Kyle Vass, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Community Seeks Police Reform After Shooting On Charleston's West Side

On April 30, Charleston Police officers shot Denaul Dickerson, a 33-year-old Black man, while attempting to make an arrest on Charleston’s West Side. The incident has left many people in the community wondering why police resorted to shooting Dickerson who had brandished a knife.

Later that day, Charleston Police Department Chief Tyke Hunt held a press conference to address the officer-involved shooting. At the press conference, Hunt played body-worn camera footage of the incident.

In the footage, Dickerson can be seen having a conversation when he suddenly sprints away a few yards away. Dickerson begins walking away when he pulls out a knife and tells police to shoot him. “I told you all last time to kill me,” screamed Dickerson, as he moved away from police.

People who had interacted with Dickerson before, including Hunt, said they believe he suffers from mental health issues. Audio from the footage shows Dickerson asked police officers to shoot him nine times in the three minutes he was pursued before being shot.

The footage also revealed conversations among officers where they expressed disbelief that none of what appeared to be 20 officers on the scene had a Taser. One officer said, “We ain’t got a Taser. Nobody’s got a Taser. Nobody’s got one.” Another officer on the radio was heard saying, “Requesting any unit that’s got a Taser. We ain’t got a single taser out here?”

When an officer with a Taser finally arrived, after a three-minute pursuit on foot, the Taser was deployed, but it failed to attach to Dickerson.

Shortly after the Taser was used unsuccessfully, several officers began to move in on Dickerson. When they got within approximately 20 feet of him, Dickerson stopped walking away and faced the officers. The police opened fire, shooting five rounds at Dickerson who fell to the ground and began crying. Multiple officers exclaimed “Shots fired!” and began administering medical care to Dickerson.

When asked by a reporter at the press conference why only one out of what looked like 20 officers had a Taser, Hunt said a lot of his officers aren’t current on their Taser recertifications.

“Tasers do require recertification and, unfortunately, the COVID pandemic really hampered us getting instructors here to recertify our officers.”

Two days after the shooting, protesters gathered on the steps of Charleston’s City Hall to speak out against what they see as another act of violence against Black people in Charleston by the police.

Protestors gather two days after the shooting of Denaul Dickerson on the steps of city hall in Charleston, W.Va., Sunday, May 2, 2021.

“I feel like we’re just consistently being gas-lit as a community when it comes to addressing our needs,” said Takeiya Smith, a youth and racial justice organizer in Charleston.

Smith said she and others have spent years trying to get city officials to develop a mental health intervention team. According to Smith, an intervention team would show up when people are having mental health crises in public and find a solution that wouldn’t result in violence.

“We have given the city and elected officials solutions to these really complex problems, such as mental health, and community engagement. And, we just haven’t made the progress that we should have made by this point.” she said.

Youth and racial justice organizer Takeiya Smith reads a prepared speech outlining community frustrations in getting police reforms to happen in Charleston, W.Va., Sunday, May 2, 2021.

Smith said two years ago, a young, Black woman who was having a mental health crisis on the West Side was met with an officer mounting her and punching her in the back of the head repeatedly. After that incident, city officials promised to do better. But, she said no real change has come about since then.

A common point brought up by protesters at the event was a recent request by the Charleston Police Department for gas masks. Two weeks ago, Charleston City Council approved $200,000 for CPD to buy gas masks. Yet, the protestors said they’ve been told the city doesn’t have money for a mental health intervention team and they question the spending priorities.

“The only reason the city is getting gas masks is because we were protesting last year and they saw what happened around the world. And, they don’t want that to happen here,” said Martec Washington, an activist who lives on Charleston’s West Side.

Activist Martec Washington addresses a crowd of protesters about police spending and a lack of officer training in Charleston, W.Va., Sunday, May 2, 2021.

Washington added that all of the protests that have happened for racial equality in Charleston have so far been peaceful.

“All we did was stop a little bit of traffic, and inconvenience people like Black people are inconvenienced every day by walking out of their door and just living life. So I mean, to me, this is like spitting in my face.”

