Who’s Got Your Vote: Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney

Rich Meagher:

Hey, RVA, you’ve listened to us. Now we want to meet you. The RVA’s Got Issues team and I will be hosting our Summer Community Meetup on June 10th at Vasen Brewing. Whether you’ve been with us since day one, or just discovered the podcast, we’d love to meet and discuss the topics that matter most to your community and the future of rva. Again, that’s June 10th at Vasen Brewing. Grab your free ticket at RVAs got issues.vpm.org now on with the show. Welcome to RVAs Got Issues, the show that brings you the people and ideas that are reshaping Greater Richmond. I’m your host, rich Meagher. It’s an election year in Virginia. What else is new? Here in RVA we’re voting for the office of the Commonwealth’s attorney, like the district attorneys who’ve seen on tv, the CA is the city’s prosecutor, and they have a huge impact on our local criminal justice system. Two candidates are competing in a June Democratic primary election. Whoever wins will likely take office. So this June vote is crucial. With early voting already underway, we’ll hear from both candidates about their vision. For the Office of Commonwealth’s attorney and the future of Justice in Richmond, first up we talk to Colette McEachin. She’s the current Commonwealth’s attorney running for reelection.

Colette, welcome.

Colette McEachin:

Good afternoon. Thanks for having me here.

Rich Meagher:

So Colette, you’ve been the Commonwealth attorney about six years. Yes. You’ve been in Richmond for a long time. You were here when Richmond was the national murder Capital. Yes, I was. What was it like working in criminal Justice at that time?

Colette McEachin:

Overwhelming. Mm. It was overwhelming. Yeah. So I came to Richmond in 1988, got married in 89, started having kids with my husband, Donald, and, um, went from working with a small private practice firm to the Commonwealth Attorney’s office. And so I was right there in Richmond at the beginning of the crack epidemic and seeing the impact that that had on communities in Richmond, especially on women and children, on whole neighborhoods, being devastated. And I’m so glad that that 162 homicide rate is now down to 56 last year, and that prosecution has been able to, uh, positively impact the lives of a lot of people.

Rich Meagher:

So you, you’re talking about numbers, but like how are you bringing that experience forward into your work today?

Colette McEachin:

We have realized as a society that just prosecuting those people who are drug users and drug dealers is not a long-term effective solution. And so that has informed, who gets prosecuted, how they get prosecuted nowadays, so that we try to send people to the drug courts that didn’t even exist back then. Mm-hmm. If there’s a mental health issue and someone is codependent and using substances to deal with their mental health issue, then we have a behavioral health docket. And so Richmond has created a lot of programs. My office has supported those programs and, um, has created new programs to address a lot of those issues.

Rich Meagher:

So you are now the Commonwealth’s attorney. I don’t think a lot of people really understand what that is. They understand like it’s the city’s prosecutor, it’s like a district attorney, but what does the Commonwealths attorney do?

Colette McEachin:

So we are the voice of the victim. A defendant has rights under the United States Constitution. The Constitution doesn’t say anything about victims or witnesses. And so it’s my office’s duty to be the voice of the victim and to make sure that the victim’s injury, harm, trauma is, uh, recognized by the court.

Rich Meagher:

And you do that through prosecution, right? Yes. So deciding what to do about offenses when they happen. Is that Right?

Colette McEachin:

Yes. Yes.

Rich Meagher:

Now, I think you’ve said something like 13,000 cases a year with only 40 or so attorneys in your, in Your staff.

Colette McEachin:

Yeah. They have a heavy load.

Rich Meagher:

Yes. Yeah. So you, you can’t cover everything. You’ve got a certain amount of discretion about what to prosecute, what not. How do you decide to go forward in a case? Like what’s your guide for for doing that?

Colette McEachin:

The 40 attorneys, 41 attorneys that are in my office are trained as prosecutors to assess each case individually based on what happened to the victim, what the facts are, what the law is to a certain extent, what the defendant’s status is. So we look at all of that, and then we decide on a spectrum of results, what is the most appropriate, fair, just equitable result. So it’s all very much a daily individualized analysis.

Rich Meagher:

Now you mentioned individualized. Right. There’s been some individual cases, kinda high profile that have generated, I’d say, frustrations among people in the city in the past. So hitting the five year anniversary of, of the, the Black Lives Matter protests in Richmond, famous episode during those protests where a peaceful protestors getting tear gassed by, by police officers. Mm-hmm. It seemed like no prosecution came out of your office. And I think people were really frustrated by that. Why was that decision made?

