Chesapeake, Suffolk, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Hampton have installed speed cameras in local school and work zones to deter speeding and enhance overall public safety.

Though law enforcement leaders tout the equipment as a safety measure to deter speeding, the cameras can also be significant moneymakers — with Chesapeake and Suffolk already raking in millions.

Chesapeake has a dozen cameras that have been active since 2022. The city reports a total of 158,075 violations since then, along with about $9.7 million in revenue.

Another 10 cameras in Suffolk went active in fall 2023 along with one at a work zone. Since then, the city reports roughly 196,000 citations, collecting $14.2 million in revenue. After paying the vendor, net revenue is $10.5 million. Suffolk did not specify whether the citation and revenue figures provided to The Virginian-Pilot were specific to school and work zone speed cameras only. The city also operates red light and school bus cameras.

Both cities previously said net revenue would go toward highway safety improvements and personnel costs.

The school zone speed cameras in Chesapeake and Suffolk are targeted in two lawsuits brought by former Del. Tim Anderson, an attorney who alleges the cities are improperly issuing speeding violations and allowing third party vendors to impersonate local government when collecting fees.

Anderson’s case in Suffolk is awaiting an order from a judge on whether it will move forward. A hearing in the Chesapeake case is scheduled for Sept. 18.

The Virginia General Assembly approved legislation in 2020 that allows state and local police to set up speed cameras at highway work sites and school crossing zones. Under that law, only motorists caught going at least 10 mph over the speed limit are ticketed up to $100.

Hampton is in the process of rolling out a dozen cameras in school zones this fall as part of a pilot program with staggered warning periods.

A 30-day warning period began Aug. 26 for cameras located near Bethel High School, Hampton High School and Hunter B. Andrews Pre-K. A 30-day grace period will begin for cameras at Jones Magnet Middle School, Kecoughtan High School, Lindsay Middle School and Machen Elementary School by Sept. 30. And cameras at another set of schools — Mary W. Jackson Elementary School, Thomas Eaton Middle School, Aberdeen Elementary School, Barron Elementary School and William Mason Cooper Elementary — will have a 30-day grace period beginning no later than Oct. 15.

Hampton city officials said about $3.5 million would be budgeted for the school zone speed camera pilot program.

Norfolk has 19 cameras in place across 10 public school locations. A 60-day warning period was slated to end in May, but a city spokesperson said last week that the cameras are still in an active warning period “until summons language can be resolved with the general district court and our vendor, Verra Mobility.”

Part of Anderson’s complaint in his lawsuits was that officers weren’t issuing an official Virginia summons document consistent with other traffic infractions when making the speeding citations.

Portsmouth has 16 cameras, and police began fining drivers in December. The city reports 28,289 citations and $951,061 of revenue collected between January and June. Of the total revenue, $565,042 will be paid to the third-party vendor.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with the latest citations and revenue figures from the city of Portsmouth. The city provided the figures after the article published.

Natalie Anderson, 757-732-1133, natalie.anderson@virginiamedia.com

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — On a busy Texas highway days before the 2020 election, former Democratic lawmaker Wendy Davis used her phone to record the scene unfolding around their Biden-Harris campaign bus: A convoy of President Donald Trump supporters weaving close while her fellow passengers called 911 for help.

In a federal court in Austin on Monday, a jury watched the video filmed by Davis — who ran for governor in 2014 — on the first day of a civil trial that seeks to hold some of those Trump supporters responsible for what Davis and others on the bus say was an intimidating threat of political violence.

“It was a day that was very different from anything I experienced campaigning,” said Davis, who testified that she felt riddled with fear and anxiety.

In opening statements, a lawyer for Davis and the other plaintiffs argued that the six “Trump Train” drivers participated in an orchestrated attack aimed at intimidating people on the bus and making the campaign cancel its remaining events in Texas.

The defense argued that the drivers did not conspire against the Biden-Harris campaign bus that day, and instead joined the train as if it were a pep rally. They also claimed that the bus had several opportunities to exit the highway on its way from San Antonio to Austin.

“It was a rah-rah group that sought to support and advocate for a candidate of their choice in a very loud way,” attorney Francisco Canseco said.

