A vice mayor is the latest of 14 Black people targeted with criminal charges in Virginia after speaking out about racism following the removal of a Confederate monument. A local news station was with Portsmouth Vice Mayor Lisa Lucas-Burke Monday when she was served two summons initiated by—get this—a resident of the city. Thomas Dubois accused Lucas-Burke of violating a city code when she twice called for Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene to be fired, WAVY-TV reported. Several community members had also pushed for Greene to resign or be fired, but Greene may be bound by an outdated city charter preventing city council members from influencing the city manager’s hiring or firing decisions.
The document not only prevents city council members from interfering in the "removal" or "employment" of any employee the city manager hires, but it attaches punishments of a class three misdemeanor and removal from office. “I don’t understand their purpose behind that because I was only expressing my opinion to a group of citizens who were out there for a rally,” Lucas-Burke told WAVY.
Police, apparently feeling sentimentally attached to the Confederate monument, also pursued felony charges against Black leaders including State Sen. Louise Lucas, the vice mayor’s mother, public defenders, and members of the local NAACP chapter and school board. Lucas was charged with conspiracy to commit a felony and injury to a monument in excess of $1,000, WAVY reported.
“People are upset. They don’t know why our Black leaders are being singled out for trying to stand against something that is considered to be hatred,” Lucas-Burke said.
Portsmouth NAACP President James Boyd told The Virginian-Pilot in February that Portsmouth has long been riddled with both systemic racism that isn't visible and "blatant examples" of it. Many criticize Portsmouth City Manager Lydia Pettis Patton, the first Black woman appointed to the role, of aiding in the oppression of her own people. Several community members are also asking her to resign after she allegedly forced Tonya Chapman, the city's first Black woman to serve as police chief, to resign last April. Chapman had been on the job for three years and expressed a dedication to fighting systemic racism within the police department, the former chief said in a letter The Virginian-Pilot obtained. That “racial strife” became "blatantly apparent" when Stephen Rankin, a white former cop, was convicted of shooting William Chapman II, a Black man of no relation to the ex-chief, in 2016.
“My dismissal was especially heart wrenching because most of you know we had an extremely close professional relationship. She was viewed as a mentor and a mother figure to me,” Chapman wrote in her letter about Pettis Patton. The city manager has yet to explain her decision to force out the chief.
“We believe there was collusion from council members,” Boyd told The Virginian-Pilot. “You can’t call it coincidence that out of nowhere the state’s only (female) African-American police chief is fired after she makes claims that there were racist undertones at her department.”
Months later, when George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody shook the nation and prompted protests and demands for restructuring at several police departments, the Portsmouth Police Department's response was to establish a community advisory committee to share concerns with the chief, local news station WTKR reported. "We're advocating for a separate independent citizen oversight committee with subpoena authority that has absolutely nothing to do with the Portsmouth Police Department,” Boyd said.
"We cannot have a situation where we have police officers supervising themselves and then choosing who's on that committee," he added.
Chief Greene told WTKR simply: “The community needs to trust their chief.”
Daniel Nichanian, founding editor of The Appeal, tweeted: “The police in Portsmouth charged a black state Senator, public defenders, & local NAACP leader over protests. You know that now. Now the black vice-mayor faces criminal charges... for calling on the police chief’s resignation. The terrorizing continues.”
