The following is an extended version of the piece that appears in our June 2021 issue.
From left, Colette McEachin, incumbent, and Tom Barbour (Photos courtesy the candidates)
Two Democrats will compete to be the city’s next commonwealth’s attorney in this month’s primary election, with no expected Republican challengers come fall. Colette McEachin, the incumbent, was elected in 2019 and has more than 25 years of experience as a prosecutor. Defense attorney Tom Barbour, her challenger, is the founder of the Virginia Holistic Justice Initiative. Early voting is open now, and the Democratic primary election will be held on June 8.
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Richmond magazine: Why are you running for Richmond commonwealth’s attorney?
Colette McEachin: [I was] sworn into office [in January 2020], then COVID hit. That [paused many] of the programs that [I ran] on … so I’m really looking forward to getting the plans that I had started rolling in my next term. That’s why I’m running, to finish what I started doing. One I was excited about was "Law School 101," and that would be a program that we would create and put into Richmond Public Schools, and obviously, since Richmond Public Schools did not operate in 2020, that did not happen. This past year has made it clear that young people need to be fully cognizant of all their rights and responsibilities under the Constitution, and I want to provide that information to them so that they can make good decisions, especially as they move from adolescence into being adults. The younger they are when they hear that message, I think the more it resonates, so that’s something that I’m very excited about.
Tom Barbour: We are in this incredible, historical moment in our country where the public has finally woken up and gotten very excited about smart criminal justice reform and effective public safety practices. I think [in] Richmond, especially what we saw last summer was an outpouring of political will for changing this system in a positive way, but the commonwealth's attorney's office is missing this moment right now, so I'm running to meet it. I'm running with a progressive plan for public safety ... that takes a fundamentally different social services approach to crime and public safety, and I think it's an approach that actually works. I've learned that through my time running the Virginia Holistic Justice Initiative, and also through my time as an advisor to then-Commonwealth’s Attorney Mike Herring alongside [Programs Specialist] Iman Shabazz on his root cause approaches to crime, and my goal is to further that work through this run at a time when the public really appreciates that kind of approach and make sure that we're meeting this historical moment and not missing it.
RM: The commonwealth’s attorney’s willingness to investigate claims of excessive force by police against protesters was a focal point during last year’s protests. Was enough done to hold those officers accountable and ensure folks can protest safely?
McEachin: I attended a number of the protests. I was at the protest down at the 17th Street Farmers Market and some that were around the Lee monument, and I know there were thousands of people in Richmond who supported the aims of the Black Lives Matter protesters and obviously were not prosecuted. So clearly, there's a distinction between being able to protest peacefully and committing acts that are criminal while you are in the midst of protesting. What my office did was look at every instance on an individualized basis and try to decide whether or not the person had in fact committed a crime while protesting — not that protesting is a crime, because it's not, it's a constitutionally protected right. For the most part, those persons who were charged with an actual offense, whether it was a curfew violation or obstruction of justice or vandalism or petty larceny, their cases were individually reviewed and then were offered an opportunity to do eight hours of community service at a nonprofit of their choosing. Once they completed the community service, the charge was dismissed and then they could get it expunged from their record.
Barbour: Not even close. As a former Marine Corps officer ... I was a foreign military adviser to [the] Iraqi army and Afghan police, which meant that I took small teams of Marines and I lived [and patrolled] with Iraqi army and Afghan police ... and more importantly, we held them accountable to a high standard of performance in these areas. So when I look at a policing situation ... I’m looking at it as a former security professional who has ... held police forces accountable to high standards. When I look at something in the street, I am seeing it through the eyes of someone who knows that's not good enough. Not just on a legal level, but on a security level, that's not good enough, and the commonwealth’s attorney's office is not using legal tools at its disposal to put forward strong cases against police misconduct. There's an opportunity for the commonwealth's attorney to request a special grand jury that can be stood up specifically to investigate particular criminal activity … [but] Mrs. McEachin ... has used only the regular grand jury to pursue indictments [where] the commonwealth’s attorney cannot be present [or] examine witnesses ... [my opponent] says that she has tried to put forward indictments against 18 officers, but only two have come back as indictments, and the reason is we don't know how the allegations are being presented. I think that we can do a lot more to make sure that there's transparency in policing the police. On day one in office, I would put forward public charging criteria about use of force. I would also put forward charging policies related to First Amendment assemblies to make sure that we're protecting people's right to protest, and I would do that so that if there is another situation down the road, the public will understand why my office is making the charging decisions it's making because they will have our charging criteria published, and they'll be able to give input on that.
