City holds public forum for three Police Chief candidates

...after City withheld their names until hours before the public forum.

Yesterday, the public was allowed to hear from three Charlottesville Police Chief candidates at a 2-hour public forum held at Carver Recreation Center and streamed online. The City hired executive recruitment firm POLIHIRE in August to conduct a national search, and Interim City Manager Michael C. Rogers selected the finalists, which was announced on November 22. However, Rogers elected to withhold the names of the candidates until hours before the forum, leaving the media scrambling to research background on the three men. After the forum, one of the major takeaways is that Michael Kochis, current chief of police for the Warrenton Police Department, appears to be the only candidate without some baggage.

Easton McDonald, a current member of the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, shot his teenage daughter in 2014 while he was a sheriff's deputy when he mistook her for an intruder, and then crashed his car taking her to the hospital. Interim City Manager Michael Rogers said it wasn't necessary to bring that up during the forum. "That's not something that he was criminally liable for and it doesn't bear on his judgment at all," said Rogers.

Current interim Police Chief Tito Durrette is named in a $10 Million lawsuit filed by former Charlottesville Police Chief RaShall Brackney in which she alleges she was terminated after she took disciplinary action against SWAT Team officers for “misogynistic, harassing, and racist behaviors” during the summer of 2021. Durrette is a longtime Charlottesville police officer and a former manager of the SWAT Team.

Kochis, on the other hand, was featured in a June Washington Post story featuring the department's Guardian Score program. Officers in Warrenton hand out business cards with a QR code on the back during encounters with residents which allow them to provide feedback on the interaction with the officer. Kochis also formed a community group that recommends policy changes at the department, which resulted in the ban of chokeholds long before the Virginia General Assembly did. During the forum, Kochis stated that he saw policing "as a co-production with the community" and shared his belief that "women make better cops." Ironically, Brackney was present at the forum, and later told the DTM that policing as a co-production with the community is "a concept and term I have been advocating 4 for years along with Dr. Brian Williams (UVA)."

It was also interesting how the different Police Chief candidates responded when asked about the problem of gun violence.

Latroy A. "Tito" Durrette -- said that it's happening mostly in Black and brown communities and that we need to respond not just when it happens "where the money is" and in our "financial districts." Said we have to "come up with meaningful ways to address" the problem and "circle the wagons" and "break bread and talk about it" But did not outline any specific solutions except creating a "neighborhood watch" and "finding stuff for these young people to do, because there's not a lot," he said.

Easton L. McDonald -- focused almost entirely on the fact, he says, that people are getting guns by stealing them from vehicles. "That’s how guns are getting out and about," he said. Suggested sending a message out to the community to "lock their cars after 9 pm" and making the community feel comfortable to contact law enforcement about people with guns.

Michael Kochis - mentioned the fact that gun violence is actually down, but that it is still a problem, and that that doesn't mean anything to people in neighborhoods who are experiencing it. Described how he met with community stakeholders and came up with a strategy, said that people told him "they wanted to be policed, just not over-policed." Said there needs to be a clear balance between the two. Said they found that the "bad actors didn't live in the communities," and so they told specific communities what they were going to do and " identified them and removed them." Said they saw a significant decrease in shots fired calls over several months in neighborhoods they focused attention on.

Police Chief candidate resumes:

Michael Kochis / Easton L. McDonald / Latroy A. "Tito" Durrette