This article has been updated since it first appeared in print.
The Belt Atlantic apartment complex sits on the edge of Swansboro, one of Richmond’s oldest residential neighborhoods, a former suburb for early 19th-century tobacco and coal workers who made the trek daily to industrial Manchester. In the 1960s and ’70s, this South Side community along Midlothian Turnpike was filled with prominent middle-class Black families.
Today, if you look past its pockmarks — the sagging rooftops and peeling bungalows, the trash-strewn sidewalks — you can still see glimpses of what made Swansboro and its surrounding tree-lined streets a destination.
There are days like April 27, 2021, when the smell of fresh-cut grass lingers, and the spring air feels more like summer. It was a Tuesday evening, and a few dozen people were socializing outdoors at the Belt Atlantic, which borders West Swansboro across from George Wythe High School. Neighbors mingled as children romped in the courtyard.
In an instant, they were all running for cover. A group of young men, armed and wearing ski masks, popped out of a gray Dodge Charger at roughly 6:30 p.m. and began to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd, killing 30-year-old Sharnez Hill and her 3-month-old son, Neziah. Three others were struck and injured. The shooting begat more shooting when another group of young men at the complex started firing back. After the smoke cleared, upward of 50 shell casings littered the ground.
“Somebody was having a birthday party. They had a bouncy house. And these guys just walked out,” says the Rev. Robin Mines, a pastor who lives in nearby West Swansboro. She wasn’t there when the shooting took place, but she has since visited the complex weekly — delivering food, running errands, helping residents with finances and housing. “Many of them have no income or very little to survive on,” she says. “These children have nothing, so the streets are getting ahold of them and raising them. They are toting guns that are visible. They are carrying them for protection.”
Police would later charge five young men in the shooting rampage; one of them, 19-year-old Kevon Tyrek Bynum, has already pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. Two more suspects, Donald Hemmings, 23, and Kevon Bynum’s twin brother, Kavon, 19, face trial later this spring, while Shyheem Martin, 24, and Sha Mondrick Perry, 20, await court hearings.
A mass shooting at The Belt Atlantic apartment community on the city’s South Side claimed a mother and her 3-month-old baby in April of last year. (Photo by Jay Paul)
The double homicide at Belt Atlantic last April represents two of the 90 homicides in Richmond last year, a 36% spike from 2020 and the highest count in the city since 2004. The rise in gun violence was unexpected: Amid an overall decline in most crime categories, including robberies, sexual assaults, larcenies and burglaries, shootings jumped. There were 297 aggravated assaults with a firearm in 2021, according to the Richmond Police Department, a 10% increase from 2020, and an additional 249 nonfatal shootings, up from 230 the year before, an 8% increase.
In a city that’s seen enormous changes in the last decade — a growing population, a surging arts and culture scene, and a newfound political will to address social justice amid a national reckoning with systemic racism — the carnage of 2021 offered a stark reminder: Gaping economic divisions and concentrated poverty continue to suffocate many of the city’s neighborhoods, conditions that are capable of producing unthinkable anger and violence.
Social Media Spurs Shootings
The spate of recent shootings and death recalls the 1990s, when Richmond was known as the South’s “murder capital,” with homicides routinely eclipsing 100 annually and peaking at 160 murders in 1994. But unlike the gun violence that gripped Richmond 30 years ago — much of it connected to drug trafficking during the crack-cocaine epidemic — the recent uptick isn’t as easy to diagnose.
“It’s much more citywide than it used to be in the 1990s,” says Colette McEachin, Richmond’s commonwealth’s attorney, explaining that the majority of shooting deaths in the 1990s occurred in the city’s six public housing projects. In 2021, only 14 of the 90 murders took place in public housing communities. “What people need to recognize is it’s no longer just confined, or primarily confined, to public housing. It unfortunately can happen almost anywhere at any time.”
There are still hot spots such as the city’s South Side, near Swansboro and Broad Rock, and Hillside Court near Commerce Road, one of Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority’s public housing communities. North Side also saw a higher concentration of homicides, particularly near Highland Park and around RRHA’s Whitcomb Court.
Police officials and prosecutors offer myriad reasons: A proliferation of guns, the shuttering of schools and limited access to social services during the global pandemic added fuel to the fire. Meanwhile, there’s a shortage of police officers, which could be inviting more criminal activity.
There’s also been an increase in shootings that stem from disagreements on social media, a relatively recent phenomenon.
“Arguments used to be somewhat private,” explains Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Hollomon, who oversees homicide prosecutions. “Now it’s on social media, and if somebody gets disrespected, that disrespect doesn’t occur in front of one or two people, it occurs in front of hundreds of people. … In order to get it to stop, some people feel like they have to resort to violence.”
McEachin says that’s what spurred the Belt Atlantic shootings last April.
