Fredericksburg To Hold Meeting On Protests For Racial Justice

FREDERICKSBURG, VA — The Fredericksburg City Council is meeting Thursday evening to discuss how it plans to handle protests against racial injustice and police brutality in the city of Fredericksburg. The meeting is described by the city as a "discussion of next steps related to civil unrest."

Due to the coronavirus, the council meeting will be held electronically starting at 5:30 p.m. Thursday. The public can access the meeting though its broadcast on Cox Channel 84 or Verizon Channel 42 or online at regionalwebtv.com/fredcc or facebook.com/FXBGgov.

As part of the meeting, the city council will discuss a draft Fredericksburg response and recovery plan, dated Tuesday, that calls for reforms to address racial inequality and race discrimination. In the immediate phase, the plan, over the next three and six weeks, would continue its "incident response phase" of emergency management.

"We anticipate that the community will continue to experience permitted and unpermitted demonstrations, including traffic and business disruption, especially in the downtown area," the draft plan states. "The continued disruption requires continued time, attention, and adaptation of City police and special events personnel."

Residents of the Fredericksburg area have been holding protests over the past three weeks against the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and against police brutality. On May 31, Fredericksburg Town Manager Timothy Baroody issued a curfew for the city in response to the protests. At the May 31 protest, Fredericksburg police fired tear gas on a group of protesters.

On June 3, Baroody issued a state of emergency for Fredericksburg and extended the curfew until Monday, June 8. Under the curfew, no person was authorized to be in public between the hours of 8:30 p.m. and 6 a.m. through Monday. The city manager lifted the curfew two days early, on June 6.

Last Saturday, a Stafford County businessman and retired Army chief warrant officer organized a closed-door youth forum attended by Fredericksburg officials, including members of the city council, the police chief and the city manager, at James Monroe High School.

The organizer, Vernon Green Jr., heads a company, GCubed Inc., that held a fundraiser in 2019 in support of Stafford County Sheriff David Decatur's (R) reelection campaign. The nature of the youth forum and the comments offered by the speakers is unclear. Green closed his youth forum in Fredericksburg to the public and the news media. City officials who attended the forum have declined requests for comment on the nature of the conversation at the closed-door event.

Meanwhile, Fredericksburg Mayor Katherine Greenlaw and City Councilwoman Kerry Devine met Monday and Tuesday with protest organizers, the city said Tuesday.

Under Fredericksburg's draft response and recovery plan, the Citizens Advisory Panel, together with a third party, would conduct a review of the what has happened during the protests and what the city plans to do next. The Citizens Advisory Panel, created in 2015, serves as the city's civilian law enforcement panel.

The goals of the response and recover plan include completion of reports on the use of force by police and then submission of the reports to the Citizen Advisory Panel for review. The city also has proposed a "complete professional standards" investigation into incidents of all uses of force.

Fredericksburg also aims to provide information to the public on the city's goals and priorities as well as its approach to enforcement of laws. The plan also calls for maintaining support for the Fredericksburg Police Department and other city staff morale as well as reducing traffic conflicts and disruptions associated with protests.

In the "strategic planning phase" of the plan, which would take place from September through January, the city council would hear from community stakeholders through one or a series of “whole of community” meetings in order to obtain input. The city council would then hold a two-day meeting to consider the community input.

The city council would use the theme of racial equality to tie together its priorities for the next biennium and generate a draft statement of its vision.

"The accomplishments of this phase will lay the groundwork for the longer-term City Council and community response to manifestations of racial inequality throughout the City," the city says in the draft response and recovery plan.

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