Hampton Roads Regional Jail

Board Meeting 2/18/18
Members & Alternates Attendance
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Robert Geis (CH) Alternate

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Jim O’Sullivan (CH)

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Chris Snead (HA) Chair

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B.J. Roberts (HSO)

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Col. Karen E. Bowden (HSO) Alternate

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Brian DeProfio (HA) Alternate

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Robert C. Ike Jr. (CH)

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Gabe Morgan (NN)

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Martin A. Thomas , Jr. (N) Vice Chair

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Alan Archer (NN) Alternate

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Nathan J. Clark (PO)

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Lt. Colonel William Rucker (PO) Alternate

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Joseph Baron (NSO)

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Lt. Colonel Michael O’Toole (NSO) Alternate

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Michael Goldsmith (N) Alternate

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Michael Moore (PSO)

A quorum was present.
Others Recorded Attending
Supt. Myers; Major Felicia Cowan; Captain Thurman Barnes; Deborah Hand; April Green; Dr.
Moreno; Deanna Isom; Capt. Ellis

Call to Order
- Chairwoman Snead (CW Snead) called the regular meeting of the Hampton Roads
Regional Jail Authority to order at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail, 2690 Elmhurst
Lane Portsmouth, Virginia 23701, on the 18th day of February at 1:30 pm in the large
training room.

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 Approval of Minutes
Chairwoman Snead allowed time for the Members to review the minutes.
Chairwoman Snead asked for a motion for the Board to approve the minutes of December 20,
2017. Robert Geis moved to approve the minutes. Martin Thomas seconded. The Motion
Carried.

Presentation of Plaque to Commonwealth Attorney’s Office
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Mr. Myers presents plaque in appreciation to Senior Assistant Commonwealth’s
Attorney Brandon Wrobleski.
Mr. Myers – We’re giving this plaque because Brandon has been really instrumental.
We started some things at the jail where we find contraband, or inmates are doing
things they’re not supposed to, we take them straight to the Commonwealth’s
Attorney. And he’s been very instrumental in bringing the charges very quickly. This
helps us, because once the inmate knows that they’re not getting away with
anything, that they’re going to receive additional charges, it helps us control our
population a lot better. We also have a certificate of appreciate which will be read
now.
Ofc. Cox – Pleasant good afternoon everyone. At this time I would like to recognize
the City of Portsmouth, Commonwealth Attorney, Ms. Stephanie Morales, and if you
don’t mind can you stand with me as I read the certificate? Certificate of
Appreciation, presented to Brandon Wrobleski, Senior Assistant Commonwealth’s
Attorney. On behalf of the Hampton Roads Regional Jail Authority, this certificate of
appreciation is presented to Brandon Wrobleski for unwavering commitment and
dedication towards keeping our facility safe. Your initiative, responsiveness,
thoroughness, and willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty are very
much appreciated. We pay special tribute for your dedicated service and relentless
efforts to help maintain a safe environment for the Hampton Roads Regional Jail, the
City of Portsmouth, and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Thank you.
Lt. Phillips – Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, I’m Lt. Phillips with the Internal
Affairs office and this is Ofc. Cox with Internal Affairs. When I first joined Internal
Affairs, or selected, I realized there was a need to make the facility a safer place. But
I also quickly found it that there’s a lot of red tape that we had to go through to make
sure that people were prosecuted for breaking the law. However, Brandon, he
championed our efforts to direct indict inmates for assaulting other inmates,
assaulting staff, and transporting contraband. And he made my job a lot easier, I
learned in over 26 years of combined law enforcement, military and corrections, that
you just run into people like that who are just excellent at what they do, that are
dedicated, and the exude e spirit de corps to the mission. And there’s really no way
that you can thank him, so I went to Linda Bryant, and I said, “Listen, I gotta do
something for this guy Brandon, because every time we call, he answers the call,
and he’s very direct and very precise at what he does.” I said, “We have to show
gratitude in some form or fashion.” So that’s when we came up with a certificate of
our appreciation, I’m sure it comes up short, based on what he does on a daily basis
to make this facility safe. It is my honor to present you with this plaque Brandon,
appreciate everything you do.
BW – Thank you sir, my pleasure. We have a recent success story actually. On
January 23rd, an inmate was in possession of a 4 in. shank. On January 25th in the
afternoon, Lt. Phillips emailed me asking me what we could do. And on Jan. 26th we
created the indictment for the grand jury and the gentleman was indicted in less than
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 a week. So that may have been fortitude of scheduling, but we were able to turn that
incident very quickly, and I think that sends a very good deterrent message and
definitely goes a long way to keep the jail safe.

Nominating Committee Report, Alan Archer
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You have a nominating committee report in your agenda packets, so you do have some
background around the work that the Nominating Committee put it into the nominating
effort. This is a very important annual process that this body undertakes, and members
of the committee take the job seriously. And over the years we have amended the
bylaws to make the selection process easier and a little bit more efficient to manage.
And the most recent amendment was the identification of a succession management
plan, that allows each jurisdiction, each member of the Hampton Roads Regional Jail to
anticipate its leadership role either in the form of Chair or Vice Chair. And so this helps a
great deal with thinking of who the member jurisdictions would like to have represent
them to their jurisdiction. We used the bylaws as a tool to guide us through this process
and through the years it has been easier to manage. And so, I’m certainly happy to
announce that in accordance with our bylaws, the Committee reached a unanimous
consensus to nominate Martin A. Thomas Jr., City Council Member, City of Norfolk, as
Chair; and Robert N. Geis, Deputy City Manager, City of Chesapeake as Vice Chair.
Additionally, the committee nominates Ronaldo D. Myers, Superintendent of the
Hampton Roads Regional Jail to serve as Secretary and Treasurer. The term of each
appointment is one year, or until their successor is elected or until they resign from
office. Each candidate accepted nomination and agreed to serve their respective term
and duties as an Officer of this Board.
Therefore, I move the appointment of Martin A. Thomas Jr., City Council Member, City of
Norfolk as Chair and Robert N. Geis, Deputy City Manager, Chesapeake, as Vice Chair,
and Ronaldo D. Myers, Superintendent of Hampton Roads Regional Jail, as Secretary
and Treasurer. Madame Chair that concludes my Nominating Committee Report.
Sheriff Morgan – Madame Chair, I second.
Motion passed.
CW Snead – Now in the bylaws, it says a, “voice vote”. Is this considered a voice vote?
Or do we have to do each individual?
Archer – I don’t think we’ve done a roll call in the past.
CW Snead – Congratulations to you Mr. Martin Thomas, and to you Mr. Geis. From what
I understand, I get to continue this meeting, until the budget is approved.
Archer – Yes, for continuity of the meeting and planning purposes, I think that’s what I
would recommend. But Martin said to me during the lunch hour that he couldn’t wait, so I
don’t know if he wants to…
Martin Thomas will serve as Chair starting at the next meeting.