“Social media was integral in that case,” she says. “The carload of young men who ended up driving to Belt Atlantic and killing the young mother, her 3-month-old child and wounding and shooting [three] other people were there because a young man who was [at the apartment complex] said to them on social media after they had been beefing, ‘Yeah, this is where I am. You going to bring something, bring it here.’ ”
City Councilwoman Stephanie Lynch, whose 5th District includes The Belt Atlantic apartments, says the shuttering of schools for a year and a half — Richmond was the last public school system in the state to open for in-person instruction last September — has also played a role. With so many students at home left to their own devices without mentors, teachers and other support, they were more susceptible to lashing out.
“Our public school system is that third family member that creates an environment of support,” Lynch says. “And that was suddenly taken away … and many of our kids and our students were left without support, without much to do during the day. And you couple that with the mental health trauma of people in their family, family members going through significant, significant economic hardship, I think those factors set us on a path.”
Richmond Police Chief Gerald Smith (Photo by Jay Paul)
A Shortage of Police Officers
The wave of shootings also came as the Richmond Police Department struggled with officer retention and recruitment. As of late January, the department had 136 officer vacancies (RPD is budgeted for 750 officers).
It’s difficult to make a direct correlation between fewer officers and an increase in violent crime, but there’s little debate that the shortage has impacted policing, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, says Police Chief Gerald Smith.
“Of course it [has]. If we had more officers, we could actually use officers to increase those positive contacts,” he explains. “Community policing ... works best when you can actually get out into the community.”
Since the early 2000s, Richmond has deployed a community policing strategy with the goal of connecting more deeply with the community and its residents. But with a short-handed police force, Smith says, there are fewer officers to patrol and walk those beats and make those casual connections.
“There’s law enforcement, which enforces the laws, and then you have policing, which actually is part of the community,” Smith says. “To do that, you need officers who don’t run from call to call to call.”
Has the shortage helped facilitate more shootings? Maybe. There is ample research that supports the idea that police work, the kind of community-focused police work Smith is talking about, when focused on high-crime areas can lead to a noticeable reduction, says David Weisburd, professor of criminology and executive director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University.
“Richmond’s not alone, but what is it?” Weisburd says. “What I can say about the policing part is that there’s evidence that if the police are focused in the right ways … they can have an impact. They can be an important part of reducing these sorts of problems.”
The shortage of officers can be traced to a variety of factors, including lower pay than that of surrounding jurisdictions and general perceptions around urban policing. The social justice protests that stretched on for weeks in the summer of 2020 also affected morale.
The Richmond Police Department’s handling of the city’s nightly protests in the wake of George Floyd’s brutal murder by Minneapolis police in May of 2020 led to public outcry over the use of nonlethal tactics to disperse crowds — including tear gas and rubber bullets — and a special task force that evaluated the department’s methods, leading to recommendations for how to improve accountability and public safety. The recommendations include the creation of a new system for responding to nonemergency mental health episodes, substance abuse and minor civil disputes with social workers and other professionals instead of gun-carrying officers, along with policy changes aimed at improving officer training and accountability, in addition to a host of nonpolice initiatives.
The police chief says he has no problem with the committee’s recommendations. “I think I agreed with everything that’s in there,” Smith says, adding that he recognizes that some reforms are needed. The department is actively examining its policing efforts, he says, pointing out that Richmond is one of 10 cities from across the country recently selected for a three-year Department of Justice program called the National Public Safety Partnership, which involves working with the U.S. Attorney’s office, the FBI and other federal agencies to provide consultation and technical assistance to improve public safety and community outreach.
The department is also “overhauling” its internal affairs process, Smith says, changing the structure so that police supervisors oversee officer discipline and complaints rather than simply assigning those cases to police detectives.
The pay and morale issues have proven tougher to fix.
Richmond’s starting pay for officers is lower than in both Chesterfield and Henrico counties. Officer salaries start at $44,000 in the city, compared to $51,913 in Henrico and $48,894 in Chesterfield (after training is completed). Higher pay and more aggressive “lateral” recruiting programs — hiring officers away from other departments — have helped the counties to shore up their officer ranks. Henrico currently has only four vacancies (the department is authorized for 647 sworn officers and is planning to add additional positions this year), and Chesterfield has just two vacancies (the department is budgeted for 557 sworn officers).
“We have a lot of people who left here because they just didn’t want to do it anymore,” Smith says of the retention issues. “And you can’t talk about attrition without talking about pay.”
Luke Geiger, who spent 17 years working as a Richmond police officer, decided it was time to retire from the force last year, leaving on Aug. 1 at age 49. Low pay and the stress caused by the staffing shortage following the 2020 protests, he says, made the job exceedingly difficult.
“I remember when the protests started, as [officers] were leaving they were writing names down on the whiteboard — it was up to 90,” Geiger recalls. “After the protests ended, police work wasn’t very popular. There’s been a huge exodus.”