The civil jury trial over the so-called “Trump Train” comes as Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris race into the final two months of their head-to-head fight for the White House in November.

Democrats on the bus said they feared for their lives as Trump supporters in dozens of trucks and cars nearly caused collisions, rammed a Biden-Harris campaign staffer’s car and forced the bus driver to repeatedly swerve for safety. Videos of the confrontation on Oct. 30, 2020, including some recorded and shared on social media by the Trump supporters themselves, show a group of cars and pickup trucks — many adorned with large Trump flags — crowding the campaign bus, boxing it in, slowing it down and keeping it from exiting the highway.

“For at least 90 minutes, defendants terrorized and menaced the driver and passengers,” the lawsuit alleges. “They played a madcap game of highway ‘chicken’ coming within three to four inches of the bus. They tried to run the bus off the road.”

The highway confrontation prompted an FBI investigation, which led then-President Trump to declare that in his opinion, “these patriots did nothing wrong.”

Davis rose to prominence in 2013 with her 13-hour filibuster of an anti-abortion bill in the state Capitol. The other three plaintiffs are a campaign volunteer, staffer and the bus driver.

“We felt overwhelmed by what was going on and we didn’t have any support,” Davis testified.

Monday’s trial ended with the defense beginning their cross-examination of Davis and will resume Tuesday. The trial is expected to last two to three weeks.

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages, accuses the six named defendants of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act, an 1871 federal law to stop political violence and intimidation tactics.

The same law was used in part to indict Trump on federal election interference charges over attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Enacted by Congress during the Reconstruction Era, the law was created to protect the right of Black men to vote by prohibiting political violence.

On the two previous days, Biden-Harris supporters were subjected to death threats, with some Trump supporters displaying weapons, according to the lawsuit. These threats in combination with the highway confrontation led Democrats to cancel an event later in the day.

Canseco said before the trial that his clients acted lawfully, exercising their free speech rights and not infringing on the rights of people on the bus.

“It’s more of a constitutional issue,” Canseco said. “It’s more of who has the greater right to speak behind their candidate.”

The trial judge is Robert Pitman, an appointee of President Barack Obama. He denied the defendants’ pretrial motion for a summary judgment, ruling last month that the KKK Act prohibits the physical intimidation of people traveling to political rallies, even when racial bias isn’t a factor.

While one of the defendants, Eliazar Cisneros, argued his group had a First Amendment right to demonstrate support for their candidate, the judge wrote that “assaulting, intimidating, or imminently threatening others with force is not protected expression.”

“Just as the First Amendment does not protect a driver waving a political flag from running a red light, it does not protect Defendants from allegedly threatening Plaintiffs with reckless driving,” Pitman wrote.

A prior lawsuit filed over the “Trump Train” alleged the San Marcos Police Department violated the Ku Klux Klan Act by failing to send a police escort after multiple 911 calls were made and a bus rider said his life was threatened. It accused officers of privately laughing and joking about the emergency calls. San Marcos settled the lawsuit in 2023 for $175,000 and a requirement that law enforcement get training on responding to political violence.

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Lathan is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

WINDER, Ga. (AP) — The 14-year-old suspect in a shooting that killed four people at a Georgia high school and his father, who was arrested for allowing his son to have a weapon, will stay in custody after their lawyers decided not to seek bail Friday.

Colt Gray, who has been charged with four counts of murder, is accused of using a semiautomatic assault-style rifle to kill two fellow students and two teachers Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. His father, Colin Gray, faces related charges in the latest attempt by prosecutors to hold parents responsible for their children’s actions in school shootings.

“You don’t have to have been physically injured in this to be a victim,” District Attorney Brad Smith said outside the Barrow County courthouse. “Everyone in this community is a victim. Every child in that school was a victim.”

The father and son appeared in back-to-back hearings Friday morning with about 50 onlookers in the courtroom, where workers had placed boxes of tissues along the benches, in addition to members of the media and sheriff’s deputies. Some victims’ family members in the front row hugged each other and one woman clutched a stuffed animal.