Washington said money spent on riot gear would be better spent preventing what he thinks are incidents of police violence that he says people end up having to protest later.

“If you can spend $200,000 for gas masks, you can spend $200,000 for a couple people to come help some of these homeless people get up off the streets, so that we can prevent people from being out here saying that they’re gonna stab somebody,” he said, referring to Dickerson who Charleston residents have identified as someone who experiences homelessness.

Chad Carpenter addresses Charleston City Council as a public speaker, asking the council to develop a mental health intervention team in Charleston, W.Va. Monday, May 3, 2021.

The following day at a Charleston City Council Meeting, five of the seven public speakers, including Washington and Hunt, spoke before the council about the shooting of Dickerson. However, none of the council members who were present brought it up. Dickerson was still in the ICU at a Charleston area hospital at the time this article was published.

Note: The City of Charleston announced today that it has hired a mental health coordinator to oversee the work of a mental health response team.

Amid Surge In Gun Violence, Charleston Remembers KJ Taylor

In the six years leading up to 2020, the average number of non-suicide related gun deaths per year in the United States hovered around 14,000. Last year, that death toll spiked, surpassing 19,000. And, this year isn’t much better. So far this year, 5,986 people have already died from a non-suicide related gun shot.

Recently, a Kanawha County teen, KJ Taylor, was shot and killed on Glenwood Avenue on Charleston’s West Side. In what his friends would say was either a stray bullet or a case of mistaken identity, KJ was hit in the chest and died moments later. The person who shot him has yet to be arrested.

Two days after his death, hundreds of people, mostly older teenagers, showed up to the eerily familiar site of a roadside vigil set up to honor a victim of gun violence.

“This was only about two days ago. Really doesn’t seem real because it’s not right,” said David, one of KJ’s friends, who can’t believe his friend is gone. He said he’s drawing inspiration by remembering how positive and supportive KJ was. “I’m just trying to let him live through me. He wouldn’t want nobody to be down. He wasn’t a down type of guy. He was always happy, joking around. He upped the mood. So, I try not to stay down.”

Everyone who spoke of KJ said he was an incredible person — someone younger kids strived to be like.

Throughout the vigil, waves of attendees would approach the assortment of balloons, memorabilia and candles set up to honor KJ on the sidewalk where he laid after being shot.

After waiting his turn, a young man named Ekia approach the site, alone. Wearing a blue hat with an embroidered “LLKJ” for “long live KJ” he stood for a moment and started sobbing. His friend, Keyandra, rushed in to put her arms around him, holding him until he stopped crying.

After consoling Ekia, Keyandra said she’s thinking about KJ’s optimism and what he would do to help people right now. Through tears of her own she said, “It’s not the point that KJ’s not here. It’s the point of keeping other people strong right now. I don’t even need to know how other people feel about KJ because I know how I feel about KJ. That’s my baby cousin. I just got to keep people’s heads up.”

Martec Washington lights candles at a roadside memorial for KJ Taylor in Charleston, W.Va. on Friday, April 9, 2021.

A couple hours into the vigil, news broke of another young person shot and killed in Charleston — Chastanay Joseph, 22 years old. Martec Washington, a community organizer who helped arrange the vigil, held back tears having just heard the news.

“I’m tired and it hurts. Somebody else is not going to have their kid to go home to or to come home. When is this s–t going to stop? At some point, man. We all got to do better. We are failing each other,” Washington said.

Washington said KJ’s death feels different because he was a young man who tried to stay away from anything that would result in violence, and yet, he couldn’t avoid being killed by it.

As Washington described all of the people he knew who died of gun violence, a teenager said he just saw on social media that someone was talking about shooting up this vigil. The mood of the crowd changed from somber mourning to agony and fear — a fear punctuated by the fact the person who shot KJ hadn’t been arrested.

Candles and sentimental objects are arranged to honor the life of KJ Taylor in Charleston, W.Va on Friday, April 9, 2021.

As the reaction from these rumors caused some attendees to fall to their knees, sobbing, 14-year-old Alexandria appeared relatively unphased.

