Board of County Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart (R) held a press conference Tuesday afternoon before the Board meeting to address the perceived rise in violent crimes in the county and give his directive to the Board to address it.
Stewart said while crime overall is at a 15 year low, down 50 percent since 2007, incidents of violent crimes have risen from 2011 to 2012, and he suspects that when the final numbers are in, they will reveal violent crime has risen in the past year as well.
The county has experienced a disturbing rash of crimes in the past two weeks. Although they are likely unrelated, Stewart said that it has caught the attention of Prince William County citizens, many of whom have emailed and written to him asking how the BOCS could address this problem.
“Citizens are really worried and concerned about it,” Stewart said.
Additionally, he said the community "has never papered over problems,” which is why he wanted to bring the concern out into the open.
Crimes that Stewart listed as particularly egregious include: “an execution-style” murder in Woodbridge, fights at the Potomac Mills, sexual assaults in Manassas and Nokesville, malicious woundings in Triangle and, although it was not a violent incident, the robbery of the Carter Bank & Trust in Nokesville.
Stewart demonstrated that crime was not limited to one region of the county, but was becoming more pervasive in the east and west alike. He asked that the BOCS consent to working with police to find a “root cause” and then make a recommendation.
Stewart was clear that the Prince William County Police Department was not to blame for this uptick in crime.
“Chief Hudson is doing a great job, especially considering the limited resources they have,” said Stewart, “but we have not given them the resources they need.”
He also told his Board, “we have the most professional police force, if not the nation. They are top notch; this is not any fault of our police department.”
Addressing the issue to the other supervisors, Stewart focused on the need to work with police to investigate “commonalities” and “trends” and to then make a decision. However, he specified that the Board did not have time for a long drawn out investigation into this, as they needed the information quickly.
At the press conference, Stewart admitted there was much unknown about the situation, but suggested that hiring more police officers would go a long way to rectifying the problem.
Currently, PWC has 610 police officers, but Stewart said it really should have 870 to meet the recommended ratio of two officers for every 1,000 citizens.
Stewart said he plans to recommend the hiring of more police officers this year. While the County Executives’ tax plan only allotted for the hiring of 5 new officers, Stewart said that was insufficient, and recommends instead hiring between 20 and 25 new officers.
“If we only hire 5 police officers this year, we will be shirking responsibility,” he said.
Stewart said that since 2007, he has steered the county towards austerity, but now is a time to end that, especially when it comes to public safety.
“It definitely has budgetary impact, and here’s why. I led this county into an austerity program. We cut fat in the budget, but also, we put off things that were easy to put off for a year or two,” Stewart said.
Among the things the Board put off was the hiring new police and new fire fighters, but now he believes the Board cannot continue putting off hiring those whose job it is to keep the public safe.
“You cannot continue to skimp on police staffing, and expect that is not necessarily going to be a problem,” he said.
While pushing for a bigger police presence, Stewart said they did not want to over penalize non-violent acts such as the use of marijuana.
“The extent that we have people in our jail taking up space because they smoke pot, that’s a waste of space,” said Stewart. “I’m not supporting legalization of marijuana; but, I don’t think we should be putting people in jail because they are smoking marijuana.”
However, he said that it is not marijuana use that has led to a rise in crime or a rise in the jail population.
“We’ve grown too fast; the jail population has grown too fast,” he said.
And even though building a new jail will be “very, very expensive,” Stewart said it is not imperative that they start funding a new building in 2017.
As for the causes of a rise in violent crime, Stewart said he does not know what it is yet, but he's working with the police to identify any trends or correlations they can discover.
He is curious to know how much of the crime is gang-related, what are the ages of the criminals, and if it is related to the drug trade. He said that even though the county is now limited in how it can respond to illegal immigration, there is no evidence that these crimes are being committed by illegal immigrants.
Stewart said there will need to be a significant investment in public safety in Prince William. Stewart is mindful of keeping taxes manageable, but he is also advocating for new revenue, saying, “I can’t say tax bills will stay flat. We require new revenue.”
He said there is nothing specifically he wants to cut from the budget to make this happen, but realistically he said the supervisors will have to set some priorities. For him, the priority is public safety and education, saying everything else is secondary.
Supervisors on the Board were mainly agreeable to Stewart looking into trends in rising rates of violence in the county. Supervisor Pete Candland (R) said they should make sure it is not just a coincidental, temporary spike before they make a big investment in the budget.
“The incidents that we have are unfortunate and terrible,” Candland said in a phone interview, but that does not mean they are systematic.
Finding out if they are systematic would help him decide how many new officers to add, as he believes we should weigh the need for new officers against other priorities as well. For instance, fire response times in the county are above the national average. Moreover, Candland wants to find out if the police chief is in agreement that more officers is what Prince William needs. The fact that crime rates are diminishing, but violent crime is on the rise does not seem to add up to him, so he wants to look into it further.
Candland also wants people to remember that the county did not get behind over night. The proffer system needs to be fixed and the county needs to refocus its priorities.
Maureen Caddigan (R) of the Potomac district said it is curious that Stewart is talking about a rising crime rate, when there are still ads running in which he says that people want to move to Prince William because it is so safe.
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