Colette McEachin:

So I made that decision after spending hours and hours reviewing multiple views of body-worn camera from scores of police officers viewing, uh, aerial footage from police planes that were flying overhead, listening to the police radio and what was happening. And then, because I knew that some people would not be happy with my decision not to prosecute, um, any police officers, I wrote a report. And so to the extent that anyone in Richmond wants to see why I did something, you can go on rva.gov, which is the city website, and there’s a Commonwealth Attorney’s page. And if you look on that page, I have published at least 10 different reports about why I might made a decision to not prosecute so that they can judge for themselves. All right. I don’t like it, but it makes sense.

Rich Meagher:

So, I mean, a similar kind of thing happening in a different area. Right. Which is, uh, last year’s elections, Tavares Floyd was running for city council, allegedly made up a lot of the information about himself and, and putting on legal forms

Colette McEachin:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

Right? I think there was a call like, somebody needs to do something, somebody needs to prosecute, somebody needs to punish. And there were calls for you to do that, but you decided not to. Again, what’s the decision making process there?

Colette McEachin:

So that would be incorrect. Okay. I did, I did not decide not to. Okay. I just didn’t say whether an investigation was happening. I am really hesitant about putting any information out about an investigation because people remember that my office said, I’m investigating you. They don’t remember if there was no criminal wrongdoing found.

Rich Meagher:

So was there an investigation?

Colette McEachin:

I will say this. The Richmond community will know the results of any investigation that takes place.

Rich Meagher:

Now, you mentioned this idea of restorative justice. That does seem to be a, a theme of, of this year’s election. Uh, like, you know, we wanna restore not just punish and that, that sounds great, but it can be a little more complicated in practice. So you created this, uh, community justice reform unit

Colette McEachin:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

Where for certain offenses right. The offenders and the victims can meet, right? Yes. Find a resolution. Can you give us an example of how this works?

Colette McEachin:

Yeah, absolutely. So what is restorative justice? For those who don’t know? Restorative justice is an alternative to the traditional criminal justice process. The traditional criminal justice process is very focused on the offender. And what restorative justice has recognized is that a lot of victims feel completely disjointed and unsupported by that system because they never get to interact directly with the person who harmed them. They never get to address that person in court. Right? And so restorative justice, um, recalibrates that relationship. It takes the attorneys out of it, it takes the judges out of it, it takes the police officers out of it. So once you are charged, my office will ask whether or not the wants to undergo the restorative justice process. If the victim is willing to, then we will provide that information to the defense counsel. If they both are willing to do it, then we will put the case on pause.

We will bring in a facilitator. The facilitator will facilitate that conferencing between the victim and the offender. They will work out what they want the solution to be. I want you to clean the graffiti off the building. I want an apology in writing. I want this much restitution by this date, uh, whatever the victim wants, and whatever the defendant feels he can actually do. And then they are given a certain amount of time to complete that bargain. And if it’s completed, then the victim comes back to us, says, I’m satisfied. I feel like I got what I needed to, and we will dismiss the charge. And that’s good for the defendant because since the commonwealth, the charge, it can then be expunged from their record.

Rich Meagher:

So you’ve been disappointed by the lack of use of this, right? Because you say you have to get the, the victims particularly and then the offenders mm-hmm. To agree mm-hmm. So why aren’t more people doing this process?

Colette McEachin:

At this point? We’re handling, uh, relatively low level misdemeanors, trespass, property damage, vandalism, things like that. We are not gonna do a case of domestic violence where the power imbalance is not equitable. Um, we’re not gonna do a case where there’s a substantial physical injury. So it’s finding the right cases, it’s getting both parties on board. But I will tell you that when both parties are on board, out of the 20 something cases that we’ve done, they’ve all been successful.

Rich Meagher:

So this program does put a bit of a burden on the victim to make a decision. Right. To participate. Um, what about other alternatives to the standard prosecutorial process? Sometimes called diversion mm-hmm. Programs, right? Mm-hmm. Mental health treatment. Mm-hmm . Substance abuse, vocational training, probation sensing, all that kind of stuff. Do, do you feel like these kinds of diversion programs are effective?

Colette McEachin:

Yes. Absolutely. Um, so Richmond was one of the first cities in the state to have a drug court.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm.

