Police chiefs participate in forum hosted by the Senior Statesmen of Virginia

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - The Senior Statesmen of Virginia hosted a police forum Wednesday, August 9.

Police chiefs from Albemarle County, Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia updated the community about what is happening within their jurisdictions.

Both county and city chiefs mentioned filling in the vacancies in their departments.

All three mentioned the increase in gun violence since January and how they joined Project Safe Neighborhoods to encourage collaboration.

“We need each other to be able to do this successfully. Our agencies are such a size that when it comes to doing big things, we need each other to be able to accomplish these big things,” UVA Police Chief Tim Longo said.

The three departments have been working collaboratively, and both Albemarle and Charlottesville have been able to fill many of the vacancies in their respective departments.

Albemarle Police Chief Sean Reeves and Charlottesville Police Chief Michael Kochis both expect their departments to be fully staffed by next January.

With more officers, police are hoping an increased presence will help crack down on violence in the community.

“There’s a significant amount of accessibility to firearms right now, more than I’ll be honest, in my 25 years, I have not seen this level of the amount of firearms in our community,” Chief Reeves said. “We certainly can’t arrest our way out of these situations. It takes community partners, committee engagements and other approaches to really get to the root causes.”

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