Review of Operations and Activities
Security, Capt. Barnes
 Last board meeting we had a presentation on the board where we had a snap look at
some of our inmate living areas, and what the staff was dealing with trying to
supervise some of the inmate living areas. Between that time, we have done some
pod modifications, some behavior modifications tools as far as helping the officers
out as far as supervising the inmates. Due to staffing, sometimes, that officer is
responsible for trying to supervise upwards of 100 inmates at a time in some of our
split pods.
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So we tried some behavior modification tools and it seemed to work out very well.
With those behavior modification tools in our split pods – what we do is alternate the
times that the inmates come out. One side in the E dayroom, we’ll let those inmates
out for a period of time. And the officers seem to like it, because 1) they were able to
focus on just one side of the dayroom instead of trying to pivot this way; and it
improved our inmate behavior.
One of the other things we’re doing – Brandon was up here earlier – we’ve initiated
some random searches in the facility because of some of the contraband we were
finding in the facility, with homemade weapons and things like that. It’s working out
very well. Anytime inmate movement is done, whether it’s from medical, from
laundry, or the kitchen, law library – everybody’s being scanned with the metal
detectors. So some of the weapons that we have found have been in our common
areas, because the inmates don’t want to get caught with the weapons now, because
they know we’re doing these searches. So that’s worked out well.
Since the last meeting that we had, we have had no serious injuries to inmates or
staff. With the type of populating we have, inmates don’t always get along, so they
have confrontations, where they’re fighting. There have not been serious injuries to
inmates or staff. If there was a use of force issue in the facility, there were no serious
injuries to inmates or staff during any use of force issues that we had in the facility.
Other than that, everything seems to be working well. The officers are working hard,
despite some of the staffing issues. But they’re working hard and doing an excellent
job.

Human Resources, CJ Bruce
 In regards to our separations, in the past 3 months since December, we’ve had a
total of 25 separations. 9 within December. 5 retired. 3 resigned. 1 terminated. A
total of 10 in January. 2 retired. 8 resigned. And 6 so far in February, additionally one
captain this month. 2 of those are retirements and 5 are resignations.
 To help with replacing those separations, we do have a list of hiring fairs and
recruiting events that we are coordinating and attending. Each one that I receive an
invitation for, I’m definitely there. On both sides.
 Some of those included are the VEC office in Hampton. We did attend the, “Get
Hired Hampton” event at the Hampton Roads Convention Center with a volume of
about 2,000 individuals. We just conducted another hiring event in Norfolk. We will
be attending the Law Enforcement & Public Safety Career Fair at Tidewater
Community College this week, which is actually tomorrow. Another one we’re trying
out is the Suffolk Workforce Development Center. They’re allowing us to open up an
event as well on the 6th. And one in Chesapeake. We try to support all locations. The
Next Generation Opportunity Fair, that’s on Mar. 1st. ECPI University, we’re
supporting both locations for that as well, Virginia Beach and Newport News – which
is Mar. 21st and April 18th.
 Each and every day we’re cold calling applicants to receive applications every day.
We’re maintaining full involvement with the Virginia Department of Veteran Affairs to
assist with our recruiting efforts.
 We have also established an employee referral program as well. Questions?
 CW Snead – How many vacancies do we have total?
o Bruce – 36.
 Sheriff Baron – Two things. Has HRRJ looked at maybe considering hiring 18 year
olds?
o Bruce – We do.
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 Sheriff Baron – You have the new incentives up there, employees $250 if
they bring somebody in and they stay for 6 months, and if they stay an
additional 6 months, they get another $250 if they’ve been here for a whole
year. How are we paying for that, where is that coming from?
o Deborah Hand – Vacancy Savings.
Vice Chair Martin Thomas – Are we doing an exit interviews to find out whether there
are any trends for the reasons some of these people are leaving?
o Bruce – Yes, each and every person we conduct an exit interview for. Many
of them, job is too stressful for many of them, childcare, etc. Some of them
have gone to other locations and found other employment.
o Vice Chair Thomas – I think it’d be appropriate to receive a report at the next
meeting that itemizes and provides trends on the reasons that were given, so
that we can be aware of any (issues?) that need to be addressed.
Sharon Scott – My question is, of the 36 positions that are (unfilled?) where is the
biggest liability for the facility?
o Supt. Myers – Making sure we stay safe, making sure we have the
appropriate level of people. The housing unit areas. That’s where your
biggest liability is. Making sure that you have the appropriate level of staff to
cover the housing units. And we’re doing that through overtime.
o Scott – Was there any conversations, we had last time, about bringing in part
– time people, or police officers to work part – time. Where are we with that?
o Bruce – I have a total of 8 so far.
Sheriff Baron – I know Sheriff O’Sullivan brought it up last meeting, but has there
been any efforts made to civilianize support jobs?
o Supt. Myers – We’ve thought about it. I’ll give you the textbook answer to it. If
the board wants to pay for the civilian positions, yes it’s been thought about. If
the board is willing to pay for those positions. The comp board will not pay for
so many civilian positions. I think we’ve maxed out on those. So, that’s what
you have.
o Sheriff Morgan – I will tell you that, the comp board does not direct how you
utilize your FTEs. If you got 350 FTEs, you can use those FTEs how you see
fit. So, they’re paying for an FTE, so say the mailroom for example – there’s
not a, if you want to make that a civilian positon – what that does, it frees up
the training requirement. It also frees up the recurring training requirement for
that position. Now, can you rotate that into a security position? No. But the
bottom line is, if it’s truly a position that is can be filled by a civilian then it may
help, because you don’t have to go through all the training, they don’t have to
go to the academy. They don’t have to maintain all those things. So I think
that’s what they’re questioning. But just keep in mind that Comp Board only
provides FTEs, how you utilize them is up to you.
o Sheriff O’Sullivan – If you approach them and say, “We’ll drop one of our
sworn positions if you give us two positions that are civilians, then we feel we
can hire for about the same amount of money to work to in the mailroom or in
the front desk,” can they switch them from the sworn to the civilian? I would
think that they would be able to do that.
o Myers – I’m not sure how the comp board does that, because normally it’s a
body for a body.
o Sheriff Baron – One of the things, no disrespect, but you may be able to find
some folks out there to fill civilian spots. There’s spots you’re gonna have to
have in that position anyways. It may be easier to find someone who doesn’t
want to go through the academy, doesn’t want to do all the law enforcement
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part of it – fill that position, and then you can use whoever you are utilizing in
that position, over into the corrections part. You gotta have a body for that
position anyways, whether it’s civilian – it cost you less money, and it’s less
training required, you know it’s just something that, you know…
o Myers – And it’s not that I disagree with you, however you still can’t replace
that body, as I understand it. Yes, it’s gonna be cheaper.
o Sheriff Baron – Well, I’m not asking you to replace it. You already got a body
in that position. I’m just saying put a civilian in that position.
o Sheriff Morgan – The only thing he’s trying to allude to is, you got folks that
are standing out there, and will probably take a mailroom job, versus a deputy
job. So if you have someone on the outside, that’s going to take a mailroom
job, as a civilian – you take the deputy or the corrections officer out of the
mailroom, and put them into the security staff. So in actuality you’re hiring,
but you’re not hiring at your upper levels, and you’re hiring where people
would be more apt to take that job versus the difficulties in taking a
corrections job.
o Myers – I’ll look at the salaries and look at how we can do this.
Scott – How many administrative positions are open?
o Myers – We just filled three.
Archer – This is really just a follow-up question that Mr. Thomas already asked, but
are we collecting through regular exit surveys those reasons that jail personnel are
leaving currently?
o Bruce – Yes
o Archer – So the data is already there, it’s just a matter of putting in a format.
o Bruce – Yes. 10% refuse to do the exit interviews.
Geis – So we’re at 36 vacancies right now?
o Bruce – Correct.
o Geis – In the sworn positions? We filled all the admin positions?
o Bruce – Right.
o Geis – Do you remember is December what that number was? Are we trying
up or down?
o Myers – We’re about the same. What we found out, is that we were not
counting all the vacancies. We were relying on the captains to know how to
do vacancies in one particular area, but he was only counting the vacancies
in his area. And there was a miscommunication between us, thinking that he
was accounting for all the positions. We discovered we had 8 more or 9 more
vacancies.
o Geis – So we had 26 vacancies in December… What I’m trying to determine
is if we are hiring more than we are losing? Is our attrition rate lower than our
hiring rate? Are we in a positive trend, flat trend, or a negative trend?
o Myers – We’ll look at the information and see where we are.
o Geis – I think that’s probably a good metric for a board to hear. I mean know
that’s your daily operational grind, you all are dealing with people that are sick
every day, but sometimes it’s hard to look strategically when you’re fighting
tactically. That’s one of the things I think the board’s role is, is to help keep
the head above and look out into the horizon. So really, big picture, trend
things. Are we on a positive trend, flat trend, or negative trend when it comes
to hiring corrections officers and what are strategies are? I think you alluded
to the hiring fairs and things like that, which is perfect, I think that’s really
good for us to hear.
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Vice Chair Thomas – At the next meeting do you want them to bring us a
year’s worth, six months’ worth of facts & statistics and you take a look at it
and look at the trend?
Myers - To be honest with you, it’s only been…exit interviews.
 To Bruce – It’s only been since you’ve been here right?
 Bruce - Since about August
Myers - We wouldn’t have a whole year’s worth.
Vice Chair Thomas – We got to August for the exit interview information, so
we’ll have more fidelity information on why people are leaving. But, as for
trends for hiring and leaving, we could have that for a year. If we could get a
year trend, a six months trend, and from the last board meeting – that kind of
gives you the long range, the short range trend.
Sheriff Morgan – Just to put in perspective, because I deal with this every
day. Every corrections facility, every law enforcement facility, is going through
the same, exact, thing. BJ and I were just comparing numbers, you know, 22,
23, out of our police department are running the same numbers. It’s an
industry wide issue. It’s more acute in corrections because, as Mr. Myers
alluded to earlier, it’s tough. This is a tough job. Most people equate to
policing as a tough job. But when you gotta live inside it’s tough. Most people
take the job, thinking they can do it. But once they get in here, the reality
sinks in. And all of a sudden, they’re doing hard times with these inmates.
And it’s hard to fill those positions. (To Bruce) And, you know, all the things
you’re doing, you’re right on point. The exit interviews, are gonna kinda a give
you an indicator, but at the end of the day, if you’re running 15-20% attrition,
that’s about normal. And that’s just to put it all in perspective. And Joe, I don’t
know if Norfolk...
 Sheriff Baron – 20%
Myers – The last time I did it, we were at approximately 14%

