Some were convicted of embezzlement, others of possession of child pornography or sexual assault.
One was convicted of pulling a knife on a woman he lived with and later, raping her.
All still have their police officer certification in Virginia.
As legislators plan to address systemic policing problems in a special session next week, a Virginian-Pilot investigation found three dozen officers convicted of crimes since 2011 who were never decertified. It’s unclear if any are still working as police.
State law makes it impossible to strip an officer of their certification unless they have been convicted of a felony or certain misdemeanors. And even when officers’ conduct reaches those narrow criteria, many are not decertified by the state board with that responsibility.
Among the convicted criminals who still have their police certification:
Deangelo Freeman, a former Hampton detective who pleaded guilty in federal court to providing a local drug dealer with information while working as a narcotics detective.
Former Henrico County Sheriff’s Deputy Jennifer Baran, who pleaded guilty to having a sexual relationship with an inmate.
Earnest Grubbs, a former school resource officer in Bedford County, who was initially charged with abducting a teenage girl and taking her to Kentucky. He pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent liberties with a minor.
Michael Green, who was found guilty of assault and battery after he pulled over his ex-fiancé while a Dinwiddie sheriff’s deputy and forced her to the ground and pepper sprayed her.
Sens. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton and Scott Surovell, D-Mount Vernon, as well as representatives from the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police and Virginia Sheriffs Association say they hope to correct this problem in the General Assembly’s upcoming session.
A bill drafted by Locke and Surovell would broaden the criteria for decertification beyond felony convictions and, since a 2013 revision to the law, misdemeanors that constitute what is called “moral turpitude” and involve sex offenses, lying, cheating or stealing.
“It’s disturbing that there are so many and that they didn’t get decertified,” said Locke of the three dozen former officers The Pilot found. “And I’m pretty sure that some of them are working in other places.”
Whether that’s the case remains unclear. Some are likely too old to be officers now. Ages at the time of their convictions ranged between 22 and 63. A few are still incarcerated.
The Pilot provided a list of 36 officers with convictions and their police certification to state officials and legislators.
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Criminal Justice Services Director Shannon Dion said her department can’t answer questions about specific officers because their database containing that information is down and would not be back online for another week.
The law already requires justice services be given notice if an officer resigns or is terminated in advance of a conviction, though until the conviction is final they would not be decertified, according to department officials.
Probably most, if not all, of these officers were not with a department at the time of their convictions, Surovell said. That means it’s likely no one thought to notify DCJS that its board should review their conduct — a loophole allowing officers to remain certified.
Surovell said he didn’t realize the state had a serious problem of officers escaping decertification until, in reaction to George Floyd’s death while an officer knelt on his neck in Minneapolis, he began to work on the police reform bill for the special session.
“Since I began putting it together, I’ve had many people in law enforcement reaching out to me, explaining the shortcomings of the current system,” Surovell said. “Your spreadsheet made me more aware of the scope of it and the details.”
Locke and Surovell said their bill, if passed, would require police chiefs to notify the board about any officer who resigned while their conduct is under review. That would fix the problem of officers not getting decertified, they say.
It’s one provision in an expansive piece of legislation that would, among other things, ban choke holds, require warrants to be served during the daytime in most circumstances, open police records to chiefs who are considering hiring officers from elsewhere, and expand the data collected on officers’ actions.
Some of the changes may be contentious, but changes to officer certification appear to have broad support.
Even if none of the 36 convicted criminals found by The Pilot are now in law enforcement, they need their certifications stripped, said Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia.
“Given how narrow the standards are for when somebody can be decertified, the idea that anybody who would be eligible for decertification based on being convicted of a crime hasn’t been would be very disturbing,” she said.
“Watch the show folks”
In July, video of a white Virginia State Police officer threatening and then pulling a young Black man out of his car by his neck went viral.
The officer curses and screams at the young man while smiling at the camera.
“You’re gonna get … whopped in front of the Lord and all of creation,” he says before putting the young man in a choke hold and dragging him from the vehicle.
The officer’s conduct is not reviewable under current state law — he’ll keep his police certification unless convicted of a crime. The April 2019 incident is under investigation and the trooper, Charles Hewitt, is on administrative leave.
The incident has come to symbolize the lack of accountability of Virginia police. It’s the type of conduct that legislators and several in law enforcement say the DCJS board should be able to review.
“It’s emblematic of the fact that police feel invulnerable,” Gastañaga said. “Here’s a guy who’s right in the camera, knows he’s on camera and says, ‘Watch the show folks.’ That is the behavior of someone who feels like they cannot be held accountable.”
Derrick Thompson, the 28-year-old pulled from his car in the video, says he recorded what happened because there are few repercussions for police violence in Virginia. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor obstruction of justice charge.
Thompson said he’s been pulled over or stopped as a pedestrian more than 50 times and always records his encounters with officers.