“You don’t feel sad, you don’t feel… you don’t feel anything really. Because things like this continuously happen over and over and over and over. It’s just crazy, to be honest,” she said.

Alexandria said the potential for gun violence to occur at any moment has robbed her of a normal childhood. “Imagine you’re throwing the football, and then blam, you’re shot. We don’t want that to happen. We need people who are shooting out of our neighborhoods so we can actually live. So we can actually play, like, I’m not allowed to play outside with my siblings.”

Alexandria said she’s not sure what she wants to do when she grows up. But, she’s sure she won’t be staying here to do it. Her love for West Virginia is strong, she added, but she’s terrified of how normal the loss of life has become to her as a child.

“Things like this have become so normalized in our community that you almost start to grow immune to it. You don’t feel sad anymore. You just kind of feel like a shell of yourself.”

As the sun started to go down and fear of another shooting escalated, the crowd began to disperse. Some people, including this reporter, broke out in a light jog to get away from the corner. Looking over was Ekia, the teenager who was being consoled earlier.

“You know, you can’t have fun or where these people don’t have any kind of respect. I don’t know when they are going to stop. An innocent boy just passed away.”

Ekia sits in front of a roadside vigil for his friend KJ Taylor in Charleston, W.Va on Friday, April 9, 2021.

Ekia said despite the fact he’s running away from the threat of violence at this moment, he doesn’t share the view that a lot of young people expressed tonight. He doesn’t want to run away from Charleston.

“I love Charleston. I love Charleston but I’m going to say this. I don’t feel safe by myself. I don’t feel safe. But, I do love Charleston,” he said.

Over the next week, KJ’s passing prompted an outpouring of support. The City of Charleston held a public funeral for KJ in its 13,000-seat coliseum, and organized a memorial event at Laidley Field where he played football. After the services, a block party was held at 2nd Ave Community Center to celebrate KJ’s life.

Friends and family members of KJ Taylor gather at 2nd Avenue Community Center to celebrate his life in Charleston, West Virginia on Friday, April 16, 2021.

Much like the vigil, the block party was packed with teenagers wearing clothing honoring KJ — embroidered hoodies and shirts with his picture ironed on.

A familiar face among the kids playing basketball stood out. It was Ekia. He was beaming with joy, nearly unrecognizable from the teenager who attended the vigil last week.

“[KJ] loved Second Avenue. I’m glad we all can be on Second. It feels safe. I feel safe. I don’t feel like I’ll feel like nothing’s going to happen. Nothing like last time. No threats. I feel actually safe this time. So, we just out here — we out here we’re grieving but we’re actually celebrating. “

Ekia and his friends said that despite feeling safe in the moment, a young person was shot last summer just up the road from the community center. Ekia added that KJ had talked about remodeling the Second Avenue Center when he got older – expanding it to have indoor basketball courts. It was the last place KJ was before going to the corner where he was shot.

“We don’t have nowhere else to go but Second Avenue. Walk around the West Side. There’s really nothing else to do. I think if they put more stuff in the community, I think it will definitely be better. I think it would definitely be better.”

Cabell Sheriff Says System Broken As 20 Percent Of Mental Safety Pickups Go Unanswered In County

In West Virginia, when a person is thought to be a threat to themselves or others, they can be involuntarily committed to a mental health facility through a process known as a “mental hygiene petition.” These petitions, usually taken out by a family member or outreach worker, have to be approved by a county court and require a sheriff’s deputy to help transport the person being committed.

But in Cabell County, data from a mental health facility show at least 75 mental hygiene orders went unanswered by the Cabell County Sheriff’s Department in 2020. The sheriff says his department is overwhelmed.

Deborah Chapman said her nephew suffers from substance use disorder. His name is being withheld to protect his privacy.

“When his number shows up on my phone, it’s like, ‘Oh, I hope it’s good news.’ And, sometimes it is. But, for the longest time, it wasn’t. ‘I need this. I need help. I need help. I’m here. Can you come and get me,” she said. “And where I have no children of my own and am so close with him. I would go rescue him. But, that even that was getting like, you know, am I really helping him by rescuing?”