RM: As Richmond’s commonwealth’s attorney, what will you do to end mass incarceration, encourage reform and look for alternatives to jail time for nonviolent offenders?
McEachin: [We must] employ those alternatives as early and soon as possible, and so what I’ve now mandated [is that] I want to increase our office’s duty to make sure that people are at least assessed to see whether or not there is some alternative that’s available to them. The first time that people come to court [is for] their arraignment, and it is now mandatory in General District Court that the attorneys ask for a mental health evaluation if they feel there's anything in the police report or just looking at the person as they are in court that would suggest that mental health might be an issue. We're no longer waiting for a defense counsel to bring it up or for that to be something that is taken into account during the trial or at sentencing, we are being much more proactive about that.
Barbour: There is no management performance review system in that commonwealth’s attorney's office — prosecutors are not held accountable for their performance and the decisions that they're making. The result is that there’s no public criteria for how prosecutors are [deciding] whether to advocate to incarcerate someone or not. It's entirely a personal subjective decision for the prosecutor, which means that the application of incarceration is inconsistent. It also means that the application of incarceration is a method of first resort for the office. I would make sure that there are specific criteria for prosecutors to consider before they decide to advocate for incarceration, and that criteria would be a judgement-based assessment of a person's recency, frequency, and severity of crimes against persons. The overwhelmingly vast majority of people do not pose risks of crimes against persons that need to be managed by placing them in a jail cell. The overwhelmingly vast majority of people can be worked with in the community. Some need to be under closer supervision than others, but there's very few people who are so dangerous that they need to be in jail, and [we need to] create a decision making process for prosecutors and the office that is public, subject to community input and review, and subject to managerial performance review.
RM: We’re speaking in late April, and we’ve seen gun violence rise in Richmond in recent weeks. Paired with a renewed wave of mass shootings across the country, what would your office do to stem gun violence and make local communities safer?
McEachin: There is no one thing that any office can do, and I think that's a hard and difficult fact for Richmond and for any city to realize ... because gun violence downstream has a lot of factors going into it, and so there is no one program, policy or change that can happen other than somehow miraculously eliminating guns, and obviously that's not going to happen. What I will say is that when there is gun violence, we work with the police department and the investigators, and our victim witness advocates work with the victims or their surviving family members to make sure that they are aware of what is happening throughout the investigation of the case, what's going to be happening in the court process, and to support them because they are the ones left behind to deal with all that tragedy.
Barbour: The commonwealth’s attorney's office does not think in terms of people, it thinks in terms of paperwork, and [nonviolent offenders] end up getting shuffled around the courtroom [and jail]. That tends to create or sustain crime trends in the long run because we can resolve cases in the courtroom all day, but if we're not addressing the root causes for why people offend, we're not creating long term public safety. In the context of gun violence, it's also a huge problem that the office doesn't organize its prosecutorial work around people because there are only so many people in the city pulling triggers, and those people need to have cases built against them from the ground up. We also need to reach out to them with services and say, ‘Look, we know that you're engaged in gun violence in the community. If you take our hand, we will pull you out of these situations in a positive way, we will break down barriers to jobs [and] housing, we will support you and try to stabilize your life.’ Right now, the commonwealth’s attorney's office … is a reactionary agency. It sits in the courtroom and it waits for shootings to happen in the street, and then for cases and paperwork to come into the court. My proposal is that the commonwealth’s attorney has to be a proactive partner ... [by joining] the mayor's office and the chief of police, trying to stop that next shooting before it happens, trying to reach out to young people engaged in these activities and put pressure on them to either get access to the services they need or to know that we're going to come after them.