During his hearing, Colt Gray, wearing khaki pants and a green shirt, was advised of his rights as well as the charges and penalties he faced for the shooting at the school where he was a student. He was escorted out in shackles at the wrists and ankles.

The judge then called the teen back to the courtroom to correct an earlier misstatement that his crimes could be punishable by death. Because he’s a juvenile, the maximum penalty he would face is life without parole.

Shortly afterward, Colin Gray was brought into court dressed in a gray-striped jail uniform. Colin Gray, 54, was charged Thursday in connection with the shooting and answered questions in a barely audible croak, giving his age and saying he finished 11th grade, earning a high school equivalency diploma.

Colin Gray has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder related to the shooting. Arrest warrants said he caused the deaths of others “by providing a firearm to Colt Gray with knowledge that he was threat to himself and others.”

The charges come five months after Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting. They were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for not securing a firearm at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health before he killed four students in 2021. The Georgia shootings have also renewed debate about safe storage laws for guns and have parents wondering how to talk to their children about school shootings and trauma.

The hearings for the father and son came as police in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody said schools there and nationwide have received threats of violence since the Apalachee High School shooting, police said in a statement. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation also noted that numerous threats have been made to schools across the state this week.

Before Colin Gray’s arrest was reported, the AP knocked on the door of a home listed as his address seeking comment about his son’s arrest.

According to arrest warrants obtained by The Associated Press, Colt Gray is accused of using a “black semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle” in the rampage. Authorities have not offered any motive or explained how he obtained the gun or got it into the school.

He was charged as an adult in the deaths of Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. A neighbor remembered Schermerhorn as inquisitive when he was a little boy. Aspinwall and Irimie were both math teachers, and Aspinwall also helped coach the school’s football team. Irimie, who immigrated from Romania, volunteered at a local church, where she taught dance.

Additional charges will be filed against Colt Gray, Smith said. When the teenager was taken into custody Wednesday, authorities did not know the identities or conditions of the nine people injured in the attack, so they weren’t initially able to file charges related to those, he said.

Colt Gray denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when authorities interviewed him last year about a menacing post on social media, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday. Conflicting evidence on the post’s origin left investigators unable to arrest anyone, the report said. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the report from May 2023 and found nothing that would have justified bringing charges at the time.

The attack was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control but there has been little change to national gun laws.

It was the 30th mass killing in the U.S. so far this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those killings, which are defined as events in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.

The cases will be presented to a grand jury, which has its next scheduled meeting Oct. 17, Smith said. Grand jury proceedings are not open to the public or news media. If the grand jury issues indictments for Colt and Colin Gray, they will then be scheduled for arraignment. Colt Gray faces another hearing on Dec. 4.

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Martin reported from Atlanta. Associated Press journalists Charlotte Kramon, Sharon Johnson, Mike Stewart and Erik Verduzco in Winder; Trenton Daniel and Beatrice Dupuy in New York; Eric Tucker in Washington; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Kate Brumback in Atlanta; and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report.

They posted on social media, hosted community events and held a rally for the 28-year-old mother and pediatric nurse. Within days of her disappearance, community members began to apply public pressure on her husband, Naresh Bhatt.

“My friend called me and said, ‘What do you think?’ and I said, ‘Let’s talk about it,’ so we initiated a group chat and then the movement was started,” said Bina Khadkalama, a member of the local Nepali community in Northern Virginia.

Bhatt was arrested about three weeks after his wife disappeared and charged with concealing a dead body. A prosecutor later said in court that the amount of blood found in Bhatt’s home indicated injuries that were not survivable.

Though his wife’s body remains missing, Naresh Bhatt waived his right to grand jury proceedings on Thursday, paving the way for him to head to trial by early 2025. The trial date is expected to be set during Bhatt’s next hearing in Prince William Circuit Court on Sept. 16.

Prince William Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Matthew Sweet described the waiver as a tactical move by Bhatt’s attorneys that limits prosecutors’ time to build their murder case — a process that typically takes longer than six months.

“We have multiple agencies, multiple witnesses who are out of the state — out of the country — that we have to prepare for,” Sweet said in court.