Colette McEachin:

Drug courts are now called recovery courts, and we created a mental health docket. And because of the success of the mental health docket in general district court, there’s now a behavioral health docket in circuit court in general district court. And in juvenile and domestic relations court, 25% of the juveniles who are arrested with a firearm will be shot before their 18th birthday. Oof. 25% of juveniles who are arrested with a firearm in their possession or use a firearm will be shot or shoot someone by their 18th birthday. That is a horrifying statistic. And so we are very intentional to your alternatives about supporting the court services unit in JDR courthouses and really focusing our attention on generally those young men who are 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and have a firearm and, um, are using that firearm.

Rich Meagher:

So that sounds a bit more focused on the youths themselves. Mm-hmm. And all of these efforts, while they sound great, the numbers are pretty small for the dockets of these courts, right. Compared to the 13,000 cases that you’re handling every year, your opponent argues that the scale isn’t there, that we should do more to be more people focused. What do you say to that critique? Is, is there more that you could be doing to send more people to these courts, expand these Dockets?

Colette McEachin:

So since my opponent was only a prosecutor for 10 months, he really doesn’t have any idea about how to be a prosecutor or what we do. And for Tom Barbour to be so dismissive of the 100 people who have gone through drug court or a behavioral health docket or restorative justice and say, oh, that’s not enough. So what? Get rid of those programs don’t provide that, that resource don’t provide that recovery. All of those programs are voluntary, and there are many times when a defendant is not ready to face his or her demons. And so for those people who are not ready to go into that program, we have the traditional criminal justice system, which is why and how you end up with 13,000 cases. And what Tom also doesn’t realize is that they’re not enough clinicians and therapists and all that. So it’s, it’s a much bigger picture than Tom Barber is even aware of.

Rich Meagher:

Okay. Switching gears here. Our, our podcast has been reporting about the effects of federal policies on, on Richmond. Uh, we have looked at the changing role of immigration enforcement and how that’s affecting local governments. I if someone in Richmond were deported without due process, something that’s happening, it seems like across the country, would the Commonwealth Attorney’s office be the ones to file a lawsuit or get involved?

Colette McEachin:

No. And the reason is because as your well-educated, knowledgeable listeners know there is a difference between the state system

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Colette McEachin:

And the federal system. And the federal system is the system that governs immigration and deportation. What the state is able to do is to make courthouses a safe space. And so the sheriff and I have been in contact, I’ve been in contact with the chief judge of the circuit court, and they have developed a policy to recognize the sanctity of the courthouse and the need for due process and the safety and protection of individuals who are in the courthouse.

Rich Meagher:

So you said you’ve talked with the folks at the courthouses about, you know, some of these policies in place, but those policies won’t necessarily protect someone from being deported if ICE comes looking for them. Is that right? I mean, if they’ve got the paperwork, if, if they

Colette McEachin:

Have legal paperwork, you’re right.

Rich Meagher:

Um, and so your opponent has suggested there’s some ways that a Commonwealth’s attorney could try to acknowledge that the danger that undocumented folks are in, uh, you could in bail requests or in not requiring folks to appear in court, are, are you willing to do this? Are you doing anything to accommodate the undocumented status of anybody who might be in the system?

Colette McEachin:

What we are doing is what we have been doing, which is recognizing that if you are a victim of a crime and you are Hispanic and you are concerned if I report this to the police or if I show up in court, I’ll be deported. We are going to wrap our arms around you and make sure that that does not happen. And in fact, once the case is over, the police department in my office can certify a U visa that goes to immigration that says, this person cooperated with law enforcement regarding a crime. And therefore we would ask immigration to allow this person to stay in the country for, I think it’s up to three years, and eventually work their way through a green card.

Rich Meagher:

So before we let you go, I wanna kind of pull back a little bit. The Black Lives Matter movement argued for reform of criminal justice. Right. Five years later, it doesn’t seem like that much has changed. You know, we still have multiple problems in jails and prisons. We have continued concerns about transparency. The civilian review board that was supposed to be launched in Richmond is just not a thing right now. Do you feel like our criminal justice system is working?

Colette McEachin:

It is working, but not in the best way. If there were unlimited resources or if there was political will, perhaps we could be more proactive if we could take more preventative measures. Mm-hmm. That would be great. And that would prevent younger people from getting involved. Um, if schools had more time to do instruction about gun safety or restorative justice or the criminal justice system as a whole, that would be helpful. So there are a of things that could be done in the criminal justice system to prevent people from committing a crime and then to punish people appropriately so as to prevent them from recommitting a crime once they’re released from jail or incarceration.