Maintenance, Capt. Ellis
 Numbers since last board meeting
 4,782 inmates seen by medical (sick call, dental, mental health)
 203 transportation medical & mental health trips (medical appointments, TDOs,
inmates being taken or released from mental health hospitals)
 212,893 meals served by the kitchen
 Maintenance has completed 918 work orders. Replaced 2 PVI boilers, with new,
condensing boilers.
 SimplexGrinnell performed 5 year check on our fire system, and there were no
issues.
 Intake has had 422 new intakes, 400 released.
 Health inspector was here for annual inspection on Feb. 15th – outstanding review.
Medical, April Green
 Recap for 2017, this is a big site with a lot of sick folks in here. We had over 330 ER
runs for all of 2017. Of those 335, 108 were admitted to the hospital.
 We completed over 800 offsite specialty office visits.
 62 TDOs for las year. 4 in January, and already 2 this month.
 Last year the total cost of HIV was 1.5 million, and that is just for the medication
costs alone. For the month of January, that cost was $96,000.

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We are currently monitoring 3 high-risk cancer patients. One is undergoing
chemotherapy and we’re getting ready to get her transferred to DOC. There’s
another patient who’s undergoing chemotherapy and she’s being monitored onsite.
She is not a DOC responsible patient. And one that we just recently worked up has
prostate cancer, and he is in the process of getting staged to prognosis of the
treatment. And we’re looking to see if he’s eligible for mental health court in Norfolk.
o Sheriff Morgan – The high-risk chemotherapy, what stage are they in?
o Green – So, one woman has inflammatory left breast cancer so that’s a very
aggressive form of cancer and her prognosis is not great. They haven’t given
us a specific timeframe. She is state-responsible, so we’re trying to expedite
her transfer to DOC. And the other patient is looking at a four year sentence,
he is not been completely sentenced, but because his guidelines and his
history of criminal activity, he’s looking at four years. And he has been staged
yet. He’s gonna go very shortly to get his CT scan for his staging. And then
again, his prognosis is not great either; they’re thinking it could be stage 3 or
stage 4. But again, that is yet to be determined.
o Sheriff Morgan – And he’s not state-responsible?
o Green – Correct. And that was discovered since his incarceration here. So
that’s something he did not know before his arrest.
Baron – The 108 hospitalized, how long were they hospitalized?
o Green – The average length of stay was 4 days.
In December we agreed to change the transfer policy and that has been going very
well. I hope that all of you are very satisfied with the 7 days being able to transfer
people over. We’ve seen a significant reduction in the number of special needs
requests as a result of that. Any feedback or questions for me?
Vice Chair Thomas – How long is the medical contract?
o Hand – It renews next February, for 2 more annual
o Sheriff Baron – So the renewal is next February?
o Hand – Yes. Well we renegotiated the contract in February, because we
changed the way we process the claims, and Ms. Bryant renegotiated the
management fee and brought the management fee down.
Are we still doing a cost-plus?
o Myers – Yes.
o Sheriff Baron – When can we get away from that?
o Hand – We can rebid the contract at any point, with 180 day notice.
o Sheriff Morgan – I have two questions. 1) The renegotiated contract, was that
brought back to the board?
 Myers – Not sure that was done back in 2017 in February.
 Hand – No sir.
o Sheriff Morgan - If not, it should have.
 Hand – I know that you were told about it, I don’t know if you voted on
it. But that was a year ago.
o Sheriff Morgan – And then to Joe’s comment about the cost-plus, without the
cost – plus, I doubt we’re gonna ever get someone to bid without paying an
astronomical cost. Because of the type of facility you’re in. Now, we could try
it, and put it out there and see what happens, but the risk that we run.
o Sheriff Baron – If we don’t like the bid Sheriff, we just put it back and redo it.
But, we’re paying – it seems to me – and I could be wrong, we’re paying a
certain amount of money and there’s a lot of plus. You know, if the board,

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with all due respect, or Mr. Myers, has been providing oversight on what’s
being spent, I’m sure you have.
 Myers – Yes.
Sheriff Baron - I know that we had to do it. I just know what we experienced.
We had to make sure that the staffing was what we were paying for. There
were a number of things that we assigned somebody that watches every
single penny that comes in and out.
 Myers – We do too. And we have somebody reviewing charges,
inmate cost.
Sheriff Baron – I would be interested in seeing what would come out of
putting out the bid without the cost-plus.