One day, in 2018, her nephew told Chapman he didn’t want to live anymore. He planned on taking a fatal overdose of heroin.

“He kept saying, you know, I’m going to do just the right amount this time that they won’t be able to help me.”

That same day, Chapman said she filed a mental hygiene petition with the Cabell County Courthouse. And, a few days later, her petition was approved by a mental hygiene commissioner. She received a call in the middle of the night telling her the sheriff’s deputies would be by to pick up her nephew and take him to Prestera, the local mental health facility.

“And I thanked him and thanked him and hung up and went home and went to bed thinking, “Yes! Something’s going to be done.” She added, “Well, our problems are over. We’re on our way to getting this young man some help, but it just didn’t happen.”

According to Chapman, the deputies never came. Knowing that the petition she filed would expire after 10 days, she went down to the courthouse to beg a deputy to execute the court order.

“He said we don’t have the manpower, nor the desire to pull the deputy off road patrol to sit with a loved one, while Prestera finds a bed one for them. And I was shocked. In the meantime, 10 days later, after my warrant was given, my nephew overdosed.” Chapman said he survived but the experience was traumatic for everyone involved. “He had to be ventilated and paddles used on him. And it made me angry, I thought, well, if he would have been picked up, maybe, maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

Chapman’s experience wasn’t a one-off thing. Jason Rhoton who worked under the Cabell County Coalition for the Homelessness from 2018 to 2020 says more often than not, when he would file a mental hygiene petition for someone as part of his job, he’d run into the same problem as Chapman.

Jason Rhoton recalls his experience filing mental hygiene petitions in Cabell County from his office in Charleston, West Virginia, on Thursday, April 1, 2021.

“Most of the time they would be approved, but then no one would come out to pick the person up even if we would call 911 or call the non emergency number and say, “Hey, that we have a mental hygiene against this person. And we need them picked up they’re right here, you can come and get them right now.” No one would be dispatched to do it.

Rhoton said his frustration in trying to get a sheriff’s deputy to come pick people up was as much a matter of public safety as it was a matter of compassion.

“I had a client who was chronically experiencing homeless and had a lot of mental health issues. He was very violent, and had been involved with beating people up before, like badly—always brandishing knives and things like that. And we did several on him, and only had one out of the five we did on him, we only had someone come out once. That’s because he was running the street. I think other people were possibly reporting it.”

“I don’t know what the staffing situation was like at the sheriff’s department. So, I don’t want to speak to that. But, I know they have to go in, they have to sit with them for a very long time. They have to stay there with them the entire time.”

Sheriff Chuck Zerkle, who knows exactly what the staffing situation is like in his office, said the current process for executing mental hygiene orders can take upwards of 20 hours for his deputies to find the person, detain them, take them to a hospital to get lab work done and then take them to a separate mental health facility and sit with that person until they can be admitted. Zerkle said recently, a single mental hygiene order took so long to process that he had to send out three deputies from his office in a single day.

“We started on a day shift, and it drug out through past day into the evening shift. And, then actually, my midnight shift guy had to finish it and take the guy to a facility. And the big part of that was…where the guy’s blood sugar was elevated, and they didn’t admit him to the hospital. They just kept dragging us out because I guess they wanted to wait until his blood sugar went down. It was multiple hours. 10, 12, 14 hours that transcended into three shifts of people.”

Cabell County Sheriff Chuck Zerkle explains the mental hygiene process at his office in Huntington, West Virginia, on Wednesday, March 31, 2021.

Zerkle added that in 2020 alone, his office received approximately one mental hygiene order a day from the courts. And per the WV State Code, only sheriffs and their deputies are approved to execute mental hygiene. He says his office can’t keep up.

“We all want to agree that we’re all wanting to help ourselves dig out of this opioid issue and the mental health issue. But you’ve got a small minority of law enforcement that is saddled with doing this.

