Mayor Dwight Jones responds to questions about his security detail. Photo credit: WTVR.
Mayor Dwight Jones has done a creditable job overall running the City of Richmond — far from perfect but above what you’d expect from a locality with a deep-blue electorate. I’ve never had cause on this blog to criticize him. Until now. I do have to say, I’m taken aback by the revelation that he put $400,000 in the city budget, approved last week, to pay for three police officers and two cars to transport and protect him.
Two cars? Really? That’s like a mini-motorcade. Four guards? That sounds like round-the-clock police protection.
City council persons had tried to transfer $100,000 of those funds to a reserve fund to pay for temp staffers at the city’s 3-1-1 call center in the event of emergencies. That would leave him with $300,000 — certainly enough, one would think, to provide him with police protection while he’s out and about town on official duties. But somehow, the money found its way back into the budget via what Councilwoman Reva M. Trammel called “backroom shenanigans.”
Style Weekly checked three other cities of the size of Richmond — Des Moines, Baton Rouge and Boise — and only one offered regular police protection for the mayor. And that city, Baton Rouge, budgets only $150,000.
It’s not as if Jones’ avocation — pastor of the First Baptist Church of South Richmond — takes him in harm’s way. Nor does he have a lightning rod personality like his mayoral predecessor, L. Douglas Wilder. As Trammel says, “What is he afraid of? Who the hell knows him? Unless he goes around out there and says, ‘I’m Mr. Mayor.'”
I remember spotting Tim Kaine around town when he served as mayor, and later as lieutenant governor. One time he was walking down the sidewalk, once he was in a movie theater, and once he was enjoying lunch with his family at a Shockoe Bottom diner. I saw no guards. Richmond’s crime rate has gone down since then. One would think there would be less need for security today.
If Jones has encountered specific security threats, there has been no word of them. He says he’s just following the advice of the police chief. Methinks he ought to follow the advice of Councilwoman Trammel instead.
— JAB