Rich Meagher:

Colette McEachin is the Commonwealth’s attorney for the city of Richmond. She’s running for another four year term. Thanks.

Colette McEachin:

Thank you so much.

Rich Meagher:

Next up a conversation with Commonwealth’s attorney candidate Tom Barbour. What is his vision for the office? That’s when we come back on RVAs. Got issues. Welcome to RVAs. Got Issues, the show that brings you the people and ideas that are reshaping Greater Richmond. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. This episode we talk to Tom Barbour. He’s a Richmond based attorney and a candidate for Commonwealth’s attorney, an office with a huge impact on our criminal justice system. Welcome Tom.

Tom Barbour:

Hey, thanks so much for having me, rich.

Rich Meagher:

So Tom, you’ve worked in the Commonwealth’s attorney’s office before, but the last few years you’ve been in private practice. You say you run a public interest law firm. What does that mean?

Tom Barbour:

By that, I mean I am first and foremost a trial attorney, a general trial practice. It’s grounded primarily in criminal defense, but I try to take on issues of civil litigation that I think lead people into the justice system. So I’m always on the tenant side in landlord tenant cases. I’m always on the employee side and employment litigation and I prosecute wage theft for people. I think those issues are in the public interest and that’s why I style the firm that way.

Rich Meagher:

I’d say switching gears in a big way here, Richmond was the national murder capital. We have come a long way since then in terms of crime rates, public safety, obviously still problems. You say we need to rethink the Commonwealth’s attorney’s office. What’s wrong with the current approach?

Tom Barbour:

Unfortunately, we are seeing stagnation or a plateau, I’d say, in managing crime downward in the city. We still have on average 10 to 12,000 major crimes per year. And the office is essentially stuck in an outmoded way of thinking. They are, uh, view themselves primarily as the state prosecutors in Richmond, by which they mean they’re gonna sit in their chairs and they’re gonna wait for a case to come in and then they’re gonna prosecute it. Well, at the point that we’ve got a case coming into the courthouse, a victim has already been harmed, a loved one has already been lost. And you know, while there may be justice to be had in the courtrooms, the better justice would be that case never happened in the first place. So my view of the role is that it’s chief Public Safety Officer, that it needs to work proactively with law enforcement of course, but also with other stakeholders like Department of Social Services, RPS, you know, community nonprofits in the city to try to actually reduce crime from happening in the first place.

Rich Meagher:

So this is the second time you’ve run for office against the same opponent. You had a similar pitch the last time. What’s different this time around?

Tom Barbour:

The difference is, uh, I’m not a first time political candidate, you

Rich Meagher:

Made your mistakes already.

Tom Barbour:

Yeah, you, you learn a lot on the campaign trail and you know, I ran in 21 kind of in a unique historical moment, and not just in the country, but especially in Richmond where in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, I think a lot of Americans and especially Virginians and Richmonders were wondering, Hey, how do we make our criminal justice system better? I had been doing that work under then Commonwealth’s attorney Mike Herring, I was a senior policy advisor to him on those issues in my private practice. I had also started a small nonprofit that connected people in the system to the services that they needed to move out of it. So I ran in a moment and a time as someone who was actually doing that work, but I was a complete political neophyte. And lemme tell you, I learned a lot and I’m not really the guy who misses twice.

Rich Meagher:

So the kinds of changes that you’re asking for, right? And you’re saying attorneys are sort of waiting passively for cases to come in. You want them to be more active, you know, currently the workload, 13,000 cases a year, there’s only something like 40 attorneys in the office. That’s a lot. Will this vision work with the existing demands?

Tom Barbour:

Lemme tell you, rich, I’ve done a fair number of interviews on this campaign at this point, and I feel comfortable that this is a safe space for policy wants , right? And I, so I thought, am I gonna, am I gonna tell Rich what that really looks like operationally? And yeah, I think this audience would appreciate this, but imagine for example, if we only had one person in Richmond committing crime, you were out there Rich, just committing crimes left and right, you know, um, as your personal recidivism rate went up, so too would the city’s crime rate. It would be the same thing when you come back to reality, when you come back to the real Richmond, we don’t have a single person out there committing crimes, but we basically have a single cohort of people and when their individual personal recidivism rates go up, we see the crime rate in Richmond go up.