Chief Public Defender Tracey Lenox argued that Bhatt was still entitled to a speedy trial, despite prosecutors’ wish for more time, adding that his defense couldn’t control whether the arrest was premature.

“They chose to charge in this,” Lenox said, adding: “I understand the inconvenience to the Commonwealth, but this is where we are.”

On Thursday, Manassas Park police said they were searching for evidence in the investigation at a nearby school, multiple parks and other community areas.

The investigation has drawn international attention to the small Northern Virginia community, where homicide cases are rare. In the courtroom, more than a dozen community members sat among the benches, wearing pink pins printed with Bhatt’s face.

“We’re always thinking about her, we’re doing so much here,” Khadkalama said. “The case is a 24-hour topic for us … I go to work, I drive home, I think about Mamta.”

Holly Wirth, a nurse who used to work with Mamta Bhatt, has been vocal in the case, hoping to gain accountability for her friend. She described Naresh Bhatt’s waiver of grand jury proceedings to be “legal gymnastics,” but said she believed prosecutors would still have ample time to prepare this case or other charges that they could be pursuing.

“Mr. Bhatt thinks he is smart, but I guarantee you, the weight of justice is leaning hard on him, and we are going to see this come to fruition,” Wirth said.

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Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

More than two years ago, former Rocky Mount Police Sgt. Thomas Robertson originally was sentenced to seven years and three months of imprisonment for joining a mob’s Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Prosecutors urged U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper to preserve the original sentence, but the judge imposed the shorter prison term Wednesday after agreeing to dismiss Robertson’s conviction for obstructing the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.

Robertson was the first Capitol riot defendant to be resentenced after the dismissal of a conviction for the obstruction charge at the center of the Supreme Court’s ruling in June, according to Justice Department prosecutors. The high court ruled 6-3 that a charge of obstructing an official proceeding must include proof that a defendant tried to tamper with or destroy documents — a distinction that applies to few Jan. 6 criminal cases.

“I assume I won’t be seeing you a third time,” the judge told Robertson at the end of his second sentencing hearing.

Robertson, who declined to address the court at his first sentencing hearing, told the judge on Wednesday that he looks forward to returning home and rebuilding his life after prison.

“I realize the positions that I was taking on that day were wrong,” he said of Jan. 6. “I’m standing before you very sorry for what occurred on that day.”

A jury convicted Robertson of all six counts in his indictment, including charges that he interfered with police officers during a civil disorder and that he entered a restricted area with a dangerous weapon, a large wooden stick. Robertson’s jury trial was the second among hundreds of Capitol riot cases.

Robertson traveled to Washington on that morning with another off-duty Rocky Mount police officer, Jacob Fracker, and a third man, a neighbor who wasn’t charged in the case.

Fracker, who pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and agreed to cooperate with the government, was sentenced in 2022 to probation and two months of home detention.

Jurors who convicted Robertson saw some of his posts on social media before and after the riot. In a Facebook post on Nov. 7, 2020, Robertson said “being disenfranchised by fraud is my hard line.”

“I’ve spent most of my adult life fighting a counter insurgency. (I’m) about to become part of one, and a very effective one,” he wrote.

After Jan. 6, Robertson told a friend that he was prepared to fight and die in a civil war and he clung to baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump.

“He’s calling for an open, armed rebellion. He’s prepared to start one,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Aloi told the judge.

Prosecutors said Robertson used his law enforcement and military training to block police officers who were trying to hold off the advancing mob.

Defense attorney Mark Rollins said Robertson made bad choices and engaged in bad behavior on Jan. 6 but wasn’t trying to “overthrow democracy” that day.

“What you find now is a broken man,” Rollins said.

The town fired Robertson and Fracker after the riot. Rocky Mount is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of Roanoke, Virginia, and has about 5,000 residents.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three gun shops that sold nearly three dozen firearms to a man who trafficked the weapons in and around Washington, D.C., are facing a new lawsuit jointly filed Tuesday by attorneys general for Maryland and the nation’s capital.

At least nine of those guns have now been found at crime scene and or with people wanted on warrants for violent offenses, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said. Many of the others are still unaccounted for.