Finance Committee Update FY 2019 Proposed Annual Budget, Brian DeProfio
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DeProfio - The Finance Committee has met several times on the proposed budget.
The FC has reviewed the information that has been provided, and we recommend
approval of the budget. Turn in it over to the Superintendent to go over the Budget
Presentation.
Supt. Myers – Basically an overview of what’s going on and we’re gonna talk about
this in 3 categories. Budget discussion points, gonna talk about the budget high
points, budget drivers, capital improvement, project and other services and support.
Budget high point is the state is going to possibly OK a 2% increase for state and
comp boards for the employees. So what we did in the budget, we have that money
laid aside to make sure if it’s approved, it’s already in the budget, we don’t have to
come back to you to spend it. We cannot spend it unless you give us permission to
allocate that to the employees. So that will not be spent unless you say so, I want to
make sure that’s clear.
o CW Snead – So the anticipated money that the state will pay for the 2%, is
that included in the budget?
o Deanna Isom – It is included.
o CW Snead – So if the state comes back and says, “We’re gonna give 1%
instead of 2%,” then….
o Myers – We’re going to lower our amount.
Budget drivers – Jail Evolution: staffing and overtime has really driven it up. When
we did a staffing analysis we noticed that we’re actually short what we should be
manning in the facility. I went back and did research. Back in 1999, there was an
analysis done that said you were short, I don’t know what happened after that. 2007
there was a staffing analysis done that said you were short, nothing happened after
that. 2017 said you were short again.
But overtime is one of the drivers. We put in the budget $700K for OT, so we have
enough for OT. Comp time, I will tell anybody that if you do comp time all you’re
doing is delaying the inevitable. It’s gonna come and you’re eventually going to have
to pay that out anyway. Because when that person leaves, according to accountants,
you gotta have that money stashed aside if everybody leaves. It creates when you
do comp time also. So $700K set aside for that.
Medical, what is the right size for medical? I have done research, after research,
after research, to find out. Someone talked about staffing on medical, to make sure
we have the right amount of staff. All the research I’ve done over the past month or
so, doesn’t really say anything. They give you how many doctors you should versus
how many inmates. I got anywhere from 1 position for every 200 – 700 inmates. Only
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thing they say is “adequate staffing”. We have taken steps to monitor what we have,
we have a lieutenant position back there and that’s all he does, helps with security in
medical. And he accounts for folks making sure they’re here. See who’s here, and
who is clocking in on our clock. We’re actually trying to manage that part.
Medical costs came to be 2.3% increase. Total, for the last 5 years, medical has
actually went up 8%. Over 8% is what I should say. So, what we’re expecting our
medical budget to be is 11.3 and some change, that’s what we budgeted for it. And
so far it looks we were right on point with that, so far this year, we spent almost $7
million in medical; that includes pharmacy, staffing, and other treatment.
Sheriff O’Sullivan – I got a couple of questions in reference to staffing. When you did
the policy change to institute that every jail officer works the mandatory two
overtimes a month within a 28 day cycle, right?
Myers – It depends on the scheduling, sometimes they work one, sometimes they
may work two. It depends on where they are in the schedule.
Sheriff O’Sullivan – OK, ‘cause I was told that it was two, that they had to work two
for every 28 day schedule.
Myers – It depends on the schedule. It’s a roster that they use and some of them will
work one, and occasionally we’ve had some work three.
Sheriff O’ Sullivan – OK that’s obviously a major thing, the overtime, when you
increase it I think that’ll probably be like 1.6 million for the FY. When you decided to
do the mandatory overtime, did you make sure that we had enough money to pay for
it?
Myers – It was taken out of salary savings.
O’Sullivan- Because I came up, like I said I was just getting information that was sent
over to me, I asked a couple questions from staff members. And they said it was 20
mandatory, basically about 20 mandatory overtime hours for each 214 officers.
Which will basically give you about 6 ½….
Capt. Barnes – What was your last question sir?
O’Sullivan – It basically would put about 6 ½, if you average out, about 6 ½ people
working overtime per shift.
Capt. Barnes – Yes, based on the roster that we created, it’s about six people, but
that fluctuates because some of those people are in the academy they’re in training,
and in some instances we’re looking at six to supplement the staff shortages on each
shift, each day and sometimes you may get 2 or 3. I wanna say sometime between
December and now, when flu season gets hard so to supplement those people who
don’t show up, some of our 8 hour officers are staying on late just to help the team,
now when we experience short officers. Sometimes the officers will come in and we
get a full 5 or 6 people to come in to supplement the overtime and shifts run
smoothly, but there are those times that they don’t have the 5 or 6 people to come in.
Sheriff O’Sullivan – Yeah and that’s what I was kinda looking at, because I based the
information…you know, I can be hard-headed sometimes or hear things different
when people say it, but it was that basically that everybody was working 20 overtime
hours a 28 – day cycle. And if you have 33 -35 officers on each shift, and there’s 24
posts…I mean you always have 10 whether that be sick, leave, annual leave, a
“Kelly day”, training, military leave, you know different things like that – that’s a 10
person buffer there. But then you added in – I didn’t wanna see a thing that it’s a
mandatory thing that everybody works overtime, and these people come in, it should
be adjusted every single shift to manage it. Not a basic thing that says we need 6
extra people every night.