If we are serious about driving crime down in Richmond, then we have to engage at the individual level driving people’s personal recidivism rates down. And it’s really hard to do that when the work in the office is centered on cases, not people. Hmm. Most of the folks in this cohort have multiple cases. They’re in and out of the system over and over again for substance use, mental health, housing instability, employment instability. And so yes, we have 10 to 12,000 cases per year. We have a much lower number of people committing these offenses. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to adopt a person centered approach to prosecution. I’m going to operationalize root cause prosecution by organizing the workflow of the office around people.

Rich Meagher:

And so this does seem like a change from the traditional understanding of the Commonwealth attorney’s role. Why is that approach the right one for Richmond? Particularly now?

Tom Barbour:

There is still very much this perception out there that Richmond streets are unsafe and that it’s city government is unfit. And frankly, those perceptions directly affect who decides to live here, who decides to stay here, you know, who sends their kids to Richmond Public Schools, whether people want to build a business or otherwise, you know, become a longstanding member of this community. And if we’re not addressing those issues, we’re not gonna see continued development in the city.

Rich Meagher:

You’ve highlighted the idea of restorative justice, like we want to restore not just punish people, but you’ve criticized the incumbent for her approach to that. What does the term restorative justice mean to you?

Tom Barbour:

Restorative justice is really only an approach you can use effectively if you’ve got a victim and an accused person who both willingly want to participate, and for many victims, especially in violent situations, you end up with this issue where unless the victim is 100% on board, you run the risk of re-traumatizing that person by putting them through that experience. So it is a tool that can be used in a small number of cases so long as you’ve got voluntary participants. But the bigger idea of taking a root cause approach to public safety of taking a social services approach and an approach that manages violent risk and requires accountability for circumstances for root causes to actually reduce recidivism. That’s what I’m talking about.

Rich Meagher:

So when you say root cause, right, can you give a more specific example of what your office would actually do? What’s different about the approach you’re talking about here?

Tom Barbour:

The scope. We already have this paradigm operating in our alternative dockets. So in the mental health docket for example, or the recovery court, the drug docket for example, you’ve got a system of prosecution that looks like requiring accountability through the courthouse, but essentially requiring that the individuals accused of mental health or substance use driven crimes get assistance for the underlying issues. The problem with those programs is that they are seat limited. You know, in a city that sees 10 to 12,000 major crimes per year, you might have a hundred people go through your drug docket, you might have a hundred people go through your behavioral health docket. So you’re really not getting at the scope of the problem. Uh, we’ve got many nonprofits in the city who are working on these underlying issues, housing, drug use, alcohol abuse, financial instability. And so what I would do is I would take the logic of these alternative dockets and I would broaden dramatically the cases that we’re extending that to.

Rich Meagher:

So what you’re saying here, this idea of root cause prosecution that you’re talking about, right? We already have a model for this. It’s used in the drug court, right? So you’re saying you’re gonna expand programs like that.

Tom Barbour:

I’m gonna create the system of that and the mechanism of that system is referral to services. Um, right now, unfortunately the counsel attorney’s office  thinks in terms of whether someone deserves to be on that mental health docket or deserves to be on that uh, drug docket. But the question of public safety isn’t whether the person deserves it. The question of public safety is whether their underlying disorder creates a risk of re-offense. And obviously the answer is yes it does. And so we need to manage that risk of re-offense by requiring them to access services in the community and maintain accountability for that in the courtroom.

Rich Meagher:

So how do you build the support for those kinds of alternative programs, those diversion programs?

Tom Barbour:

The work of accessing those services requires essentially therapeutic probation, right? We do have a probation office, but the management of people in that office is punitively focused. Meaning someone will show up for a probation appointment, the probation officer will say, you need to go to this resource, but the probation officer won’t in any way engage in empowering that person to go there. There might be a childcare issue, there might be a problem getting an actual ride there or even understanding the bus system. There might be a problem once you get there feeling sort of socially comfortable navigating the bureaucracy of that service. And so we do and are going to need to expand essentially the social work capacity to make that happen. And that’s a longer term conversation in the city.

Rich Meagher:

You describe yourself as a progressive I think, Right?

Tom Barbour:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

Some progressive prosecutors have overstepped at least politically, right? So here in Loudoun County, uh, Buta Biberaj was defeated for reelection. Um, do do people want progressive solutions for criminal justice?