“Our city is being flooded with illegal weapons,” he said. “All three of these stores ignored the red flags.”

Washington, D.C., has struggled with gun violence in recent years. The nation’s capital saw its highest number of homicides in more than three decades last year, and more than 90% of those were carried out with firearms, the suit states.

“Many of us watch the news and we wonder where all these guns are coming from,” said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown. “Now we have part of the answer.”

In Washington, the supply of weapons is often fueled by people who buy guns for others who can’t legally possess them, Schwalb said. About 95% of guns recovered in Washington, D.C., which has strict gun laws, originally come from nearby Maryland or Virginia, Schwalb said. While some of those are stolen weapons, more come from illegal straw sales, according to data about firearm trafficking investigations from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The suit seeks unspecified damages and court action to halt any future straw purchases.

The lawsuit is the first to be filed jointly and comes as cities and states around the country file civil suits against gun shops, including in New Jersey, Minnesota, Chicago and Philadelphia. Kansas City also settled a suit last year against a gun dealer accused of ignoring evidence that guns were being sold illegally.

Licensed firearm dealers do work with ATF to identify possible straw purchases, said Larry Keane, senior vice president at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an industry group. Still, he said that warning signs may not always be obvious at busy stores, where a buyer might encounter different employees on different days.

“The focus should be on the actions of the criminal, not trying to scapegoat retailers who do their best every day to try to prevent straw purchasing,” he said, pointing to a 2016 Justice Department survey of people in prison that found a relatively small number had gotten firearms from a retail source.

The new suit, filed with the gun safety group Everytown Law, accuses the Maryland-based stores of failing to respond to warning signs, including bulk purchasing and repetitive purchases.

The three stores sold a total of nearly three dozen similar weapons to Demetrius Minor over a seven-month period in 2021, the suit said. Nearly all were trafficked to others, including people who aren’t legally allowed to buy firearms, the suit alleges. One gun, for example, was found in a D.C. hotel room along with an illegal large-capacity magazine and another was found at the home of a stabbing suspect, the suit says.

Minor pleaded guilty to one count of dealing in firearms without a license last year in a plea deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. An attorney who represented Minor could not immediately be reached for comment.

One store, Atlantic Guns, Inc., said it has “never and will never knowingly sell to someone who we have reason to believe is committing a straw purchase.” Another, United Gun Shop, declined immediate comment, and the third, Engage Armament LLC, did not immediately respond.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and court action to halt any future straw purchases.

Survivors fled out of the back of the store to escape the bullets. For more than an hour, others hid in shelves, checkout stands and offices.

Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, then 21, surrendered after being shot in the leg by a police officer in the store, emerging wearing only his underwear and repeatedly asking officers to call his mother. His attorneys don’t dispute he was the shooter.

But why he carried out the mass shooting remains unknown as his trial is set to begin this week.

The closest thing to a possible motive revealed so far was when a mental health evaluator testified during a competency hearing last year that Alissa said he bought firearms to carry out a mass shooting and suggested that he wanted police to kill him.

Robert Olds, whose niece 25-year-old Rikki Olds was the manager Alissa fatally shot at close range near the entrance, plans to sit in his usual spot in the front row throughout the trial. While sometimes wishing Alissa had just been killed, he has held out hope that he would one day learn why his niece, known for her sense of humor and outgoing personality, and the others were killed. He has become less hopeful of that but is certain Alissa knew what was he was doing.

“I hope he goes to prison for the rest of his life, and then he’ll serve the real penalty when he has to meet God and answer for killing 10 people,” he said.

The trial is expected to focus largely on Alissa’s mental state at the time of the shooting. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and his lawyers argue he should be acquitted because his mental illness prevented him from being able to tell right from wrong.

The defense argued in a court filing that his relatives said he irrationally believed he was being followed by the FBI and would talk to himself as if he was talking to someone who was not there. However, prosecutors point out Alissa was never previously treated for mental illness and was able to work up to 60 hours a week leading up to the shooting, something they say would not have been possible for someone severely mentally ill.

Alissa is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder, 15 counts of attempted murder and other offenses including having six high-capacity ammunition magazines devices banned in Colorado after previous mass shootings.

