Inauguration of University of Richmond’s 11th president slated for April 8th

Richmond ranked fourth worst city for spring allergy sufferers

Youngkin pledges to pull Virginia from carbon market by executive order

VCUarts renames Fine Arts Building for first African American dean, Dr. Murry N. DePillars

Patrick Patrong named VMFA’s new Chief Diversity Officer

Secco Wine Bar Closing at the End of the Month

Richmond BizSense Reporting that Spoonbread Bistro is Closed for Good

Richmond Black Restaurant Experience is Back this Week

ACACIA Midtown reopening restaurant at Libbie Mill

Buzz and Ned’s on Arthur Ashe Boulevard Closing

Test Your RVA Street Knowledge with Back of Your Hand

Beary Entertaining Film Now Playing at the Science Museum

Three Sheets to the Wind and Full Moon Fever take the stage at Maymont May 6th

Eleventh Richmond Bluegrass Jam set for April 30th after two year COVID hiatus

Richmond Night Market Turns on the Lights for its 4th Season

Richmond Region Tourism Foundation distributes $25,000 to local sports organizations 

ACACIA Midtown reopening restaurant at Libbie Mill

Buz & Ned’s closes Scott’s Addition location ahead of redevelopment project

House GOP blocks recreational marijuana sales from beginning this year

Allen & Allen accepting applications from high school seniors for annual scholarship program

Preview: Open Cup Returns to Richmond as Kickers Face NC Fusion U-23

VUU Spring Jamboree Softball and Football Photos

Kickers Dig Deep to Draw Against the Hailstorm – Photos and Game Summary

Preview: Hailstorm is Coming to City Stadium

Kickers Win Home Opener with Authority – Photos and Game Summary

The Valentine receives major national grant to upgrade archive storage facilities

U of R professors awarded $325K NEH Grant for open-source tool to analyze historic images

The Valentine Museum and “Reclaiming the Monument” receive historic grant

Lead Box Found in Lee Monument Not the Elusive Time Capsule

Governor Northam announces study to explore ways to reconnect Jackson Ward

The Valentine was awarded the largest grant of any other humanities project in Virginia and is in the top 8% of the 245 grant recipients across the country.

On April 13th, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced a grant awarding $408,761 to The Valentine for new collection storage materials. The grant will go toward the Valentine Moment Campaign, a years-long effort to modernize the museum’s storage facilities and strengthen the presentation of Richmond history by analyzing all 1.6 million objects in its collection.

The Valentine received the full amount requested with a 2:1 matching requirement after demonstrating its commitment to preserving local history, addressing complex social issues, and engaging diverse audiences. The grant will support a $1.6 million project to purchase and install compact storage cabinetry and fixtures in the main museum building, under the umbrella of the larger $16 million Valentine Moment Campaign.

“The Valentine Moment Campaign will fortify our museum to serve Richmonders for generations to come. The NEH’s generous grant is a crucial part of our efforts,” said Valentine Director Bill Martin. “This infrastructure upgrade allows us to safely store important historical objects, and our goal is to use these objects to engage, challenge and inspire our community.”

The Valentine was awarded the largest grant of any other humanities project in Virginia and is in the top 8% of the 245 grant recipients across the country.

Trevor Dickerson is the co-founder and editor of RVAhub.com, lover of all things Richmond, and a master of karate and friendship for everyone.

The inaugural tour will begin at The Valentine on Saturday, April 16 at 10:00 a.m., with a complimentary breakfast served at 9:00 a.m. The tour will explore the museum’s own historic Court End neighborhood.

This weekend, The Valentine will begin its 2022 walking tour season, which explores neighborhoods and historic sites across Richmond. Each tour reveals little-known stories throughout history that shaped Richmond today. In addition to offering popular traditional tours and the groundbreaking augmented reality tour of Monument Avenue which first launched last summer, The Valentine will debut several new experiences. 

‘It’s as if the police tagged them with a chip under their skin’

Scott Durvin says he faced aggressive questioning from a Chesterfield County Police detective after his friend died of a drug overdose at the end of 2019. What he didn’t know at the time was that police had also begun secretly tracking his whereabouts by ordering Verizon Wireless to regularly ping his phone’s GPS and report his location back to detectives in real time.

