Bob Lewis, Virginia Mercury

Mixing politics, law enforcement and religion is a difficult high-wire act under the best of circumstances. Add in a sex sting operation and you’re toeing the wire over the Grand Canyon without a net or safety harness in the middle of a blizzard.

Chesterfield County’s commonwealth’s attorney, Stacey Davenport, should know that.

A lurid, real-life soap opera with all those elements, and more turns than a mountain backroad, is playing itself out in Chesterfield County and showing up in headlines from sea to shining sea.

It began at the end of an online chat that allegedly occurred between a Virginia Beach megachurch pastor and a police detective posing as an underage prostitute who directed him to a Chesterfield motel room in October 2021.

The Rev. John Blanchard, pastor of Rock Church International, was arrested and booked on charges of solicitation of prostitution. He was one of 17 men snared in a two-day Chesterfield County Police Department sting.

Three months ago, in October 2022, Davenport — Chesterfield’s Commonwealth’s Attorney — announced she would nolle prosequi (not pursue) the case against Blanchard, giving no explanation beyond suggesting that the evidence was insufficient to win a felony conviction.

“The interaction between the detective and the defendant in each case was different,” Davenport said in a statement announcing the decision to not prosecute Blanchard’s case. “As a result, the evidence available for use in the prosecution of each case was different, and the outcome of each case was different. Some of the cases had sufficient evidence to support felony convictions, and some did not. As ministers of justice, prosecutors are required to individually evaluate the strength of the evidence provided by the police in each case.”

Blanchard vehemently asserted his innocence. He returned to the pulpit and called the charges against him “vicious and inhuman accusations” and said that statements made in support of the charges were “demonstrably false.” He also petitioned a court to expunge the charge from his record.

“You dress up a lie. You can twist it. You can misrepresent it. But I’m sorry, a lie is still a lie,” he said according to a television report.

Perhaps Davenport failed to anticipate the fires of condemnation ignited by her decision to not prosecute an influential pastor who allegedly drove nearly two hours for a “QV” (flesh trade shorthand for “quick visit”) in a suburban Richmond motel room with a person who purported to be a 17-year-0ld girl named Maddie. How such a public relations miscalculation is possible for a Republican elected to her job in 2019 with 54% of the vote — and who seeks reelection this fall — is bewildering.

In November, Timothy Anderson, a lawyer and politically ambitious Republican who represents a Virginia Beach district in the House of Delegates, was among the first to raise hell. He used Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act to obtain police incident reports and posted the documents on his law firm’s Facebook page.

The real game-changer, however, came in early January when Chesterfield County’s normally taciturn police chief, Jeffrey Katz, posted a blistering rebuke of Davenport’s decision on his police department Facebook page. In it, he acknowledged granting a FOIA request to release his department’s records in Blanchard’s case and argued, point by point, why Blanchard’s case should be tried.

“I believe a jury of Chesterfield County residents deserves to weigh in on the matter of criminal culpability,” Katz wrote. “The decision to nolle prosse [sic] this case has made such a deliberation impossible … but I want to be clear; this is NOT due to a lack of evidence or a substandard investigation.”

Cops and prosecutors work closely together and sometimes disagree. In nearly 40 years as a journalist and six as a PR guy, I’ve never seen such a sensational public imbroglio between the leaders of two essential parts of the criminal justice system, as every fan of the long-running “Law & Order” TV series can recite by heart.

After Katz’s fusillade, Davenport fired back. Sort of.

In a mid-January statement, she called out Anderson, saying her office “takes great exception” to his efforts to politicize the case. She said assertions that Blanchard’s expungement petition was a bid to “silence any political opponent [of her office] from using published police records is unwarranted and without merit.” What the statement didn’t include was any elaboration that would help the public understand where and why the case against Blanchard, at that time, fell short.

The statement further said that “moral outrage is no substitute for evidence, and this office stands by its decision.”

It did, too. For six more days.

On Thursday, Davenport announced that new evidence had persuaded her to recommend reinstating the case against Blanchard. She also said she would step aside and entrust the matter to a yet-unnamed special prosecutor. Because Davenport chose to nolle prosequi the case without prejudice, she had the option of resuming the prosecution without breaching Blanchard’s Fifth Amendment double jeopardy protections.

As one might by now imagine, there was no information about the nature of the new evidence that put the prosecution back on track from Davenport’s brief remarks, all read from written text without taking any press questions.