Alissa’s trial has been delayed because experts repeatedly found he was not able to understand legal proceedings and help his defense. But after Alissa improved after being forcibly medicated, Judge Ingrid Bakke ruled in October that he was mentally competent, allowing proceedings to resume.

Prosecutors will have the burden of proving he was sane, attempting to show Alissa knew what he was doing and intended to kill people in the store.

Authorities have not explained why Alissa bypassed a King Soopers near his home in the Denver suburb of Arvada and drove about 15 miles (24 kilometers) to the chain’s store in Boulder, a city he had never visited before the shooting, according to the defense.

Prosecutors have presented evidence that Alissa had researched things like how to move and shoot with an assault rifle and what kinds of bullets are the most deadly in the months before the shooting. One court document noted without elaboration that he searched for information about the “Christ Church attacks”, an apparent reference to the livestreamed shooting attacks by a white nationalist on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 51 people in March 2019.

Alissa immigrated from Syria with his family as a toddler. He lived with his family in Arvada, where they owned a restaurant.

The only known problem Alissa had before the shooting was an incident in high school in 2018 when he was convicted of assaulting a fellow student, according to police documents. A former classmate also told The Associated Press that Alissa was kicked off the wrestling team after yelling he would kill everyone following a loss in a practice match.

A sister-in-law who lived in Alissa’s home told police that he had been playing with what she thought was a “machine gun” two days before the shooting before two relatives took it away, according to court documents.

A number of Alissa’s relatives are listed as potential witnesses for the defense during the trial. Potential jurors will be questioned starting Tuesday, with opening statements expected before the end of the week.

Both sides will rely on experts to testify about his sanity, possibly including videos of their interviews with Alissa, said defense lawyer Karen Steinhauser, a former prosecutor and University of Denver law professor.

If jurors don’t believe Alissa was legally insane, they could also consider whether his mental illness prevented him from being able to act with deliberation and intent and find him guilty of second-degree murder instead, she said.

A sanity evaluation done by experts at the state mental hospital found Alissa was legally sane at the time of the attack, according to details provided by the defense in a court hearing this spring. According to the defense, the evaluators found the attack would not have happened but for Alissa’s untreated mental illness, which attorney Sam Dunn said was schizophrenia that included “auditory hallucinations.”

Olds said he is bracing himself to learn more horrific details about the shooting, including surveillance video not previously shown in public.

But he said finally having the trial behind him will help him and many of the families to finally grieve what they’ve lost, he said.

“There’s no such thing as moving on. It’s finding other ways to live without your loved one,” he said.

Portsmouth prosecutors had charged McClean with manslaughter in two separate 2018 cases. In both, the officer was accused of failing to render first aid to people police arrested before they died.

Stanfield, 38, wanted to see the records, he said, in large part because it’s “so unusual to me that it’s law enforcement being prosecuted by the local prosecutor.”

This was only the latest in court cases stemming from the York County man’s hobby — filing open records requests to state and local agencies, which he says he does about a half-dozen times a week.

“I’ll read a news article in the morning, and I’ll think, ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ ” he said. “I want to see some records.’ ”

Several of Stanfield’s open records requests have gone to court. He tends to focus on high-profile cases — a meals-tax scandal in Richmond, casino controversies in Richmond and Norfolk and a report into a shooting at a Richmond high school graduation last year.

And when he pushes for records, he said, it’s all about attitude.

“Public bodies think these are their records — and that when you do a (Freedom of Information Act) request, you’re asking permission for them to share something with you,” he said. “And that’s just not my position. My position is what the law says — that these are all presumed to be mine. They’re the public’s. They’re all of ours.”

Though agencies can withhold some documents under certain exemptions, he said, those should be the exception rather than the rule.

By the time Stanfield asked for records into the McClean case in December, the officer already had been acquitted of one of the manslaughter counts. He was acquitted in the second three months ago.

Also at the time, Stanfield wanted records about Robert Huntington, a former Portsmouth Commonwealth’s Attorney’s investigator who helped look into McClean — and whom McClean sued in May, alleging malicious prosecution.

