Wake Up Vienna: Local Pushback on Police Construction Project

Incidents of police profiling and brutality that have plagued the black community in the U.S. for hundreds of years have recently come to a head. The outcry from Americans following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers on May 25th has pushed state and local governments to re-examine the functionality of their police forces. Our Vienna community should not be exempt from this needed re-inspection period.

According to an article published in the Vienna Patch in 2019, Vienna is one of the safest cities in the state of Virginia. As reporter Emily Leayman wrote, “Vienna earned a safety score of 87.15 with a violent crime rate of 0.24 per 1,000 people and 7.96 property crimes per 1,000 people.”

It seems absurd, then, that such a low-risk community plans to spend $14.6 million of bond funds (repaid largely using local meal tax revenue) to construct a brand new police station in the heart of the town. Complete with an upgraded shooting range, interview rooms, secure parking for police, evidence storage and forensics space, the Town describes this new station as a community space for town members to get to know the police staff.

The Council’s delayed response to recent racial injustice was a catalyst for a group of young adults who have grown up in Vienna. As soon as they became aware of the town’s police station construction plans, the group of James Madison High School alumni decided to take action, forming their own coalition to stand up against unnecessary police spending in their town. The group, Wake Up Vienna, hopes to work towards reallocating money from the police station project into other methods of community support and safety. As group member Megha Karthikeyan explains, “In light of the recent police killings and BLM protests, it was time to think again about what we are doing as a Town.” Megha describes, “We felt that given the plan to design and zone the building is happening this year, it would have been good to reevaluate with more community input, but there was minimal input.”

The group initially started to gain traction with an email campaign sent to local officials with the subject line “Divest from the Vienna Police Department.” This email campaign, which sparked the attention of town manager Mercury Payton and mayor-elect Linda Colbert, was the subject of a Zoom call held with a small group of email-signees in which Payton and Colbert opened up a “dialogue” regarding policing and police spending in the town.

Shortly afterwards, the group organized a petition to “Halt the Vienna Police Department Construction Project pending a commission report” on the issues of policing and safety in Vienna. This action developed amidst national conversations about systemic racial injustice and how the institution of law enforcement has historically perpetuated these injustices.

The group’s petition currently has over 1,000 signatures and counting, around 600 of which were received within 24 hours of posting. The Vienna Town Council has committed to respond to the petition by July 6th, and as the petition continues gathering community support, Wake Up Vienna hopes that overwhelming numbers will pressure the Town Council to pause the project until meaningful public conversations are held. Virginia legislators have promised to hold a special session in the coming weeks solely to discuss the issues of racism and police reform. As of now, the Vienna Town Council has not made plans to do something similar, although town manager Payton’s YouTube series, “On Deck with Mercury,” intends to address the matter conversationally.

Moving forward, Wake up Vienna hopes to see the Town of Vienna move away from policing, except in the case of violent crime, and the town council invest in community resources such as better mental health services, a sexual assault resource agency, and social services for our homeless and otherwise disadvantaged. Wake Up Vienna would also eventually like to push the town towards zoning reform in order to improve both racial and socio-economic diversity through increased development and the construction of more affordable housing options.