“That’s kind of shocking, really,” Durvin said, reached by phone at the same number police were using to follow him virtually a little more than two years ago. “The detective would call me all the time and try to get me to give them information and he would threaten to lock me up. But I didn’t have anything to do with it and he finally left me alone.”

Police never described Durvin as a suspect in the search warrant application they submitted seeking permission to track him and court records show he has not been charged with any crimes in Virginia since police took out the warrant.

Instead, officers wrote that they had found voicemails from Durvin on the overdose victim’s phone and thought tracking his location might help them figure out who supplied the deadly dose of heroin, noting that Durvin had been with the man during what appeared to be a prior overdose in Richmond.

The case offers a glimpse into a surveillance technique that’s become commonplace for police but is mostly unknown among the general public: cell phone location tracking.

Public records requests submitted to a sampling of 18 police departments around the state found officers used the technique to conduct more than 7,000 days worth of surveillance in 2020. Court records show the tracking efforts spanned cases ranging from high-profile murders to minor larcenies.

A state law passed with little notice in 2015 authorizes the surveillance as long as police first obtain a search warrant from a magistrate or judge, but in practice, the bar for judicial approval isn’t particularly high. Officers simply have to attest in an affidavit that they have probable cause that the tracking data is “relevant to a crime that is being committed or has been committed.”

The warrants are limited by law to 30 days but can be — and often are — renewed monthly by a judge.

“I don’t think people know that their cell phones can be converted to tracking devices by police with no notice,” said Steve Benjamin, a criminal defense lawyer in Richmond who said he’s recently noticed an uptick in cases in which officers employed the technique. “And the reality of modern life is everyone has their phone on them during the day and on their nightstand at night. … It’s as if the police tagged them with a chip under their skin, and people have no idea how easily this is accomplished.”

In Durvin’s case, the justification police gave for tracking him came down to a single paragraph in the search warrant application asserting officers believed it might help their case.

“It is in your affiant’s experience that users of narcotics will associate with other users and suppliers of narcotics in the drug trade,” wrote Det. G. Hopkins. “Your affiant believes the real time location data … will assist in the on-going investigation into the supplier of narcotics.”

Records reviewed by the Mercury suggest Chesterfield police are among the more prolific users of the technology in Virginia.

The department makes no apologies for its embrace of phone tracking. “We exist to preserve human life and protect the vulnerable, and we will use all lawful tools at our disposal to do so,” Chesterfield County Police Spokeswoman Elizabeth Caroon said in a statement.

To assess how widely police in Virginia employ cellphone tracking, the Mercury submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to police departments around the state seeking billing records from telephone companies, which charge police departments daily or monthly fees to report their customers’ location to officers.

• At least nine of the 18 police departments sampled track cell phones, but how frequently varied considerably by department. At the high end, Chesterfield accounted for 4,500 days of tracking and 346 warrants, while Norfolk Police, at the low end, reported 63 days of tracking across six warrants.

• Two departments indicated they had relevant invoices but requested hundreds of dollars to provide the records to the Mercury: Loudoun County estimated it would cost $361 to fulfill the request. Alexandria requested $1,360 and ignored emails seeking an explanation for the high price tag.

• The remaining seven departments responded that they did not have any relevant billing records, indicating they don’t use the technique.

• Only one of the departments surveyed, Alexandria, indicated it had an internal policy governing how their officers use cellphone tracking, but a copy of the document provided by the city was entirely redacted.

To understand what kinds of cases police are using the technology to investigate, the Mercury also reviewed all unsealed search warrant applications filed in 2020 in the city of Richmond and Chesterfield County. The documents, which are presented to magistrates or circuit court judges to justify and obtain permission to conduct the surveillance, describe the crimes under investigation and the basic facts of the individual cases.

Drug investigations accounted for more than 60 percent of the search warrants taken out in the two jurisdictions. Larcenies were the second most frequent category. Major crimes like murders, rapes and abductions made up a fraction of the tracking requests, accounting for just under 25 of the nearly 400 warrants filed in the jurisdictions that year.