For Zerkle, the only way to fix the problem is to change the law regarding mental hygiene orders. He doesn’t see why lawmakers can’t approve all law enforcement agencies to do these pickups.

“My perfect world would be law enforcement would secure them, get them to the facility, get the stuff started, and then we leave and turn it over to someone else that’s medically trained to take care of these people,” he said.

Currently, two bills have been introduced by Sen. Charles Trump, a Republican from Morgan County, that would address mental hygiene orders in the state. The new bills would expand the window deputies have to pick people up from 10 to 20 days and remove the need for deputies to first take people to the hospital prior to transporting them to a mental health facility. Both of these bills have made it out of the senate and are currently being heard by the House Health and Human Resources Committee.

W.Va. Prisons Data Show Significant Racial Disparity in Recidivist Life Sentencing

In January 2019, Joshua Plante received a life sentence in Cabell County District court. The sentence came as a shock to him and his attorney, because, at the time, three-strike, or recidivist, life sentences were given to people whose record included a violent felony.

Courtenay Craig, who represents Plante, said none of his client’s charges were violent.

“No. 1, possession with intent to deliver crack cocaine. No. 2, prohibited person in possession of a firearm or sales of a firearm. And, No. 3 three was possession with intent to deliver, less than four grams of heroin.”

Craig said at the time his client was sentenced, the standard set by the West Virginia Supreme Court was that only violent felonies would be considered for recidivist life sentencing. Eventually, a series of West Virginia Supreme Court cases would determine that any felony involving heroin trafficking is dangerous enough to be considered a violent crime.

But, the WVSCOA decision to treat heroin possession with intent to deliver as a violent crime didn’t happen until after Plante was sentenced to life in prison.

“My client couldn’t have possibly known what the standard was at the time of his sentencing because the standard used to uphold his license wasn’t created until 10 months later.” Craig added, “My client’s being upheld to a standard by the West Virginia Supreme Court — to a standard that didn’t exist at the time of his sentencing.”

According to Craig, a double standard exists with life sentencing in the state. Around the same time Plante received his life sentence in circuit court, the West Virginia Supreme Court threw out a life sentence for a man from Wyoming County.

The differences between that man’s case and Plante’s? That man had a violent felony, Plante did not. That man was caught selling OxyContin while Plante was caught in possession of heroin. Finally, and most importantly, said Craig, that man is white. Plante is Black.

Carmon Plante shows the outfit her son Joshua Plante was wearing when he was convicted of a drug related felony that prompted a Cabell County Circuit Court judge to sentence him to life in prison in Huntington, W.Va., Monday, Mar. 15, 2021.

Matthew Bova, a lawyer with the Center for Appellate Litigation in New York, said in an interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting that there is discretion built into recidivist sentencing. “There are charging decisions that can be made that can skew and direct the case into one direction or the other.”

Bova said in cases where police officers, prosecutors and judges are overwhelmingly white, there’s racial disparity when it comes to charging and sentencing people of color.

“There is an absolutely natural reaction that someone is going to have when they’re looking at someone who is of a different race and they’re weighing issues of compassion, and mercy.”

Black men, on average, receive sentences that are 19.1% longer than white men in similar situations according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

And in West Virginia, there’s a significant racial disparity in recidivist life sentencing. While Black men make up less than two percent of the state’s population, they’ve made up 20 percent of the recidivist life sentences in West Virginia since 1979, according to data from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

“It absolutely creates a world where people believe that the government is going after a particular group of people at a far higher rate than it is going after another group of people.”

Not long after Plante’s life sentence was upheld by the West Virginia Supreme Court, the state legislature passed a bill to change the recidivist life sentence statute in the state code.

A list of qualifying offenses was added to the statute. Instead of relying solely on the precedent set by the court where one of the three felonies had to be violent, the legislature’s list included drug possession over a certain amount.

A 2015 analysis from the Brookings Institute shows a significant racial disparity in drug-related arrests and incarceration across the United States.

According to a report from the Brookings Institute, Black people are 6.5 times more likely to be incarcerated for drug related crimes than their white counterparts despite the fact that drug use is slightly higher among white people.