Richmond Police Sgt. Brendan Leavy, president of the Richmond Coalition of Police, says the low pay and what he calls a lack of public support from the mayor and the police chief, especially during and following the protests, only made matters worse.
“Police officers aren’t feeling supported,” says Leavy, who called for the police chief to resign in December. “The police department is on auto-pilot. This police chief doesn’t inspire anybody … and officers just keep leaving.”
On Feb. 3, Mayor Levar Stoney announced a series of initiatives aimed at combating gun violence across the city, including hiring a new community safety coordinator and a partnership with local nonprofit NextUp, which will distribute $1 million in federal grant money for community programs — after-school tutoring and mentoring, mental health support for children and parents, and other crime prevention efforts. That’s in addition to a new program launched by RPD in November, Operation Red Ball, a special task force that offers cash rewards for tips that lead to the seizure of illegal guns. Through early February, the task force, made up of detectives and officers from different precincts, had confiscated 97 firearms. During his State of the City address on Feb. 8, Stoney also said the city was launching a new $500,000 gun buyback program to get more guns off the street.
At the press briefing on Feb. 3, the police chief introduced yet another initiative. The department plans to add a team of “violence interrupters,” based on similar programs in other U.S. cities, which involves hiring civilians — individuals from “the streets,” Smith explained — to help “de-escalate and mediate conflicts” and work as peer counselors to at-risk youth.
Leavy, however, was bothered by how the violence interrupters program was announced. At the briefing, Smith said the positions would pay $65,000 annually but later corrected the figure in a press release — the pay structure is actually $31,200 to $46,000.
Leavy says officers remain frustrated.
“We will take all the help we can get combating gun violence,” Leavy says of the violence interrupters program. “But they still did not consult with us.”
Officer pay, however, is finally going up. As part of his proposed fiscal year 2023 budget introduced on March 4, Stoney set aside $17.4 million to increase salaries for first responders, including firefighters and police officers, beginning on July 1. Under the mayor’s proposal, which awaits approval from City Council, 95% of police officers and firefighters will see their pay increase by at least 10%, and 83% will see pay rise by 15% or more. Starting pay for police officers will jump from $44,000 a year to $51,000.
In a statement, Leavy said the mayor’s proposal represents progress.
“We said we needed a new pay plan, [and] we’re getting a new pay plan. We said we needed it to be fully funded and implemented July 2022, and it will be as long as it passes” City Council, Leavy said. “The pay plan is not perfect, and the city administration acknowledged that, too, so we will continue working on it. … It is a good step in the right direction.”
‘The Problem Behind the Problem’
There is no easy solution for gun violence. The underlying causes are systemic, says Brian Williams, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Virginia. And during the pandemic, social isolation and a deadly gun culture seemed to converge.
He says the push for police reform, which is healthy, shouldn’t be viewed as antithetical to law enforcement, a critical component to keeping communities safe.
“Right now, in this kind of polarized moment, there are obstacles,” says Williams, who served on Richmond’s police reform task force in 2021. “I think it brings back into focus the shared responsibility sense when we think about community well-being, public safety, public order. ... It’s not just law enforcement or policing, it’s community coming together.”
Weisburd, the professor of criminology at George Mason, says police reform can also play a role in reducing crime. He points to a study he worked on recently wherein officers trained in “procedural justice” tactics — essentially teaching officers how to communicate and treat people with more dignity and respect — led to a 12% reduction in crime over a nine-month period in targeted, high-crime hotspots in three major U.S. cities.
“There’s no reason why you can’t combine reform of the police with a continued focus on proactive policing to reduce crime,” he says. “These are not combating ideas.”
Others agree. The broader, systemic issues that lead to violent crime have little to do with the police, says Lynch, who was elected to City Council in 2019.
“I think there was some, perhaps, misplaced policy alignment and advocacy around police presence,” she says of the protest movement. “And I’m not confusing that with police brutality, because, absolutely, there is reform that is needed within departments, one thousand percent.”
But what really needs reform, she says, is the criminal justice system.
“If you were to do a focus group with my Belt Atlantic community right now, what has impacted them the most? Every single one of those kids has grown up with a family member that’s incarcerated,” she says. “What do you think that does to a family system when you got someone who is locked away for 15 to 20 years?”
In cities like Richmond, concentrated poverty, which has roots in redlining, federal interstate construction that cut through Black communities in the 1950s, and “white flight,” the migration of white Richmonders to suburban counties following desegregation, created deep economic divisions that still exist.
“Thinking about gun violence, what’s the problem behind the problem?” Williams posits. “I think about Carter G. Woodson, who wrote that famous book, ‘The Miseducation of the Negro.’ There’s been a miseducation of America, too. I don’t think enough of our society really appreciates that past, and how that past has a presence in the present. And until we kind of acknowledge that, and kind of try to resolve that, we’re going to continue to have problems, gun violence, you name it.”