Real-time location warrants in Virginia are addressed to telephone companies, ordering them to regularly ping a customers’ phone for its GPS location and share the results with police. All four major telecoms charge varying rates to surveille their customers on behalf of law enforcement.

T-Mobile charged $30 per day, which comes to $900 per month of tracking.

AT&T charged a monthly service fee of $100 and an additional $25 per day the service is utilized, which comes to $850 per 30 days of tracking, according to bills reviewed by the Mercury.

Verizon calls the service “periodic location updates,” charging $5 per day on top of a monthly service fee of $100, which comes to $200 per 30 days of tracking.

Sprint offered the cheapest prices to report locations back to law enforcement, charging a flat fee of $100 per month.

In Richmond, Maj. Ronnie Armstead said in an interview the department leaves it to individual detectives to determine when and how to use cell phone tracking. And he said officers don’t distinguish between major and minor cases — they just want to solve crimes: “These detectives do a thorough investigation,” he said. “They don’t care what size fish you are.”

In practice, that means officers used the technique in high-stakes drug investigations as well as more run-of-the-mill investigations.

Court records show police used phone tracking extensively in the investigation that led to the arrest of Nikike Tyler, who authorities allege led a regional drug ring that imported and distributed large quantities of heroin, cocaine and marijuana. Search warrants filed by a regional drug task force in Richmond indicate officers tracked Tyler’s cell phone for more than a year, updating warrants as he regularly changed cell phone numbers, according to affidavits on file.

Records show police also turned to location tracking when a former employee of a Mexican food restaurant in downtown Richmond, Café Ole, was accused by an ex-girlfriend of stealing $200 from the register. According to the warrant on file, a Richmond officer received permission to track the man’s location for 30 days after a visit to his mother’s house in Goochland failed to turn him up.

Sometimes, police sought the warrants even in cases where officers weren’t sure who exactly they were tracking.

In one Chesterfield search warrant application, an officer wrote in their affidavit that an unnamed person he described as “a reliable confidential source” had given him the phone number for an alleged drug dealer named “Weedy” who his source had heard was coming to the Richmond area to sell heroin. A magistrate approved the warrant based on the officer’s justification that “real time location data collected during this investigation will assist in identifying ‘Weedy,’ potential co-conspirators and locations utilized for conducting drug transactions.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that warrantless cellphone tracking is unconstitutional back in 2012. Since then, there’s been limited public discussion or awareness of the kinds of tracking warrants the judiciary is approving.

When Virginia passed a law three years later setting out the warrant requirement in state code, it drew almost no notice in the General Assembly, passing unanimously on every vote. The bill’s patron, then-Del. Manoli Loupassi, a Richmond lawyer, said he had little recollection of the legislation and was surprised to hear how often police now use the statute to enable cell phone tracking.

“I think the original intent was to capture and ferret out extremely serious criminality,” Loupassi said. “Not just nothing cases. And this is one of the millions of examples of how the road to hell can be paved with good intentions.”

Police officials, meanwhile, argue it only makes sense to take advantage of technological advances. Dana Schrad, the executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, said departments often don’t have the resources to conduct physical surveillance. And even if they did, she said cell phone tracking is safer.

“It may be considered an intrusive way of gathering data on someone, but it’s certainly less dangerous than physical tracking,” she said.

Back in Chesterfield, police officials described their use of cell phone tracking as part of an effort to proactively investigate drug crimes, suggesting the effort had helped keep the number of fatal overdoses from rising in the county.

“We believe our continued robust enforcement efforts are part of why the numbers haven’t increased further in Chesterfield,” Caroon, the department’s spokeswoman, said.

Meanwhile, Durvin, who Chesterfield police tracked in the 2020 overdose investigation, counts himself among those who considers the technique intrusive. “It’s kind of f**ked up,” he said. “I feel like my privacy was violated. And who’s to say they ain’t still doing it?”

Use of real time location tracking varies significantly by police department, according to billing records and search warrants reviewed by the Mercury.

Chesterfield County Police: Conducted more than 4,500 days of cell phone location surveillance and obtained 346 real-time location search warrants in 2020, according to billing and court records.

Arlington County: Conducted an unknown number of days of surveillance across an unknown number of warrants, but provided purchase orders for GPS location surveillance totaling $86,000, which is the second highest amount reported of localities surveyed.

