Carol Adams (file photo)
Carol Adams didn’t win her write-in campaign for Richmond sheriff last fall, but she’s in uniform nonetheless.
Adams retired from the Richmond Police Department as a sergeant in October, when she made a late entry into the sheriff’s race. Former Henrico Sheriff’s Department Maj. Antionette Irving won handily in a contest with two other candidates besides Adams: Nicole Jackson and Emmett Jafari.
We caught up with Adams this week at the police department, where she returned to work full-time Dec. 11 as a patrol officer with the Community Care Unit. Her work focuses on re-entry programs for juvenile and adult offenders.
“I loved my job before I decided to run for office,” Adams says. “When that didn’t come through, why wouldn’t I come back to the police department? I enjoy being out in the community. I enjoy making improvements in any way, shape or fashion, creating partnerships and different programs, trying to think out of the box.” And, she adds, at 54, “I’m still relatively young.”
Adams’ current projects include a re-entry job expo planned for April 11 and the RVA League for Safer Streets, which kicked off last July, providing an athletic outlet for former inmates and young men from at-risk neighborhoods. Richmond Police Chief Alfred Durham announced at a meeting this week that the department plans to start up the league again in March and have it continue throughout the year.
She’s also helping to coordinate a new series on Public Access TV (Comcast Channel 95) related to re-entry. Titled “RVA PD HOPE TV” — HOPE stands for Helping Offenders Pursue Excellence — the series will feature community partners talking about services they offer, as well as some former inmates. It’s set to air on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. from March 14 to April 11.
“We’re always trying to get our message out,” she says. “This gives us the opportunity to get the message out at one time to thousands of people.”
In an effort to stop re-incarceration, Adams and other officers are visiting juvenile detainees to get to know them in a more relaxed way and teach them how to interact with police.
“We started last year at the city detention center [and] we hope to expand to other facilities,” she says. “Out in the street, talking to a police officer is a bad thing, they think. We need to introduce them to a police officer to change their perception of police.”