On Dec. 19, Stanfield sent a Virginia Freedom of Information Act request to the Portsmouth Police Department and Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office.

He asked for “any and all documents and communications mentioning or concerning any closed investigations” into McClean. And he sought “any and all documents and communications mentioning or concerning any complaints or disciplinary actions against Mr. Robert Huntington” between 2014-23.

The city eventually acknowledged they had 20 files “with hundreds of pages of records” into McClean. But they cited personnel and administrative exemptions in withholding them.

But police referred Stanfield to the Portsmouth Commonwealth’s Attorney regarding documents pertaining to Huntington. But about a week later, the prosecutor’s office said the police were actually the “custodian” of that record. Stanfield wrote back to the police — and they referred him back to prosecutors.

Feeling the runaround, Stanfield emailed Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Morales and two others.

“Please clarify who is the proper custodian of the records, otherwise I will be forced to bring the question to a Circuit Court judge,” he wrote on Dec. 27.

He never got a response.

But Stanfield didn’t take that lying down. Though he typically takes his cases to court without a lawyer, he hired attorney Verbena M. Askew to represent him in this case, explaining that “Portsmouth can be tricky.”

Askew sued Morales on March 20, asserting the prosecutor violated the state’s open records law by failing to properly cite an exemption within the five working days. Morales, meantime, hired two outside lawyers to represent her.

In May — five months after Stanfield’s initial request — the commonwealth’s attorney’s office’s lawyers said the records about Huntington are exempt from mandatory disclosure under protections for personnel records and administrative records. Separately, the city said it had 70 pages of records into Huntington on file, but also withheld them based on the same provisions.

At a hearing Monday, Askew asked Circuit Judge Randall Smith to rule that the prosecutor’s office ceded its right to withhold the records when it took five months to invoke an exemption. Under law, Askew noted, they only have five business days to do so.

“They have played games with Mr. Stanfield,” Askew said at Monday’s hearing. “You don’t get to wait five months to say the records are exempt. So I would submit that they have waived that.”

A spokeswoman for the commonwealth’s attorney said this week that the office was unable to comment because of the pending litigation.

Attorneys representing Morales acknowledged at the Circuit Court hearing that the prosecutor’s office should have cited the exemptions earlier. Still, they contended, that doesn’t mean they give up their right to cite the provisions allowing the withholding under law.

Because the records Stanfield wants are clearly exempt from mandatory disclosure anyway, they asserted, “the alleged failure is immaterial … and of no consequence.”

Smith said the runaround “must have been frustrating for Mr. Stanfield.”

“No one likes to have to submit a bunch of requests,” he said. “It certainly would lead a reasonable person to be frustrated.”

But Smith stopped short of granting Askew’s motion to force Morales to turn over the records. While the prosecutor’s office improperly ignored the response deadlines, Smith said, he would still allow them to cite the exemption.

Still, Smith voiced skepticism that a government agency should be the unilateral arbiter that a document should be withheld, particularly when it ends up in a court challenge.

“No one can ever see if they were following the law or not?” he asked skeptically during the hearing. “No one can check behind the public officer?

Smith told attorneys from both sides to file briefs on that issue in the coming weeks. He also appeared open to the possibility of reviewing the documents himself to determine what can be released.

Stanfield said the episode proves he has a lot more work to do to push for government transparency.

“I thought one way to get public bodies to comply more often with the law was to get a reputation where they think, ‘OK, maybe we ignore the timelines with other people, but this guy, he’ll be a pain in our ass,'” Stanfield said. “He’ll sue us. We need to follow the law with this guy.”

But so far, he said, “it hasn’t had that effect.”

Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com

Chesapeake resident Nelson Velez filed the lawsuit in Chesapeake Circuit Court this week, asking the court to compel the Virginia Department of Elections and the local registrar to find Carey ineligible to run, remove him from the ballots and delay printing them.

It’s the second legal action taken amid an ongoing dispute over Carey’s candidacy. A majority of City Council members in July approved a lawsuit seeking to compel him to resign his council seat.