“I need accountability, and I need safety,” Thompson said in an interview. “I think he wanted to make a statement, not just to myself, but to anybody that crosses him. ‘This is what’s going to happen to you. And … there’s nothing you can do about it.'”
Locke said she hopes the proposed legislation will help prevent officers from treating people like Hewitt treated Thompson in the future.
“That could have ended up in a George Floyd situation,” she said. “That young man was saying, ‘I’m not doing anything,’ and he (Hewitt) continued to be out of control. He was the person out of control.”
The video may not tell the full story, but Hewitt’s actions at minimum should be reviewable to see if there is a pattern of such behavior, said Chesapeake Chief Kelvin Wright, who sits on the criminal justice services board. Even if some of his actions were appropriate, the way Hewitt talked to Thompson could amount to abuse of power.
“Some of the things he said, in my opinion, were threatening,” Wright said. “There’s a difference between threatening with legitimate power and authority, as opposed to someone perhaps, for lack of a better term, having an ego trip.”
“Mutual respect”
State legislatures around the country are grappling with how to hold police more accountable.
Gov. Ralph Northam, the Democratic Caucus, the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police and the Virginia Sheriffs Association support measures that would expand the criteria for taking away an officer’s certification.
Much of the legislation is still being drafted.
Many also want to make it easier for police chiefs and sheriffs to get the personnel records of people applying to become officers from agencies where they worked in the past. A long-standing problem is that officers often resign from a department and quickly get a job elsewhere without any repercussions for their conduct.
The state Fraternal Order of Police also supports legislation proposed by the Chiefs of Police Association that would prevent officers from jumping from department to department.
“This is key in developing professionalism throughout the commonwealth,” said John H. Ohrnberger, the FOP president.
Smaller departments usually don’t have the money or resources of larger departments, so when someone applies and they already have their police certification, that saves time and money, said Roger Goldman, professor emeritus at the Saint Louis University School of Law and a national expert on police licensing and revocation laws. There are nearly 18,000 police agencies in America, many with 10 or fewer officers.
“Some of these agencies are so small and have no money, so even if they knew an officer had a problem, they would hire them,” Goldman said. “At least it’s a start if the hiring agencies know about the problem.”
In the past few months, there’s been interest in strengthening decertification laws throughout the country, Goldman said. Five states — California, Massachusetts, Hawaii, New Jersey and Rhode Island — don’t even decertify officers. Legislators in several of those states are now pushing for it.
Many believe misconduct shouldn’t need to rise to the level of a prosecutable offense to get an officer decertified. Goldman likened decertification to the licensing of other professions at the state level — if lawyers, barbers and doctors can lose their license for misconduct, then why can’t police?
Maggie DeBoard, Herndon’s chief of police and incoming president of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, said chiefs want to see as much information as possible about whom they are hiring.
“If I call a sheriff’s department or police department … there’s been times in the past when they won’t let me see certain things,” she said.
Legislation being drafted by the association would require departments to hand over all of a former officer’s files and disciplinary records. Locke and Surovell’s bill would also address the records issue.
“It seems like we have complete support for this,” DeBoard said.
Where police and legislators’ proposals will likely diverge is in who holds the power to initiate decertification — chiefs and sheriffs or the criminal justice services board.
Locke and Surovell’s proposal would make it the Department of Criminal Justice Services’ responsibility to create a set of state-wide standards for police, then give their board the power to decertify officers that violate those standards.
Gov. Ralph Northam also likes that proposal, said Alena Yarmosky, Northam’s press secretary. She said he supports legislation that would also allow the board to review any actions brought to their attention. It wouldn’t take a written notice from the head of an agency to trigger a review, as it does now.
DeBoard believes police chiefs alone should have the power to flag officers for decertification based on standards created by DCJS.
“They don’t come and look at my stuff now,” she said of the department. ” Let’s say, I’m the state police superintendent, and I decide not to fire this guy. That’s my decision.”
She said heads of police agencies are accountable, and if they don’t fire people who need to be fired, “I’m not going to be in a job very long, right?”
But criminal justice services shouldn’t get to overturn that decision and decertify an officer if a chief felt they should keep their job and certification, she said.
Thompson said he just wants police to be held accountable for their actions so his 9-year-old son doesn’t grow up scared of law enforcement.
“I don’t want him to be intimidated by them,” he said. “There should be mutual respect when it comes to law enforcement and the community.”
Staff writer Moss Brennan contributed to this report.
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How we did the story
Data for this story was compiled by searching through newspaper articles and federal and state court records. The Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings was used to update The Pilot’s police shooting database, which was created by sending Freedom of Information Act requests to all of the Commonwealth Attorneys in the state. The list of decertified officers was provided by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. Spreadsheets containing data in the above graphics and links to local news stories on the various incidents involving police officers can be found here.