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Myers – They probably need to plan for 6 people every night, I’ll be honest with you.
That’s how short we are. Even if we do the changes – and I’m going to seriously look
at that – we’re still short. The shifts have 40 people; 40 people assigned to each
shift. Subtract all the folks you said, normally that gives you right about 32. Just in
security alone, they’re probably about 41, 42 positions that need to be manned, for
this place to actually operate the way it should operate. The picture that we showed
last month, when you had one officer watching 112 inmates, the jail was not
designed that way. It was never meant to be that way. And the way we’re operating,
it’s….. unsafe for the staff. They make do, over the last 20 years, (excuse my
French) they’ve done a hell of a job keeping this place settled and safe. But
eventually things are gonna happen out of their control where we can’t observe
everything. And those are the things I’m trying to look at. Because if we’re not
proactive in doing something, something eventually is going to happen that is worse.
We’re tasked here to keep the community safe, and when I look at overtime, I look at
it as something essential. Because one thing I know, what happens when you start
instituting overtime, that’s time away from people’s family. That’s serious business.
But also, I would hate to have to tell a family member, a person got assaulted
because we didn’t have enough staff to get from point A to point B in enough time.
And those are things I’m looking at. It’s very difficult to say…I raised this question to
staff yesterday, “What if we don’t do overtime, where is that going to put us at?”
That’ll put as back at pods are not being supervised by anyone. They can’t even go
make rounds, because no one will be able to watch their back. And that’s the thing
I’m trying to avoid. I understand staff gripe about it and they have some issues, but
the bottom line is, you have tasked me with keeping this place safe. That’s what ya’ll
have done. And I’m doing everything in my power, and I know the budget – there’s
not an infinite amount of money in the budget, no matter how we look at it. But one
thing I’ve tried to do is to say, “OK, how can we do this?” We’ve put things in place to
minimize what the officers doing. Because one time I did a cursory look at overtime,
and I was thinking, “Why is overtime so high?” Folks were complaining about
overtime, but they were coming in all kinds of places. But now, all overtime goes
back in the housing units.
O’Sullivan – And I know its paramount, you gotta keep a safe and secure facility, I
would never say short staff anything, you have to man those posts. But I did pull
three sheets from last week, and there was 25 people in those positions on one day,
and 24 in those positions on the other two days. Which those platoons have 35
officers and 6 other people coming in overtime, which is 41 to fill 25.
Myers – No, subtract your people off.
O’Sullivan – It did subtract people off.
Myers – You may have, I have to look at it.
O’Sullivan – I pulled an extra roster sheet – you can see there were 10 people off. A
few of the different things, whether it be military leave, sick leave, annual leave, but
you had the additional ones coming in overtime. I just wanna make sure that
overtime is being managed appropriately, that’s something that needs to be done
every shift, everyday – there’s different standards for the night than there is for the
day time. I just wanna make sure we’re not getting into a thing where it’s just, hey
we’re having six people coming every shift to fill in, or otherwise the overtime is
gonna be…. Like my overtime for the year is $300,000, and it’s the same size facility.
And I know this facility has a lot of its own issues are very difficult to deal with, but
1.6 million in overtime is a lot of money.
Myers – And I understand that.
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Sheriff Baron – I guess the teams are allowing 10 people to take off and then we’re
back filling them?
Myers – It’s not allowing them to take off, no sir.
Capt. Barnes – You’re absolutely right sir (referring to Mr. Myers) most of the watch
commanders will only have 3 or 4 people. Right now, I believe there’s class 17-1 in
the academy. So those people still count on that duty roster, even though, you look
at the total number, it may be 35 people. But if that shift has four people in the
academy, then actually when you show up you only have 31. So no, most of the
watch commanders on the four shifts, they’ll only ….?? 3 or 4 people off.
Sheriff Baron – Right now, the current level of vacancies is how many? 36. Your total
authorized positions – I guess civilian and sworn – how many authorized sworn
positions do you have?
o Ms. Hand – 250
o Baron – What about sworn?
o Ms. Hand – 285
Sheriff Baron – But you’re short 36? I guess I’m just looking at the numbers and
trying to grasp and understand. ‘Cause we’re all concerned about, you know, you’re
staffing, we’re all concerned about what’s going on. But if you have 285 sworn, and
you have 4 teams that are supposed to be 40 each – that’s 160. That leaves you with
125, minus the 36.
Myers – No sir, you’re counting wrong. Don’t forget, transportation, major, major,
major part of this jail. And that’s one of the things that…
Baron – How many people? According to the last meeting you have 20 people that
are transportation.
o Myers – Yes.
Baron – 20 people, minus the 125. So that’s 105, minus 36.
o Myers – Now you take your records people. And that’s one of the first things
that I did mention when I first came here and I talked about where we had
officers. I did say that we had officers in places that we shouldn’t have
officers. I did say that. But, how do we want to do those positions?
Sheriff Morgan – Madame Chair, I don’t want to cut the discussion, but I think we
probably ought to move this into a subcommittee, and then come back to the full
board. So that we can have the time to really explore this perfectly.
Sheriff Baron – If I could, that’s really where I was going with all this. Last month,
Sheriff O’ Sullivan brought up the question about the Operations Committee, and has
the Operations Committee met? And has the Operations Committee taken a look at
how the operations are going, so they can report back to the board to let us know,
“Hey this is what we see, and this where improvements can be made, and guess,
what – you’re stuck.” And the Operations Committee, as far as I know, has not met.
o Sheriff Roberts – That’s not true Joe.
o Colonel Bowden – That’s not true.
Myers – I’m not sure who had the, who was responsible for the Operations
Committee in 2016, ya’ll did an audit of the jail…One of the things they talked about
was the staffing issues here. And they did mention that some folks were in positions
that should be in the back, or civilianized. Those are the things that were discussed.
But, you’re still gonna be short when you take out those positions. I told staff there
are certain positions here where we should have civilians. Possibly the records room,
the mailroom. I’ve talked about that stuff.
Lt. Col O’Toole – Can I receive an invite to the next one, because I did not receive an
invite.
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o Col. Bowden – And we talked about that and I told you, “Yes.”
Sheriff Baron – When was the last Operations Committee meeting? That’s not clear.
o Myers – November?
o Col. Bowden – We had a telephone conference on last Friday, and we’re
going to meet again today, after this meeting.
o Sheriff Baron – Can Norfolk get invited?
o O’Toole – I promise to be nice.
* inaudible chatter ensues*
CW Snead – I know this is my last meeting, but I got to gain control here. I’d like to
put on the table, with the SOP committee working, but it looks like you sheriffs have
a lot of concerns too. And so, what I would like to suggest is that Mr. Myers consider
meeting with you all (sheriffs) on a quarterly basis. So that you all can talk about
what concerns you have regarding this operation that can maybe funnel to the SOP
for them to study and come back to the board. Because, we could sit her all day long
and question, and just make innuendos or whatever. So that’s one of my
suggestions, because I think that you guys know how to run the jail better than any of
us elected officials because you run jails all the time. And so, you all could possibly
help the Virginia way. Am I making sense? So would you be willing to do that? (To
Mr. Myers)
o Myers – I have no issue with that.
CW Snead - So you’re gonna call a meeting with them. I do think that will really help
this situation…a lot.
o Sheriff O’Sullivan – Can we do it within the next couple of weeks?
o Myers – Yes sir.
o O’Sullivan – OK, thank you.
CW Snead – And that doesn’t take away from the SOP committee at all, but it can
maybe funnel things to the SOP.
Vice Chair Thomas – Madame Chair, I have a question on a different issue – the
medical services cost…looking through your report here it looks like 2017 you had
11. 4 million in actual costs, and then your projected in 2018, 9.6, but now you’ve
revised it that to 10.7.
o Myers – What I looked at – CCS was new – I looked at all the issues that
we’ve had coming up to that. That’s why I tried to right-size up there and it
looks like we’ve probably plateaued now to where we wanna stay there. The
only exception to that is possibly consumer price index (CPI), costs that they
can go up every contract year. But I’m thinking that because they were new,
they didn’t know what they were getting into the first time, because we have a
cost-plus model. The management, they have basically a fixed management
fee and the CPI would increase on that part, I believe. But the rest of medical
we’re paying for the care and for the meds. I think that it is more or less over
the plateau now. Where we can see it level out now, it’s not going at a sharp
increase.
Vice Chair Thomas – Has the budget committee reviewed the medical contract, at
any point?
o DeProfio – Uh, the Finance Committee had an extensive conversation about
the medical costs and we looked at the historical trends. Now in terms of the
medical contract, specifically, that was entered into a couple of years ago. At
that point and time there was a consultant who was hired for their expertise in
corrections and medical, and he guided the board along in that process. The
medical provider and different sheriffs here, might have different
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arrangements, with the medical providers, but from my understanding, is that
the medical provider is the same medical provider of most of the jails.
 Sheriff Morgan – 4 out of the 5.
o We did have an extensive conversation about what the right amount was to
budget for medical. And that was a big driver in the per diem.
And who was involved in the discussion to do cost-plus versus (?)
o Sheriff Morgan and DeProfio – The entire board.
o DeProfio – At the time we expected to receive a 3 million dollar increase in
cost (??), if we didn’t do the cost-plus model when it was presented. When
we did that we also had enhanced service in terms of additional mental health
service provision embedded in the cost-plus contract. It was sort of a, greater
service, lower cost when it was presented to the board.
o Sheriff Morgan – And just to add to that, one of the reasons we went for a
cost-plus, that sizable increase would have meant a sizable increase for
everyone. We’re paying for something where we don’t know what we’re
gonna need. So we’re paying them to pass the risk. The cost-plus, we
assume the risk and we help manage the contract. We’re still paying, but
we’re only going to pay for what we’re using. And that was the benefit
because of this type of facility versus someplace else where they can kind of
estimate based on population and that kind of stuff. We, as a board, made a
conscious decision, if we’re going to assume the risk, we need to be able to
manage that risk versus playing someone else to assume the risk. And the
3.2 is the CPI index that basically everybody was handed this year. We paid
only on the management side of it, most of everyone else paid over the entire
contract. It’s one of those things where we’re looking at how you minimize
costs here.
o So the cost looks high, but that’s the type of people that we’re sending here
and at that time we had a discussion - and BJ brought this up today, at lunch
– we talked about doing a percentage of how many truly sick folks you can
send out of your overall population to kind of stabilize that across the board,
but we haven’t done that. So the bottom line is, if you have 250 beds, you can
send 250 of your worst inmates here, if you have 100 beds, you can only
send 100 of your worst inmates here. So that cost, is then shared by
everybody in here. So if we really wanna talk about, holding the cost of
medical, then we need to have some real organizational talks about how we
manage the inmate population that we send here.
 Vice Chair Thomas – As a whole.
o Vice Chair Thomas – That talk doesn’t really change anything, because
whether we pay through it the region or pay it individually, it’s the same
amount gets paid.
o Sheriff Morgan – But it does change something, it does. It changes
something for those who don’t send as many sick, because what happens is,
for example: We may pay more of the overall cost because the cost is higher
and we’re not sending as money. So each individual locality…
 Archer - Shares the (?), it changes the proportional cost share at the
local level.
o Sheriff Morgan – Right. So right now, it may not be in my interest to….
 Vice Chair – If everyone agreed to only send 50% sick people and
50% heathy people, that doesn’t really change the mark, because that
50% that you’re keeping at your jail, you’re just paying more for. The
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ratios may change slightly based on how many you’re sending, but it’s
still getting paid for by the locality.
*inaudible chatter from the group*
o Sheriff Morgan – No, no. He’s technically right. I’m not talking about the ratio
of here. I’m talking about the amount that the locality pays out would change,
because if I don’t have that many to send, then I’m not going to paying that
out. That’s where if you do it based on proportion changes, so in essence the
locality will pay less.
o CW Snead – The one that sends the least sick people, will pay less.
o Sheriff Morgan – There you go. I needed a finance person to help me out with
that. I may not be articulating it correctly, but trust me, I’ve done this.
o Vice Chair Thomas – Where I was heading though, my next question would
be. Is now an appropriate time to look at how this contract has performed
over the last two years, compared to how it was sold to this board, and make
a decision on whether it’s the best type of contract to continue with.
o Michael Goldsmith (?) – Have we done the analysis to see if we’re actually
better off with the cost-plus? Compared to what we would’ve done?
o Myers – I don’t think we’ll actually know unless we actually bid out a fixed
cost. But I have to agree with Sheriff Morgan, a fixed cost would probably,
once they do the history, we’re probably talking about 13, 14 million at the
start. That’s just a wild guess, to be honest with you.
o Goldsmith – What are we paying now?
o Myers – About 11.4 is what we budgeted.
o DeProfio – I think one thing we might be able to do is look back at, I think we
did get a bid from a provider as to how much the increase was going to be
when we had the other model. So, we can kinda look at and where we are,
and if that was higher than where we are, then we know we made the right
decision. As kind of a quick, peck at the envelope type of analysis. But if it’s
not then we probably need to look at some additional options.
o DeProfio – We were at 10 million dollars, 2, 3 years ago. So basically we
need to look at that and look at where we are and see the difference.
o CW Snead – Is that something the Finance Committee would look into? Staff
will look into it.
Myers – Capital Improvement Plan: You’ll notice by third item on here is air
handlers. In order for us to adjust the temp, we cannot do it electronically. We have
to manually go on top of the building to move the air handlers around to adjust the
temp in the building. That’s what is in this budget here. We found out our fire panel
was outdated we have to replace that. Those are some of the drivers for the budget.
I think we asked for $777,000 for that.
Increase in utilities – water is up, sewer is up. We’re not sure, to be honest with you,
why the water is going up, we’ve checked for leaks in the building, but the water is
constantly going up. I don’t know how it is in some of your facilities, but for some
reason, our water has been going up and there is no leak.
This budget was a $4 increase, and we’re using one-time funds that we got back
from security upgrades which was ??? . The larger increase of what we originally
proposed to the Finance Committee, the original one was $8. We managed to bring it
down to a $4 increase to a total budget for 42.8 and some change. It comes to a $4
per diem increase.
CW Snead – Any questions?