At issue is a resign-to-run provision on the books in Chesapeake that requires any council member running for mayor to vacate their council seat by June 30. The provision was established when Chesapeake held city elections in May, but it was not altered when the General Assembly acted in 2021 to shift city elections to November. Carey’s council term will end Dec. 31.

Velez’s complaint states because Carey didn’t resign, he didn’t fulfill all necessary requirements to be a mayoral candidate.

Reached by phone Friday, Carey said the move was “disheartening” and “anti-democratic.”

“It’s just an attempt to disenfranchise not only myself, but the people that I represent and the issues that we’re fighting for,” he said. “I would have never thought to see something like this happening in the city of Chesapeake.”

Carey and Mary Lynn Pinkerman, the city’s elections registrar, confirmed to The Virginian-Pilot that Carey filed all necessary documentation to be considered a candidate. Pinkerman, who’s named in the complaint, didn’t comment on the pending litigation.

Velez’s complaint, which seeks an emergency injunction, urges a hearing no later than Tuesday, but as of Friday, no hearing was scheduled. His attorney, Christopher Woodfin of Woodfin Law in Williamsburg, told The Pilot on Friday that Chesapeake judges have recused themselves, and a judge is being appointed. Still, he’s confident the court will expedite the process before the election.

It’s also unclear when the City Council’s lawsuit will be heard. All Chesapeake Circuit Court judges also have recused themselves in that case and no hearing was on the docket as of Friday.

When Carey declared his candidacy in March, he announced he was switching political parties to become a Democrat in the nonpartisan election. He is running against incumbent Rick West in the Nov. 5 election.

Pinkerman said the window for creating, proofing, printing and delivering ballots begins Sept. 6 and spans to Sept. 20, the start of early voting at the registrar’s office.

Velez’s complaint also states that if Carey is included on ballots, he asks that Carey be forced to resign as a council member and pay back the salary he earned after June 30.

Reached by phone Friday, Velez said he filed the lawsuit because he “needed to act” before the start of early voting.

“I pretty much filed it because I’m a citizen of Chesapeake, and I’m concerned about this absolute disregard of law,” he said.

John O’Bannon, the chair of the Virginia Board of Elections, also is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. He did not respond to a request for comment. Andrea Gaines, a Virginia Department of Elections spokesperson, declined to comment on the pending litigation.

Natalie Anderson, 757-732-1133, natalie.anderson@virginiamedia.com

Tyosha Mitchell was the highest ranking female member of a Norfolk-based gang called the Mad Stone Bloods, a subset of the larger Black P. Stone Nation gang, according to police. As a condition of exiting the group, she had to be “beaten out,” court documents show.

A group of four gang members — Hezekiah Carney, 25, of Norfolk; Jamica Langley, 25, of Richmond; Donnisha Goodman, 27, of Portsmouth, and Acacia Jackson, 19, of New York — traveled to Mitchell’s Richmond apartment to beat her in the early morning hours May 6, 2023. They left only to return an hour later, this time with Jayquan Jones, 21, of Richmond. Some members of the group were armed and wore masks.

The group attacked Mitchell again, then took her away in a vehicle. They drove about an hour east to a remote area in Yorktown on Old Williamsburg Road, about halfway between Riverwalk Townes town houses and Colonial National Historical Parkway. There, the five members took her out of the car and shot her.

Her body was discovered by a jogger about 6:30 a.m. that morning near the tree line about 10 feet from Old Williamsburg Road. She had been shot eight times in the head, abdomen, back, buttocks and legs, according to the medical examiner.

Carney then told the others to avoid capture by burning their clothes, staying together and not speaking to police, prosecutors said. The vehicle used to take Mitchell away was found May 7, with Jackson, Goodman and Langley inside, along with substantial evidence, including multiple cellphones, a black mask and a bullet matching the shell casings found at the shooting site.

Carney, Goodman and Jones pleaded guilty to using a firearm to cause death and each faces a minimum of 35 years in prison with a maximum of 45. Jackson and Langley pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping and face up to life in prison.

Jackson is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 31; Langley on Nov. 7; Goodman on Jan. 7; and Carney and Jones on Jan. 9

Gavin Stone, 757-712-4806, gavin.stone@virginiamedia.com