmond’s top prosecutor will not pursue a case against a woman who was arrested after filming police as they performed crowd control in Shockoe Bottom last year. Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael N. Herring said yesterday that he is withdrawing a charge of impeding traffic against Joanne Jefferson because the statute is meant as a traffic-safety law, not as a measure to enforce crowd control.

Richmond prosecutors have ruled that police officers were justified in shooting a man who police say charged at them with a large knife. Prosecutors said yesterday that the three Richmond officers and one Virginia Commonwealth University officer who were involved in the April 22 shooting of Nathan Randolph acted lawfully and will not be prosecuted.

DNA testing of material found in the old case files of Mary Jane Burton, a deceased state forensic serologist, may clear a sixth man of a rape. Victor Anthony Burnette, 56, of Richmond served eight years for a 1979 rape that he always said he did not commit. He said he first sought DNA testing when he was released from prison in 1987 but was told all the evidence had been destroyed.