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Sheriff Morgan – I have a lot, but I’m gonna yield to my rep in the Finance Committee
and just assume that all of the questions have been asked.
Myers – Oh yeah, what 4 meetings? And several emails back and forth.
Sheriff Baron – I yield to my Finance rep as well, you know, as far as the $4 because
we talked about it yesterday. We all had a couple questions when we looked at pg.
40 and it says the, “General Operating Budget”, there are some areas that, you
know, we spent more than we obviously had projected that we would spend for in the
budget. One was medical services, that’s been gone over multiple times. And the
other was, “Other Charges”. I take it the Other Charges is the waters bill and utilities
bill?
o Hand – Yes
Baron - And we spent over $500,000 over what we said we would?
o Myers – That was water, sewer, electric, and gas.
Baron - $500,000 more than we thought we would?
o Myers – Yes. Over what we projected.
Baron – And then it says, “Materials & Supplies”, we spent $172,000 more than what
we had projected we would spend.
CW Snead – We’re not on the Treasurer’s Report.
o Baron – Oh, we’re not?
o Sheriff Morgan – Oh, this is not the budget?
o Deanna Isom – No, that’s not the budget.
o Baron – It says Operating Budget, I guess it’s a Treasurer’s Report.
o Myers – It’s part of the Treasurer’s Report.
Baron – I guess it goes inline though because it says the jail saw decreases in
Materials & Supplies in 2016 and 2017, so the proposed budget reduces that
expense by 3.87, but here in your Treasurer’s Report, you’re spending more.
o Hand – Right, we worked up that budget October and December based on
October numbers. Started with October numbers and utilities have gone up,
supplies have gone up, and maintenance repair supplies.
Baron –I will defer to my Finance Committee representative, thank you.
CW Snead – Anything else on the budget? Do you want to do the Treasurer’s
Report?
CW Snead – I need a motion to adopt the proposed annual budget.
DeProfio moved that the board accept the budget, Archer 2nd. Motion passed.
Budget approved.