Tom Barbour:

You know, when I first took my then boss, my carrying out for coffee to ask him if I could work him, he said some version of, you know, Tom, you’re just kind of a bleeding heart. And I said, well, I actually just like to do things that work. You know, I use the term progressive to mean that we need progress in how we do things. Generally, I think Richmonders especially are interested in government services that work and they have the patience because they have the civic pride in our city to see that those things are working so long as they’re communicating what the plan is, what the milestones are, keeping them up to date. They want to see us reduce recidivism, manage violent risk, drive crime down over time, and they want progress on that. So in that sense, I very much identify as a progressive.

Rich Meagher:

So if the courts and cops though are concerned about this, right? Other powerful players in the city, can you approach work? If they don’t buy in, they’re calling you a bleeding heart.

Tom Barbour:

I actually have a much easier relationship with the police than you might guess. And the reason for that is I’m a former captain in the United States Marine Corps and a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, and I was a foreign military advisor. So you know, when I sit down with the Richmond Coalition of Police, I can say like, look, I know what it’s like to feel like you are in danger, to feel like other people you care about are in danger. To feel like you might have to do something violent to keep someone safe. But at the end of the day it’s like, hey, we’ve gotta single group of folks who are committing most of the crime. How do we manage that? And the police officers don’t want to keep responding to the same situations over and over again and keep arresting the same people over and over again. And so there is absolutely commonality to be built around how we do this work together.

Rich Meagher:

So switching gears here a little bit. Local governments are navigating a big national political picture, especially when it comes to immigration enforcement. So if someone in Richmond were deported without due process as we’re seeing happen elsewhere in the country, would the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office, would you be the ones to file a lawsuit?

Tom Barbour:

In a short answer, no. That being said, there’s this question of if a federal agent is potentially breaking a state law in the execution of an arrest for an undocumented person, is there a role for the CA’s office to play there in terms of prosecuting that agent?

Rich Meagher:

Right. But do you have an answer to that question?

Tom Barbour:

I think yes. The Commonwealth Attorney is charged with prosecuting criminality, right? And that means criminality in all of its forms, not just from individuals, from people who might be in our government. And so, you know, my North Star as a ca is public safety and the rule of law. We’re not going to allow our courthouses to become hunting grounds for law enforcement agencies and we’re required by Virginia Code to keep the courthouse free from disturbance and violence. I think some of what is getting lost in that conversation is people are adopting this point of view of like, oh, the only undocumented peoples in the courthouse are people who are also accused of crimes. No <laugh>. You’ve got undocumented people who are victims, you’ve got undocumented people who are witnesses to very serious crimes. And these types of arrests are going to have a chilling effect on our ability to keep people safe in the city and achieve justice for people who may or may not be documented. So we really can’t have our courthouses become a place that people are afraid to go. We need them to come and participate in the prosecution of serious crimes so that we can keep people safe.

Rich Meagher:

So one final point here. The Black Lives Matter movement argued for reform of criminal justice, right? That was five years ago. It doesn’t seem like much has changed. We have multiple problems in jails and prisons. We have continued concerns about transparency in law enforcement and criminal justice. The civilian review board that was supposed to be a big outcome in Richmond is just not a thing. Do you feel like our criminal justice system is working?

Tom Barbour:

I do feel that we are at least having a conversation around how to make it work more effectively. And frankly, that was not something that we were doing before George Floyd was murdered. If I’m successful, it’s gonna be because we’ve fundamentally and systemically altered how we do public safety in the city and the commonwealth, and I’m quite happy to be forgotten after that.

Rich Meagher:

Tom Barbour is a candidate for Commonwealth’s attorney in the city of Richmond,

Tom Barbour:

thanks for having me.

Rich Meagher:

Thank you. That’s our show. Thanks to our guests, Tom Barbour and Colette McEachin. The Democratic primary election for Commonwealth’s attorney as well as offices of Sheriff and treasurer will be held on Tuesday, June 17th. Early voting is available at three locations across the city through June 14th. Find out more about our show and tell us about your issues at our website. RVAs Got issues.vpm.org. Remember to tell your friends about us, share a social media post or leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform. RVAs Got Issues is produced by Max Wasserman and Rachel Dwyer. Script editing by Donna Lack and Rachel Dwyer. Audio mix by Steve Lack. Our theme music was composed by Alexander Hitchens. Meg Lindholm is our executive producer. Steve Humble is VP’s Chief Content Officer. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. Thanks for listening.