This column is not a commentary on the rightness or wrongness of whether Blanchard should stand trial. I have not seen all the evidence in this case, and even if I had, I am not a lawyer and am unqualified to determine whether it meets legal and ethical standards for proceeding to trial.

It’s about the persistent, airy refusals to provide better, more relevant answers and explanations that help ordinary people understand this sensational saga while respecting the legal protections and confidentialities of both the government and the accused.

There are communications professionals out there who advise and shepherd attorneys and public officials through the media maze. I’ve done it myself.

Davenport was not without opportunities to provide a helpful, cogent explanation. For days, journalists invited her to do just that in on-the-record interviews, and I was one of them. (My offer still stands, by the way.)

Davenport’s an accomplished prosecutor whose reserve and reticence in this volatile case does her a disservice. The lurching, on/off/on-again approach to a case involving alleged efforts to victimize a minor not only hasn’t quelled the tempest, but has aggravated it in the court of public opinion.

She’s left a door open for Republicans who might challenge her for the nomination. Appearing unsteady in the handling of Blanchard’s case also gives oxygen to the malignant foolishness advanced by conspiracists who claim a cabal of pedophiles controls major public and private institutions of national power.

More broadly, it feeds the cynical notion that justice needn’t apply to favored people in powerful positions, only to the poor and powerless – a notion that’s poisonous to the rule of law and the free civil society it sustains.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

A Virginia man drove the width of the United States, kidnapped a 15-year-old girl, shot her mother and grandparents dead in cold blood, torched their home and then killed himself in a shootout with California police. The gun he used came with the badge he wore back in Virginia.

So many questions. And to date, not enough answers.

Cops are vested with extraordinary legal authority over us in enforcing society’s laws, up to and including the taking of lives if their training and judgment tells them it’s necessary.

There’s rigorous testing, personal vetting and physical and mental training required before they wear the blue. Hopefully, that process is careful and thorough and only the best, most fit make it through. But then there was Austin Lee Edwards.

Edwards, 28, was a trooper for nearly a year and a half before he left the Virginia State Police in late October for a sheriff’s deputy job in Washington County near Bristol. He wasn’t on that job a month before he drove to Riverside, California, and sought out the child he had met online pretending to be someone else – a despicable practice known as “catfishing.” The carnage in his wake has generated sensational headlines worldwide.

When the Mercury’s Graham Moomaw filed a public records request with VSP for administrative documents and background checks on Edwards, the agency chose to “exercise its statutory discretion” and hide the documents from taxpayer view. Pressed for a reason for withholding information about Edwards, he was told that under state law, the agency isn’t required to comment further.

The VSP will only concede the obvious: that “human error” is to blame for the agency missing an incident in Edwards’s not-too-distant past during his hiring process. The agency said that no red flags emerged during his pre-employment background checks.

The Los Angeles Times, however, revealed that the incident referenced was a 2016 mental health crisis in which Edwards threatened to kill his father and was ordered hospitalized by a court. WTVR-TV in Richmond reported last week that Edwards revealed during a pre-employment interview that he had checked himself into a mental health facility that same year. On Thursday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin asked the Office of the State Inspector General to investigate Edwards’ hiring.

Stonewalling something like this is short-sighted and futile because of the likelihood that those details will be pried loose, if not by unhappy political leaders then in the discovery process of a wrongful death lawsuit. Even if the case doesn’t go to trial, such explosive material has been known to find the hands of enterprising journalists.

State law doesn’t require that the records of the individual in question be withheld. That was a choice. And it’s a choice that only serves to undermine the trust and confidence in law enforcement that is essential for the police to effectively do their jobs.

This columnist is not anti-police. I’ve known people at all levels of law enforcement and, for the most part, they’re dedicated professionals who do their jobs for low pay and at high risk because they’ve felt a call to serve. Some of the most genuine friends I have wear or wore the badge and I have chronicled the good work of many of them in my reporting. Edwards’ case, however, underscores that, like all of society, there are bad actors in their midst.

Law enforcement as an institution has work to do when it comes to public accountability, and it’s not just a passing political moment.