Bova said adding drug-related crimes to recidivist sentencing not only furthers racial disparities in the criminal justice system, it’s also contributed to communities of color losing faith in government institutions as a whole.

”You look at someone who has committed a rape, and that might be their first or second offense. And they may get, say, 10 years, whereas someone who has a third offense for a drug offense… they’re getting 20 years to life.” Bova added, “People are looking at that system and saying to themselves, this doesn’t make any sense.”

Carmon Plante said she’s still trying to make sense of her son’s life sentence.

“During court, there was someone who went before [the judge] who had his fourth felony. And the judge just told him, go ahead, go on back.”

Plante said despite her son’s receiving a life sentence in circuit court, she was hopeful that the West Virginia Supreme Court would recognize that her son didn’t have a violent felony on his record and would throw out his life sentence. But, the state’s highest court upheld his sentence.

“We’ve been fighting for almost three years. And there’s been cases so similar that we don’t understand how he gets one sentence, and somebody else gets another. And, it’s the exact same charges.”

“One case, it’s one answer. The right next case, it’s his death, you might as well say.” She added that her son is currently filing an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.

A painting Joshua Plante made in prison for his mother during her battle with breast cancer hands in her living room in Huntington, W.Va., Monday, Mar. 15, 2021.

Jennifer Bundy, the public information officer for the West Virginia Supreme Court said, “the Justices are not aware of the race of the people involved; however, if a party has concerns that race was a factor to any error in their case, that would be an issue they could bring to the Court’s attention in the presentation of their case.”

Currently, there are no bills before the state legislature to amend or eliminate the state code’s recidivist clause.

Syringe Distribution Meets City Roadblock Amid Ordinance Concerns

A volunteer-run harm-reduction group in the city of Charleston called SOAR has come under fire from city officials for distributing syringes as part of its “mobile outreach” efforts.

A representative from SOAR (Solutions Oriented Addiction Response) says group members started distributing syringes some time after the 2018 shutdown of the Kanawha Charleston Health Department syringe program.

SOAR shut down its program three weeks ago after the city’s police chief claimed they were violating a municipal ordinance. However, the city’s ordinance may not actually prohibit anyone from distributing syringes.

Volunteers with SOAR set up a tent in Charleston, WV.

Every two weeks, SOAR sets up tables in a church parking lot to provide free services to anyone that wants them. People come to get anything from rapid-HIV testing and wound treatment, to a cup of hot chocolate and a conversation. Volunteers pass out supplies like Naloxone, snacks, and condoms. Until three weeks ago, these supplies included sterile syringes for anyone who needed them. People, like Tommy, who lives in the streets.

Tommy spoke out about the problem on Thanksgiving, sitting under a bridge in Charleston. Tommy said now that SOAR has stopped giving out sterile syringes, he’s had to Macgyver his old needles in order to reuse them.

“I had to take a matchbook because you use the striker as your sandpaper to try to sharpen the end of that needle back.”

As he talked, Tommy took out two syringes — a clean one and an old one that he’s tried to sharpen back into shape. Despite his efforts, the old syringe looked a little crooked. To demonstrate how dull his old needle was, he jabbed it against a plastic bag he was holding in his other hand.

“Well, you see how it’s bent? I mean, it was a ‘Z’ the other day.” Holding up the old syringe, he said, “I had no choice, but to use this. It barely goes through the plastic.”

Tommy said when access to clean syringes dries up, people often resort to buying used ones. “You’ve got this black market out here where you’re buying a used needle. Now, yeah, you’re trying to bleach it. You’re trying to — but where’d it come from?”

Experts say limiting access to needles doesn’t impact addictions.

“In 20 years of doing this work, I’ve never met a person who said: If I didn’t have access to sterile syringes, I would stop injecting,” said Robin Pollini, a researcher at WVU, who holds a Ph.D. in public health from Johns Hopkins. “It just doesn’t work that way.”