Hanover County Sheriff’s Office: Conducted 1,407 days of surveillance and obtained at least 71 real-time location search warrants.

Virginia Beach Police Department: 840 days of surveillance across at least 51 real time location warrants.

Fairfax County Police Department: An unknown number of days of surveillance across 56 real time location warrants.

Richmond City Police: Conducted an unknown number of days of surveillance across at least 31 real time location warrants.

Spotsylvania County Sheriff’s Office: 254 days of surveillance across at least 25 warrants.

Prince William Police Department: 76 days of surveillance across at least 4 warrants.

Norfolk Police Department: 63 days of surveillance across at least four warrants.

Two additional departments indicated that they utilize real-time location warrants but requested high fees to provide records documenting the surveillance: Alexandria Police Department and Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department. (Fairfax Police requested more than $550 to provide the invoices requested but voluntarily reported that they took out 56 of the warrants in 2020.)

The following departments either indicated through their responses to the Mercury that they do not use real time location warrants or a review of court records turned up no real-time warrants: Chesapeake Police Department, Hampton Police Department, King William County Sheriff’s Office, Portsmouth Police Department, Roanoke County Sheriff’s Department, Roanoke City Police Department, Stafford County Sheriff’s Department.

All figures are for invoices received in 2020 except in the case of Hanover, which provided figures for 2021.

The days of surveillance by Chesterfield County Police are partially estimated because the department was the only one to redact dates of surveillance on its invoices and one wireless carrier, Sprint, charges a flat monthly fee, making it impossible to calculate the number of days tracked based on invoice totals. However, the figure most likely represents an undercount because the department provided no receipts from Verizon despite filing warrants requesting tracking from the company.

Richmond Police Department was the only department that provided no response to a FOIA request for billing records and figures are based on a review of court records.

Virginia Mercury news intern Jackie Llanos Hernandez contributed to this report.

Despite commitments from both major parties to improve on and regulate the marijuana industry, cannabis advocates say the General Assembly has left a flourishing industry in the weeds. 

Jacob Williamson grows, makes, and sells hemp-based CBD products through his family’s Hens and Hemp farm. He went through the permitting process to be a hemp farmer when it became legal in 2019, but now he is leaving the industry.

“We can’t keep up with the multimillion-dollar cannabis industry coming into the state,” Williamson said. “So, we’re just gonna stop because it’s too much.”

Williamson represents a group of entrepreneurs concerned about the future of the commercial hemp industry in Virginia, because of what they say is the risk and increased regulation of selling these products.

Sen. Emmett Hanger, R-Augusta, introduced Senate Bill 591 which originally focused on the prohibition of cannabis goods that can be easily confused with everyday treats, and that are shaped like a “human, animal, vehicle, or fruit.”

“It would restrict the use of products that appeal to children through gummies,” Hanger said in committee.

The Virginia General Assembly allowed farmers to grow industrial hemp starting in 2019.

Lawmakers passed an amended version of Hanger’s bill, which redefines marijuana as any cannabis product with over .3% THC or .25 milligrams of THC per serving. That includes some non-intoxicating CBD products. The bill, however, excludes industrial hemp that is possessed by a person or company who holds a U.S. Department of Agriculture hemp producer license, as long as the THC level remains under .3%.

It is currently legal to possess, but not sell marijuana in the state of Virginia.

The .3% THC threshold comes from the 2018 Federal Farm bill. Anything over .3% THC is still federally defined as marijuana. In 2018, most marijuana used recreationally contained over 15% THC, according to the National Institute for Drug Abuse.

Hemp advocates are upset because they say the bill will limit product sales of items from edibles to salves.

Hanger told a Roanoke Times reporter recently that lawmakers “kind of stirred a hornet’s nest” but there is time to work on the bill before the legislature reconvenes in late April.

Legislators want to crack down on the sale of Delta-8-THC, which has a similar chemical structure as the main psychoactive compound, or Delta-9, found in marijuana that gets users high. Delta-8 typically comes from hemp-derived CBD, according to the Food and Drug Administration.

Many Delta-8 products, which are low in THC, are made in a lab because additional chemicals are needed to increase the amount of THC, according to industry website Cannabis Tech.