Things came to a head in America after the broad-daylight murder of George Floyd by police officers on a Minneapolis street in May 2020. A tempestuous summer of nationwide protests over deaths of Black people at the hands of police, and arrests and incarceration rates for people of color far greater than their share of the population, drove new laws mandating greater transparency by law enforcement agencies. It led to the creation of citizen review boards and requirements that police report and sometimes publish information on police use-of-force incidents.

According to the National Council of State Legislatures, 26 states have enacted law enforcement data collection and transparency laws since May of 2020, including seven – Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Nevada, Washington and Wisconsin — that mandate publicly accessible databases of use-of-force information. Others post reports using aggregated data on use of force by officers on patrol.

Virginia began collecting data in July 2020 under the state’s Community Policing Act. Those data show that out of more than 2 million traffic stops since then, 31% of those included Black people, who are only 20% of Virginia’s population, compared to 63% of stops that included White people, who are 68% of the state’s residents in the 2020 census. The 2020 law also banned the police use of racial profiling in deciding which drivers to pull over.

That doesn’t sit well with some policymakers. As of last week, there was already one Republican bill introduced in the House to repeal the Community Policing Act.

Gathering data on traffic stops, however, touches just one facet of law-enforcement answerability. Departments often go mute when their own are implicated in wrongdoing, and it often takes unrelenting public pressure to get a fuller accounting.

Last summer, Richmond Police Chief Gerald Smith called a press conference to make the fantastical claim that his department had discovered and disrupted a plot to carry out a mass shooting at Byrd Park in the city during July 4th festivities. Two days earlier, an assault-style rifle was used to kill six people and injure 30 who watched an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, so Smith’s tale had global resonance.

Challenged repeatedly by journalists to provide evidence to buttress his claim, Smith resisted. As his yarn began to unravel, he bristled, insisting that his conclusion, based on his experience, was right and suggesting that the media were trying to impugn his officers, though they bore no role in Smith’s fiction. Already on thin ice and with his story discredited, he resigned last month and the record was belatedly set straight.

Smith’s folly is trivial alongside the murderous depravity of Edwards. Here was a walking time bomb who left red-flag clues to his psychological instability, and it staggers the mind as to how they could be overlooked. He desecrated the oath he swore, right down to firing his service weapon at unarmed people and fellow officers before he turned it on himself and committed the last of his life’s many cowardly acts.

So, VSP, if this harsh assessment looks bad and smells bad, too bad. If we’re off base, release Edwards’s records and prove us wrong.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.

The myopic partisan brinksmanship that is the predominant pursuit of Congress these days reached a seeming impasse last week over a critical vote to raise the federal debt limit before our elected elites did what they do best: kick the can down the road.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., offered the Democrats, who hold the slimmest possible majority in the 100-seat Senate, an “off-ramp" ahead of an Oct. 18 deadline for Congress to increase the government's $28.5 trillion line of credit. The Democrats lunged at the offer with the desperation of a drowning person groping for a floatation device.

Without such a delay, the nation was on course to default on its debts for the first time one week from today. That would have left the government unable to fund its operations or pay its bills, potentially plunging the planet into a financial catastrophe.

“We dodged a bullet," a friend observed after McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY., agreed to a stopgap vote that delays a final reckoning to Dec. 3.

He's right. We did dodge a bullet. You could also say we received a 53-day stay of execution. It also drove the stakes even higher because the new deadline for raising the debt limit coincides with the deadline for passing a resolution to fund the government, a task Congress deferred two weeks ago.

Unless the Machiavellian partisan maneuverings and intraparty feuds of the 117th Congress miraculously resolve themselves by then, our Halloween financial apocalypse will become our nightmare before Christmas. And Schumer's gratuitous, graceless swipe at McConnell and the GOP after the Senate passed the extension Friday inspires no hope for anything better.

If worse comes to worst, you will could see your investments and retirement savings eviscerated, interest rates and already troublesome inflation will rocket to levels not seen in decades, layoffs and insolvencies will punish businesses large and small, existing scarcities of many groceries and consumer goods because of global supply chain disruptions will worsen, and Medicare benefits will be suspended or terminated, leaving tens of millions of seniors without health care coverage. That translates into everyday lives in heartbreaking ways.

That cute three-bedroom, 2½-bath Cape Cod in a good school district that was to be your starter home, for which you've scrimped and saved over more than a decade to pull together a down payment? It's not happening.

Investments that were deducted from each paycheck and had grown enough over the past 18 years enough to put both kids through four years at State U? Sorry. And don't look to government-backed college loans or scholarships for help.