Pollini says this isn’t the first time the City of Charleston has shut down a harm reduction program. In 2018, the Kanawha- Charleston Health Department’s sterile syringe program closed its doors after the city put restrictions on it — restrictions, she says, that prevented the program from operating according to best practices as outlined by the CDC.

“They were serving a very large number of people, which is what you want these programs to do, because you need to have enough people having access to sterile syringes, to reduce the transmission of disease.”

The WV Center on Budget & Policy recently released a report that confirms Pollini’s point. The study looked at HIV transmission from people reusing needles in Kanawha County. It found the rate of HIV transmission started going up 2018, the same year the KCHD’s syringe program shut down. As of October 2020, the transmission rate had increased by more than five times since the shutdown of the city’s program.

The report also showed that statewide the number of fatal overdoses from all drugs was down 15 percent over the past three years, in contrast to Kanawha County where the number has been rising steadily.

“Here’s a perfect case study of when you restrict these programs, and reduce the number of people who can use them, you are not effective in preventing disease in the community,” Pollini said.

According to Pollini, SOAR was picking up the city’s slack. But in recent interviews Mayor Amy Goodwin and Police Chief James Hunt have said SOAR’s syringe program was violating a municipal ordinance. The ordinance says that any person distributing syringes in Charleston has to first get “any and all licenses required under state law.” Hoyt Glazer, an attorney in Huntington, says there’s just one problem with the ordinance.

“At this point, I don’t see there’s any statute that requires licensure,” Glazer said of the W.Va. State Code.

Glazer says there is no license required by the state for people to distribute syringes. In fact, the state guidelines for syringe programs don’t even use the word “license.”

“It uses the word certification. A certification is different than licensing. And, I’m not aware of any statute that requires an entity to have actual licensing in order to go forward with the distribution of the syringes.”

He adds that anyone being told they can’t distribute syringes by city officials could have grounds to sue.

“If they’re going to challenge the person or program that’s providing the syringes, a person could possibly challenge that and make arguments that it was a violation of their rights to distribute materials that are not otherwise prohibited by the criminal code.”

The city’s attorney responded to West Virginia Public Broadcasting by saying that the city council may move to amend the ordinance in the future. The WV-ACLU, which represents SOAR, says it doesn’t currently plan to sue the city. In fact, a representative from SOAR says his organization is “eager to work hand in hand with the city to address public health and safety for our whole community.”

Under a bridge in downtown Charleston, Tommy said that “whole community” includes people like him—people who are suffering from addiction. In the weeks since SOAR stopped giving out syringes, Tommy says he’s seen someone pay $6 for another person’s used syringe. In recent weeks, he’s even had to use a set of pliers he carries with him, to remove a broken needle from a friend’s arm — a common occurrence when using old syringes, he said.

“They’ve got no choice but to use something that should have been retired last week.” According to Tommy, the problem of drug addiction isn’t going to be solved by taking resources away from people who inject drugs.

“Yes, there’s a problem. But, closing [syringe programs] down or turning your back to is not going to change the problem. Problem’s still here.”

Until sterile syringes are made accessible again, Tommy says a lot of his friends will still be here, too — on the streets of Charleston.

W.Va. Troopers Endorse House of Delegates Candidate With Restraining Order For Stalking

The president of the West Virginia Troopers Association, John W. Smith Jr., says he did not know that a candidate his organization decided to endorse this year has an active restraining order against him.

Perry Bennett

West Virginia Legislative Photography

Government

Newly Elected Del. Derrick Evans Live-Streams Storming Of U.S. Capitol

Dave Mistich

A newly elected member of the West Virginia House of Delegates joined supporters of Donald Trump as hundreds forced their way into the U.S. Capitol.Del. Derrick Evans, R-Wayne, streamed video on his Facebook page that showed him at first outside the capitol building and, then later, just outside an entryway before the group made its way inside.

Derrick Evans, a Republican frontrunner for the House of Delegates in 19th District, was found by a Kanawha County magistrate last year to have engaged in “stalking” and made “repeated credible threats of bodily injury” to a woman who worked at the Women’s Health Center in Charleston, W.Va. It is the state’s only facility to offer abortion services. Nine days after he was served, Evans violated that restraining order leading to an extension that does not expire until Dec. 31, 2020.

