Va. Beach police alter body camera policy
VIRGINIA BEACH — Police in the city of Virginia Beach will require officers’ body cameras to be activated immediately when a police officer indicates “en route” to a call for service.
The previous body camera policy required officers to activate cameras as soon as they arrived on the scene and as soon as it was “safe and practical to do so,” WAVY-TV reported.
The change in policy comes after the fatal police shooting of Donovon Lynch in the city’s Oceanfront area in late March. Lynch was a cousin of Pharrell Williams, a Grammy-winning musician and Virginia Beach native.
Police have said the body camera worn by the officer who shot Lynch was not activated for unknown reasons.
Lynch’s shooting has drawn calls from Williams and others for a thorough and transparent investigation. The incident remains under investigation.
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Both Lynch and the police officer who shot him are Black. That officer and another officer who witnessed Lynch’s shooting have both said Lynch had a handgun, according to police.
The night’s shootings — described by police as “very chaotic” — also killed a woman who likely was an innocent bystander, according to authorities, and left eight others wounded.
Part of SW Va. will get rail service under deal
CHRISTIANSBURG — Virginia and Norfolk Southern Railway have reached a $257 million agreement to bring new passenger rail service to part of Southwest Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam announced Wednesday.
The deal, which includes infrastructure improvements and right of way and track acquisitions, will increase existing service to Roanoke, the governor’s office said. The deal also will expand service to Christiansburg, which neighbors Blacksburg, home to Virginia Tech.
That means service will be returning to the New River Valley, the area southwest of Roanoke, for the first time since 1979.
“Bringing passenger rail service back to the New River Valley will fuel tourism, drive economic growth, and create new opportunities for the region’s 180,000 residents and 40,000 college students,” the governor said in a statement.
The announcement comes amid an ongoing push by the Northam administration to expand and improve passenger, commuter and freight rail.
Under the agreement and starting next year, an additional round-trip train to Roanoke will depart Washington, D.C., in the morning and serve Alexandria, Burke, Manassas, Culpeper, Charlottesville, Lynchburg and Roanoke, according to a news release. That train will complement an existing one that travels northbound from Roanoke in the morning and returns in the afternoon.
The two round trips then will be extended from Roanoke to Christiansburg upon completion of the infrastructure improvements in 2025.
Part of the agreement also involves studying the possibility of adding a stop in Bedford, subject to future funding, and assessing the cost of extending passenger rail to Bristol, in the state’s far southwest.
2 pipeline protesters receive jail time, fines
CHRISTIANSBURG — Two Mountain Valley Pipeline protesters have been sentenced to months in jail and ordered to repay the cost of removing them from tree stands they were chained to along the pipeline’s path.
On Wednesday, Montgomery County General District Court Judge Randal Duncan convicted Alexander Lowe, 24, of Worcester, Mass., and Claire Fiocco, 23, of Dorset, Vt., of obstructing justice and interfering with Mountain Valley’s property rights, The Roanoke Times reported.
Fiocco, who occupied a tree from early January until March 23, was sentenced to 158 days. Lowe was sentenced to 254 days after occupying a tree from November until state police removed him on March 24.
Later in the day, the pair appeared before Circuit Court Judge Robert Turk, who ordered them down from the trees. Turk fined Lowe $17,500 and Fiocco $10,000 for defying his order. He also ordered them to pay more than $140,000 to Mountain Valley to cover the cost of extracting them.
A crane hoisted two state police officers to where the protesters were chained on wooden platforms about 50 feet above the ground.
“I appreciate the passion you had in your protests,” Turk told them before they were taken away. “You just did it the wrong way.”