Treasurer’s Report, Deanna Isom
 In revenue, our Out of Compliance, we’re projected to come down lower than we
normally projected. Because we’re getting out DOC inmates out and to DOC earlier, so
we don’t have as many medical costs.
 Investment income is up higher than we projected because we moved money to LGIP
where we’re getting a higher interest rate on our Operating Reserve. So it’s sitting into
an account where we’re actually learning a higher rate of interest.
 Special revenues are going to be up, that’s due to more of the inmates using
commissary and families having packages sent to inmates.
 Personal services and employee benefits – we’re actually using vacancy savings to
cover our increase in our overtime cost. So that’s kind of…right now we’re currently
projected to be favorable, however, as we hire new people, that may increase, because

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we’re going to start adding benefits that we’re using too as part of our vacancy savings
for overtime.
Medical is going to be over cost, that’s already been discussed
Materials & Supplies, that’s more maintenance and cost of maintenance repairs on this
building that’s driving that cost. Any questions?
o Sheriff Morgan – Have we looked at the water utilities and try to determine what
the increase is? Are they running water for Ramen?
 Hand – We have looked at it from every angle. We’ve had leak detector
companies out here with scanners and in the front lawn; we’ve had
cameras go up pipes looking for leaks. We can’t identify that big. We’re
told if it’s that big of a leak then we have a sinkhole. We have had leaks
with the piping in the HVAC and got worse. But, not that grand. Maybe an
extra $2,000 one month before we get the repairs completed. It’s; nothing
compared to what we’re seeing. What we plan to do is an energy audit
and upgrade. One of the big things we want to look at is controlling the
water, putting in special flush things, so that they can only flush the toilet
once or every 20 minutes. Water shut-off because we do have mental
health inmates that flood and they cut off one cell, they have to shut off a
whole bank at one time. A shut-off on the control panels, so we can do
that, cut off the water quickly and not have to shut it off for everybody.
There are some areas with water that are some concerns that we want to
address when we do the energy audit.
o Sheriff Morgan – For the rounds, that can be an item of special interest. If you’re
making your rounds and that water’s running, you may need to go in there and
get that thing turned off. Because we can’t afford to continue paying at that kind
of rate. And on electricity, as we begin to look, we may need to look and see if
we’re gonna be able to transition to LED.
 Hand – And electricity is up of course because of the weather, but
historically electricity and natural gas have been trending down. They
went up, but they started trending down in the last few years. Water’s the
only thing that keeps going up. So electricity and natural gas seem to
following the flow of the weather, but not the water.
o Sheriff Morgan – I thought you had steam heat?
 Hand – Yes.
o Sheriff Morgan – So why would the electricity be following the weather?
 Hand – We had summer part of this FY too to factor into that.
o Sheriff Morgan – The last question is, when are the bonds going to mature?
 Hand – 2028
o Sheriff O’ Sullivan – What was currently budgeted for the water, sewage, and
gas, and electric?
 Hand – I can’t tell you those breakout numbers, but total utilities it’s $2.7
million. That includes utilities, that includes travel and training. That
includes telecommunications. That’s all in other.
o Sheriff Morgan – Can we get a graph, of over the last year, inmate population
and utilizes, overlaid on top of it, please?
 Hand – Yes.

New Business, Update on Budget Amendment, Supt. Myers
 It didn’t go through. It was basically it was floated down, as far as I know. But we’re still
going to continue trying to push it for a new budget year, see if we can get additional
staffing. When I look at it, and hindsight is 20/20, the ask may have been too big. So we
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may have to bring down the ask to see if we get something. And I will bring that before
ya’ll, before we take it any further.
o Vice Chair Thomas – Do we know if it made it out of the committee? Did it get out
of the budget committees? Where did it get killed?
Myers – Budget Committee.
o Sheriff Morgan – Let me take us back to the Treasurer’s report, I’ll make a motion
to accept the Treasurer’s Report. Sheriff Baron 2nd. Motion passed.
CW Snead – Any other questions on the budget amendment?
Sheriff Morgan – I will tell you that the Sheriff’s Association worked to kill that bill. And I
will also say, that in the future, if we’re going to try to go and lobby, that we should have
a conversation here with the Board first. Talk about objections, potholes on the way, all
those things before. And have a board vote on whether or not we should go forward with
such an effort. I will tell you right now that was opposed by the Association.
CW Snead – All the more reason to have the Sheriff’s Roundtable.
Robert Geis – Can I ask, I honestly don’t know, why was it opposed?
o Sheriff Morgan – The overall way that budgets are done, we don’t go back and
they don’t do individual appropriations. If that happens, what ends up happening
is your locality may lose out because Fairfax had more influence, more strength,
and all those kinds of things. So what happens is the compensation board is the
pie cutter…so everything is given to them and then they cut that pie. We don’t
do, except for when we’re standing up an organization, or building a new facility,
or a manpower study done, or a staffing study done, those will be approved. That
money will be held in advance. Then the general assembly when they that fiscal
year, they’ll make the appropriation. And that’s the air mark to that particular
facility. There’s never an air mark other than those (?) to keep everything on an
even – keel.
Geis – So what I think I heard you say, or as I understood it, the strategy would be not to
advocate for a particular organization, but a higher limit overall to be cut between all
locations.
o Right. Or, a particular type of organization that meets a certain type of criteria
would have this type of staffing versus…so it’s general in nature, but still specific
enough to handle the facility.
DeProfio – Can I ask, that the sheriffs, when they have their meeting with the
Superintendent, look to identify legislative strategy going forward?
*Geis 2nd. Motion was passed*
Vice Chair – We kind of glossed over this – but that was done, lobbying was done
without first coming to the board and I do think that’s inappropriate.
o Myers – We came before you in October and told you that.
September…whenever we met, we did ask you for permission. And that was
along with the mayor thing.
Vice Chair Thomas – You should’ve come to us first and had that discussion. And that
dovetails into another concern that I’d like to point out. Really, be careful about getting
ahead of the board. Hardly a week goes by right now without seeing something about
this institution in the newspaper. And I’m wondering what benefit that is and why that
should come to this board, and we make a decision on whether an announcement
should be made to the press. Maybe it’s just the lawyer in me…if we’ve got an issue, we
should let our attorneys handle that and we shouldn’t be making comments to the news,
that may or may not hurt our defenses in these cases.
o Sheriff Morgan – No, it might hurt our defense, because the statement that was
made was about the lack of staffing and attributed that to the cause of…?
18