The new-to-you used car you'd been eyeing to replace the 20-year-old minivan that now costs you more per month in repairs than would auto loan payments? Maybe a bicycle will suffice.

A procedure that your cardiologist says you must have to open a heart artery that tests revealed is 80 percent blocked? Medicare is out of cash and you're out of luck. Get your will in order.

Instead of celebrating 25 years of meeting or exceeding expectations, long hours at the office and several promotions, your boss and the HR rep regretfully inform you that your job is the victim of emergency cost reductions. You're given a cardboard box and 10 minutes to collect your personal items before security escorts you from the building.

Pay and benefits cease instantly for U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and Air Force personnel, as well as care for veterans who've already answered their country's call.

In Virginia, you would join tens of thousands of new jobless benefits claimants, left to the plodding ineptitude of the Virginia Employment Commission. Only this time the feds can't fund enhanced unemployment support as they did during the pandemic.

Many on the margins, living paycheck-to-paycheck, could face homelessness without the prospect of rent relief from a broke Uncle Sam.

Food pantries go bare, unable to meet demand. Long lines queue outside soup kitchens funded by charities and houses of worship until their endowments also evaporate. Summer gardens that augmented supper tables stand barren in the shorter days and overnight frosts of a gathering winter.

Not that any of this seems to have registered much with those who write our laws, control the nation's purse strings and could fix the problem quickly. Rather, they assess the predicament for a tactical political advantage.

None of this should surprise anyone who has paid more than peripheral attention to public affairs in the past six months. And there's abundant blame to apportion.

We can blame our national addiction to credit with scant regard to the ever-larger balance due and the inevitability that it becomes unsustainable sooner or later.

We can blame Democrats, who hold all the elective levers of power in Washington – albeit by paper-thin margins – for their paralyzing schism between progressives and moderates over trillions in new spending the liberals demand.

We can blame McConnell and his GOP conference, still fuming after losing the White House and control of the Senate last fall. Having sworn a blood oath to foil every goal of President Joe Biden for four years, McConnell is ready to let the process fail, greet the subsequent carnage and then gloat over his rivals' impotence ahead of the 2022 midterms.

Historically, raising the government's cap on the amount of money it can borrow to pay its bills has been a bipartisan undertaking — a mundane but essential bit of congressional housekeeping — since 1939 when legislation established an overall federal debt limit, then only $45 billion. Never in those 82 years has the government defaulted on its debt obligations and set off a chain-reaction financial crash.

Three times during the term of Republican President Donald Trump, the debt ceiling was raised without partisan roadblocks.

This time, it's different. Last November, Democrats picked up enough seats to forge a 50-50 tie in the 100-seat Senate with Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote.

There was a time when a functioning Senate routinely allowed a debt ceiling vote to proceed unimpeded by the threat of a partisan filibuster.

McConnell had said since July that no such accommodation would be forthcoming this fall from Senate Republicans. He relented last week, allowing GOP senators to contribute 11 votes to forgo a filibuster and bring the stopgap measure to raise the debt ceiling by $480 billion to an immediate vote that passed 50-48. But Republicans warn that Democrats are on their own in raising the debt limit in December.

Democrats, with their internal divisions, enable McConnell and the GOP to create an impasse by exploiting Democratic divisions that make it impossible at times for the party to muster a simple Senate majority.

Progressive Democrats in Congress want to pass a package of clean-energy and social programs as large as $3.5 trillion over 10 years as a precondition for allowing passage of $1.8 trillion package of overdue, basic infrastructure needs such as roads, rails, waterways, power grids and broadband internet.

In the Senate, two so-called moderate Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, say a $3.5 trillion price tag is a non-starter, leaving Biden and congressional Democrats to negotiate a lesser sum the moderates will accept in return for providing the minimum necessary Senate votes.

Republicans have abetted the misconception that the debt ceiling increase is necessary to cover the two multi trillion-dollar Democratic spending bills. This debt ceiling vote applies only to spending and appropriations already signed into law, including nearly $8 trillion in debt authorized during the Trump years. It would not apply to the pending legislation, even if it somehow passes.

Last week's postponement at least gives Capitol Hill's elites time to breathe, to return home on recess and reconnect with real people, and hopefully to realize how much suffering their selfish game of chicken could cause them.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Robert Zullo for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.