Ed. — From the Sunday, Oct. 16, print edition. After this column appeared in print, I spoke with Jody Saunders, the new chief communications officer for VBPD. It was a positive conversation. The original print edition of the Oct. 16 column appears below.
BACK BAY — I wrote in the last edition about the Virginia Beach Police Department’s poor record of promptly providing basic public information to the people and the press.
You may not dig reporters like me, but VBPD has not informed you, the public, about some incidents, including two I described. You can read it for yourself.
I’ve had several responses, but I regret the one that matters most hasn’t arrived.
That’s from the department.
For now, I’ll cover a discussion among city leaders and some reader comments.
City Councilmember Delceno Miles, a communications professional who runs her own firm, asked Police Chief Paul Neudigate about my column during a meeting at City Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 4.
“I just want to hear what the game plan is to better engage our media and the public,” Miles said.
“This is something we’ve actually been working on for quite some time,” Neudigate said. “We realize we have a capacity issue. We’ve had two people in our (public affairs office) for close to a year, and they do an incredible job of, one, to be there to interact with our media and handle the just over-staggering amount of requests and to manage our social media.
“We’ve taken a number of steps,” he continued, noting improved social media practices and a new communications person who just came aboard. “We’re the police,” the chief said. “Many of us are not communications experts. We needed a communications expert … to come in and assess how we are doing things and give us some feedback on how we improve.”
Neudigate said the department has also brought in a media trainer to help leaders better interact with journalists.
My column had some critics online and in letters.
Terry King, a regular reader from Knotts Island, N.C., who has extensive service in public safety, wrote that police are doing important work in an environment in which they must contend with being maligned or misrepresented.
The “public safety providers of America are under attack,” he wrote. “Too many lawyers without scruples, too many organizations that attack the public safety providers. Groups are very uncaring if it is perceived to compromise their cause. There are too many unscrupulous media journalists that beat their cause to death. They use the power of the pen to manipulate the public and get their way, whether it be right or wrong. We need reporters that collect statements and report the facts as collected.”
King, like other readers, addressed my discussion of the department recently turning to encrypted communication.
“Many public safety agencies have gone to encryption to protect the citizens and the officers and the departments that provide welfare to the people,” he wrote.
Some discussion about my column on social media defended the decision to encrypt police communication. To clarify, I did not criticize that decision. To me, encryption means police have an even greater responsibility to be forthcoming about incidents because they have even greater control over information than they did before.
Daniel Laino of Virginia Beach, who served as a sheriff’s deputy in our city, wrote, in part, about the 5/31 tragedy. Laino, too, criticized news media. He has family ties to that event and saw journalists asking questions that seemed untruthful or irrelevant. He criticized journalists demanding answers before investigations are complete.
“My first thoughts as an answer to your article was, ‘I have come to trust the media maybe even less than I trust politicians,’” he wrote, adding that he believes citizens should have access to “accurate, truthful information on a timely basis. However, there has been less and less of that kind of reporting from the media (all forms) and less and less of a reason to trust any of it.”
Laino, too, discussed very valid reasons for encrypted communications.
“I also get the impression that you are already negative toward the VBPD’s new chief communications officer,” Laino wrote.
I am not. We haven’t spoken yet.
Laino recommended that I get back to “we want the facts, just the facts” reporting.
That would be great. I prefer that, but I stand by what I wrote.
Thanks for reading.
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The responses you have shared here are concerning. I have come to be suspicious of those in power who chose to hide information. With the Jan 6th insurrection in mind, it worries me that so many people in uniform—both police and military—are involving themselves in militia type activities. I believe we must have an active, unbiased press to keep a spotlight on the workings of police, etc., if we are to remain a free society. Times are getting very scary and a government of “secret police” does not put my mind at ease.