The products get people buzzed, but still fall into a legal loophole. And a few adverse reactions to Delta-8 products have been reported to the FDA.

“I recognize there are a lot of legitimate businesses with legitimate products out there that shouldn’t be forced out of the market,” Hanger said. “But I think the broader issue right now is public safety.”

The U.S. Hemp Roundtable, a national advocacy group for hemp cultivators, stated in a press release that it supports regulation for public safety, but that new regulations are too broad.

“Advocates for SB591 provided no scientific basis or public safety justifications for these arbitrary restrictions,” the group stated.

The Virginia Hemp Coalition is an industrial hemp education and advocacy group whose goal is to create new agricultural and manufacturing opportunities for hemp farmers. The group has been involved in campaigns to amend SB 591 and shared a petition that has garnered almost 4,000 signatures. The group also wants Congress to expand the THC threshold to 1% in the next Farm Bill.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Service issues hemp permits and tests THC concentrations of hemp plants. The THC levels increase as CBD levels increase in the cannabis plant. Growers run the risk of getting higher THC levels in their cannabis plants in order to get a higher amount of CBD.

Henry Watkins, chief of staff for Sen. Adam Ebbins, D-Alexandria, said hemp growers might see a little more regulatory oversight, more testing and enforcement.

“I think folks who are saying this wasn’t enforced before are really saying ‘no one enforced it on me before,’” Watkins said.

Many stores throughout Virginia since 2019 began selling a variety of CBD-based, low-THC products for a variety of reasons and ailments.

People who want to buy actual, high quantity THC marijuana can easily find it, despite the risk of prosecution. Some sellers offer delivery options and showcase product menus on social media. Many people began operating in those spaces when marijuana possession was decriminalized and in anticipation of the legal recreational market that many thought was greenlit for 2024.

Both parties mostly agreed a legal recreational marijuana market would generate substantial tax revenue for Virginians, but the session ended without lawmakers adopting a framework for sales.

The bill that passed in 2021 needed to be reenacted in the 2022 session, but a House committee continued the bill to the next session next year, effectively killing the reenactment clause and likely the January 2024 start date for recreational sales. The only way marijuana can be obtained legally is if it is grown or gifted, or if an individual has a state-issued medical marijuana card.

David Treccariche sells lab-tested CBD products at his boutique dispensary Skooma in Charlottesville. Hanger’s bill was an “absolute death nail in the coffin” for the industry, he said.

Treccariche said he expected small business owners to be more involved in cannabis policy making.

“They’re [Republicans] theoretically, pro-small business, limited government, limited oversight, limited regulations,” Treccariche said. “He’s a Republican, he should improve small businesses. Why would he shut me down?”

Treccariche’s products have QR codes for consumer protection, with nutrition information and THC concentrations for his products.

Senate President Pro Tempore Louise Lucas, D-Portsmouth, is co-owner of a Norfolk shop that sells legal CBD products. Some products sold at the store were over the threshold for allowed THC, according to a report published by the Virginia Mercury. The dispensary could be affected by Hanger’s legislation.

Lucas, who co-patroned the 2021 legislation that decriminalized simple possession of marijuana, voted for Hanger’s original bill but not the final amendment. She did not respond to repeated phone and email requests for comment on the bill.

Michael J. Massie, an attorney and board member of the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority, said there is no gray area for selling marijuana products.

 “There is no provision that allows for the legal sales of marijuana at this juncture,” he said. “You sort of put yourself in a very precarious position where you might be prosecuted.”

Marijuana advocate Dylan Bishop, a lobbyist for the Cannabis Business Association of Virginia, argued in a committee hearing that having a legal market allows consumers to verify a product’s authenticity.

The association doesn’t think limiting the definition of hemp or cracking down on low THC levels in CBD products is the best course. Instead, they suggested stringent testing and labeling requirements, which advise the consumer of any potential psychoactive effect.

The General Assembly will hold its reconvene session on April 27. Hanger said he is open to suggestions about modifying his bill.

 “Let’s regulate some stuff for safety,” Williamson said. “I can see that. However, they probably didn’t realize how far a little law could change a lot for a bunch of farms.”

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