Norfolk — Norfolk is launching a new citizen committee to address racial inequality and criminal justice issues in the city, Mayor Kenny Alexander announced Tuesday night.
At the start of a City Council meeting, Alexander read a statement outlining his vision for a new “mayor’s commission on social equity and economic opportunity.”
He said he will chair a group that will include residents from a broad cross-section of Norfolk and focus on economic inequality and barriers to access to education and jobs.
Alexander said he wanted there to be a focus on “wealth-building” and said the committee would also discuss criminal justice reform.
“In wake of recent tragedies involving police brutality and racially motivated violence, let’s let our actions speak for us,” said Alexander, a Democrat who was elected in 2016 and is Norfolk’s first black mayor.
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Norfolk is among cities across the nation that have seen days of protest against police brutality following the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis. That officer, Derek Chauvin, has since been fired, arrested and charged with murder and manslaughter.
Discussing the weekend’s protests with a reporter Monday, Alexander spoke more broadly about the issues that the committee expects to tackle.
“We find ourselves in 2020 addressing and witnessing and experiencing some of the same economic and social inequalities of 50-plus years ago,” he said. “I think the bigger conversation for all of us is addressing poverty and social and economic inequalities in housing and wages and homeownership and access to health care for black and brown people.”
On Tuesday, Alexander did not shy away from Norfolk’s own issues.
“For 338 years, Norfolk has struggled with its own history of human bondage, hate, racially motivated crime and violence, structural inequality and poverty,” he said. “Our continued growth in this city is evolving as a modern city that will always demand this change. Norfolk is by no means perfect, but we will continue to strive to be just, especially in the administration of public safety.”
Despite decades of discussions around bridging economic gaps and building racial harmony, Norfolk still grapples with racial disparities in wealth, education, police treatment and other areas.
Alexander’s signature effort as mayor has been launching the redevelopment of the St. Paul’s area — the city’s poorest neighborhood, which has an almost entirely black population. The vision is for nearly 1,700 public housing units there to, little by little, be replaced with mixed-income communities.
The effort, years in the making, met immediate resistance from residents who said decisions were being made without them and cited decades of racist redevelopment efforts that injured Norfolk’s black community.
As part of the St. Paul’s overhaul, the city has promised to give residents help in becoming economically self-sufficient, though those programs were slow to start and residents have expressed skepticism and frustration.
City officials say their goal is to deconcentrate poverty. But a group of residents and advocates filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year, alleging the redevelopment would have the opposite effect. The redevelopment effort is on hold during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Despite highly visible efforts from Norfolk’s police chief, policing in Norfolk is also still marked by racial disparities.
For instance, Norfolk officers arrest dramatically more black people for marijuana possession, The Virginian-Pilot reported last year. An effort by Norfolk’s lead prosecutor to dismiss all low-level marijuana charges in the city — a move Commonwealth’s Attorney Greg Underwood said was his own crack at criminal justice reform in the interest of Norfolk’s black community — was torpedoed by several Norfolk judges.
Norfolk Police Chief Larry Boone has championed the community policing model, rolling out a slate of trust-building efforts like cookouts, fundraisers and barbershop visits. This weekend, Boone held a “Black Lives Matter" sign and marched with demonstrators protesting police brutality, after he called for the officers involved in the killing of George Floyd to be fired and charged with murder.
But Boone’s department has refused for years to divulge police brutality complaints and information about how Norfolk police officers use force against suspects.
At least one council member wasn’t buying that this effort – a new permutation of similar commissions that have come before, including Mayor Paul Fraim’s commission on poverty – would affect real change.
“Mr. Mayor that little proclamation you read earlier, they are simply idle words when it comes to blacks in the city of Norfolk," Councilman Paul Riddick said later in the meeting. “We’re going to go back and get the same recycled people from Norfolk and get the same product.”
Ryan Murphy, 757-739-8582, ryan.murphy@pilotonline.com