Evans rose to local notoriety last year by livestreaming himself outside the Women’s Health Center on social media. In a series of videos still available on the candidate’s Facebook page, Evans documented himself divulging personal details about women who work at the center to his followers and yelling things at patients walking into the facility that are so graphic in nature, they aren’t suitable for publication.

In one of these videos from February of last year, Evans approached a row of four women sitting at the edge of the clinic’s blacktop parking lot. He addressed one of them using her full name multiple times on the livestream. “You don’t have to cover your face,” he taunted. “Everybody’s already — 50,000 people’s already seen what you look like. It’s no big deal.” Filming the side of her face and standing about a foot away from her, Evans announced on his video that he knows she’s “already had two abortions.”

Jamie Miller was one of the women who was singled out by Evans while working at the Center. Miller said that Evans would mention specific details about her personal life as she was being watched by Evans or any one of his followers. “He would say things about, you know, how’s your daughter doing today, Jamie? How’s your son?”

In addition to concerns about being stalked, the presence of visibly armed demonstrators showing up to protest her doing her job led to what she described as a feeling of “being tormented for six months.”

“It was just extremely, extremely scary, because, you know, you’re trying to walk a patient from their car to the clinic, which is probably, I don’t know, I’m gonna say 12 feet?” she said. “It’s not a very big distance. But yet, you’re having to do this in front of men who are staring you down with giant weapons on their side. It’s probably the most scared I’ve ever been.”

Miller hired an attorney and took her concerns to Kanawha County Magistrate Joseph L. Shelton to request a type of restraining order known as a Personal Safety Order. Miller said in court that Evans tried to submit screenshots that showed comments from Miller’s children’s Facebook accounts as evidence.

“And that’s when the judge stopped the hearing and said no more,” Miller recalled.

Miller said Shelton admonished Evans about harassing someone at their place of work and granted the restraining order.

Evans did not reply to multiple requests for this story.

Court documents, provided by Miller’s attorney, show Shelton granted the order, saying Evans made “credible threats” and “engaged in stalking” as defined by the West Virginia State Code. Evans was ordered by the courts to stay away from Miller, including her place of work. But, nine days after being served, Evans showed back up at the Women’s Health Center. When Charleston Police officers responded to a call that Evans was violating a restraining order by being at the center, he gave them false information about the court order.

“There’s not one,” Evans said in a live-streamed video. “It went to court in front of Magistrate Shelton. I could be wrong. What he did was he threw it out and basically said we both have a personal protection order against each other cause he saw right through it and said it was BS–for 90 days. There’s no footage or anything like that, just not to engage or say anything to her, specifically her to me. But yeah, there’s not a restraining order.”

Miller said when she found out that the West Virginia Troopers Association had endorsed someone who had violated a restraining order she has against him, she was shocked.

“I mean, it’s just, it makes me sick. I don’t know, I felt just blank,” she said. “I was furious. And I didn’t even know what to do or say or who to reach out to. And I wanted to just scream because if this is who our troopers are endorsing, nobody in our state is going to be safe.”

She said she relies on the courts and the police to protect her. But, the Troopers Association’s endorsement makes her fear for her safety.

“Am I not supposed to be able to trust the police now? Are they not going to have my back if something goes on and something happens to me?” she said. “Because you’re endorsing somebody who hurts people. You know, I’m about to cry because it doesn’t make any sense.”

The WVTA President John W. Smith Jr. told West Virginia Public Broadcasting that his organization was not aware that Evans has an active restraining order against him. When asked if he knew about the order against Evans, Smith requested details from WVPB surrounding the restraining order and said his organization will discuss whether or not to rescind the endorsement at their next board meeting. Smith, however, was unable to provide a date for when exactly that meeting would take place. WVPB reached out to the Troopers Association a second time to find out if Evans’ restraining order had been discussed by members. Smith said his organization had not yet met and officers had been very busy with criminal investigations.