 Sheriff O’Sullivan – Attorney contacted me and said I can’t believe ya’ll wrote that
in the paper.
o Myers – That statement was not said that way. When she asked me that
statement, I said, “I said no, there was proper staffing through overtime the whole
time things were going on.” Because she said, “Well did staffing have anything to
do with death” and I wanted to make sure...
o Sheriff Morgan – We’re not talking about your interview. The Captain did that.
Vice Chair Thomas – My suggestion is that no one should be talking to the press unless
it first comes through the Board, or if it has to be done before the next Board meeting,
talk to the Chair and the Vice Chair.
CW Snead – I’m not sure that I agree with that.
Councilwoman Sharon Scott – That’s too much (micromanaging?)
Myers – They put out the part they wanted to put out. I understand it was a soundbite.
Many – They always do that.
Sheriff Morgan – What I’m saying is the statement that was made put us in a bad
position, and…
Vice Chair Thomas – What was the benefit of talking to them in the first place? Why? I
mean get our defense attorney in here, what will he say? He’ll say, “Don’t talk”.
Myers – Well see that’s been our whole problem. You cannot tell the press no comment.
That opens the doors to where your story is not gonna be there. Yeah, we have to be
careful, I agree with you. But just by saying, “No comment”, you get all this negative
press.
o Vice Chair Thomas – You don’t say, “No comment”, you say it’s under
investigation and you can’t comment at this time. Which is absolutely, 100%
appropriate.
Myers – Yes, and we do if it happens that way.
Scott – And then you have to tell them something that you want out in the public. If you
can’t totally speak to the issue. You have to give a positive – I used to be a reporter –
you have to put a positive piece of information to dovetail on whatever they are asking
you, so that when they decide to print it, won’t just be the negative out there.
CW Snead – One way to get around this maybe is that when they’re getting ready to
some sort of press thing, they should alert the board, that we’re gonna be interviewing
with “such and such”. Not necessarily to get our approval, but to at least alert us to the
fact that it is happening or is going to happen.
o Sheriff Morgan – If no one else, at least the Chair. The Chair should know when
it’s going down.
o DeProfio – I would think that you all (the sheriffs) should know as well because
you all would get asked questions.
Myers – And I will say there have been cases, especially in December, and we did not
notify the Board.
Vice Chair Thomas (holding a newspaper article in reference to the housing of juveniles)
- Why talk to the press about this? What good did that do, for you to call the press and
talk about that?
o Myers – They asked about…
Vice Chair Thomas – That injures each and every one of your local municipalities who
support this jail. I disagree; I don’t think you should be talking to the press at all without
first going to the Board.
Zakkiyya Anderson, Public Information Officer – Madame Chair, I have a question.
Myers – My rationale, I’m going to be honest, as most honest as I can when talking to
the press, what I’m not going to let them do is catch me in a lie. What I’ve said to the
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press, is what I’ve said during open session. I’ve said no more to the press. When I was
asked about juveniles: “How are you holding juveniles?” I told them, the state statute…
o Sheriff Baron – Were you asked or did you talk to them about it?
Myers – They asked me the question. The question was asked. “How are you holding
juveniles?” I said, “The state statute allows us to hold juveniles.”
o Sheriff Baron – OK, because they didn’t ask any of the rest of us. And all of us
are doing the exact thing you are. So it’s curious to me how the press came to
you, and just asked how you’re holding juveniles. And the reason is exactly what
the Councilman Thomas is talking about getting in front of the board. It sounds
like an agenda. And I understand, we all understand, because we talked about it
last meeting, the problem with juveniles, and how are we going to house the
juveniles. We all have to deal with it, but getting out there and basically saying to
the press, and to the whole world, that Hampton Roads Regional Jail is violating
federal law – that’s exactly what it says.
o Sheriff Morgan – And I will challenge that, and say, show me a federal law that
we’re in violation. I will challenge it. Because I’ve searched for it, and I haven’t
found it.
o Myers – It’s not a law, it’s a standard.
o Sheriff Morgan – Exactly.
o Vice Chair Thomas – But that’s what was said.
o Sheriff O’Sullivan – And it’s very unusual that they wouldn’t contact the rest of the
sheriffs.
CW Snead – Are we insinuating that they contacted the…I’m trying to understand
Sheriff O’Sullivan (I believe) 1 hr 30 min – I’m asking again. Did you all reach out to the
staff about that situation?
o Myers – No we did not. As far as I know of, nobody reached out to talk to the
press. All I know is we got a call that morning, and says we wanna come in and
talk to you about um what changes you’ve made, and things you’ve done. And I
said, “OK fine, we can do that – no biggie. We’ll take you on a tour of the facility
and show you some of the changes.” They asked me about juveniles, and I
talked about PREA. They asked me were we in violation of PREA. I said the
state…
o Sheriff Morgan – How would they know?
o Sheriff Roberts – They don’t know nothing about PREA.
o Myers – I’m not sure...
Anderson – Madame Chair, may I interject, because I have an answer to that question.
o CW Snead – yes.
Anderson – So I also serve as Public Information Officer for the jail. So I get a lot of the
phone calls that we get from outside and from the press as well. So one answer to your
question is that there are mothers that call, of the juveniles that will call the reporters and
call the news. And so we get phone calls that trickle in from reporters regarding those
matters. Now, they might not ask them directly all the time, but the reporters are aware
of the situation, because I’ve talked to mothers myse…
o Sheriff Morgan – They know about PREA specifically?
Anderson – Correct. Like I said, I’ve had mothers that have called and said, specifically,
“You are in violation of PREA.” I have.
o Sheriff Morgan – But we’re not.
Anderson – And I agree with you, but I have gotten those calls. And secondly, when you
all say about, as far as, talking to the Board before going to the press, if it reporter calls
my line for example, I guess my question to you all is, is the response then to say, “We
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aren’t able to comment at this time.” And then to come to you all every time we get a
phone call?
o Sheriff Morgan – No. I think the appropriate thing, at that point, I got a Public
Information Officer, and I think we all do. I personally, I am not in the position to
answer that, let me check. And I’ll get back to you. That’s it.
Anderson – Correct. And so then…
o Sheriff Morgan – Then you go to the Superintendent
Anderson – And then bring to the Board?
o Sheriff Morgan – Have them (Superintendent) craft an answer, bring that back to
you. But at the same time, he is responsible for making a notification to the
Chairman or whoever we decide, before you release it.
Anderson – OK. Before you answer the question?
o Sheriff Morgan – yes.
Myers – And if you notice, what we did…We had a phone call yesterday?
o Anderson – Well it’s only Wednesday, so it was Tuesday.
Myers – Tuesday.
Sheriff Baron – Yeah, we’ve been getting emails lately. That’s been pretty good.
o Sheriff Morgan – And that’s good.
Myers – Yeah. And that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to give you a heads up
now. Because when it was brought to my attention in December, I said OK, my fault.
Archer – May I suggest a slightly different approach to this? Because I understand that
it’s a problematic. For those of you who are familiar with the history and the previous
Superintendents’ reluctance to engage in the media it put the Board in an equally bad
position. We had various conversations, over a period of time about, what’s appropriate
to comment that’s advantageous to the Board and what is not. But I’m going to suggest
that to, avoid the one might read in between the lines, as becoming a “you said vs he
said”, we ought to have a straightforward policy, and this is a matter of our Board. Each
one of our jurisdictions has a standard operation procedure that the City Mayor’s Office
or the Sheriff utilizes every day to manage and monitor inquiries that come from the
press. And I think that if you have a clear policy about how you’re going to receive those
inquiries and respond, it may be a policy that this board wishes to retain at this level.
And if it is a potential matter involving litigation, then we certainly should reserve the right
not to comment. Except in those matters, under advice from our attorney, we realize that
a statement would be appropriate, and would be forthcoming. But don’t ever be, put in
the position, where you feel like you have to respond on the spot. We all agree, and I
think I would encourage you to certainly not withhold information, but certainly be
prudent in what you do say. So if this is a matter, that I think we need a formal policy, I
don’t want to add something onto the SOP committee to do, I think that it ought to come
internally, as a recommendation, and let us review it, feel comfortable with it, and go
forward with adopting it. That would be my recommendation.
Scott – I just wanna say, as a former journalist, when somebody calls this facility for
answers, you can’t just not answer them. And the Board is not going to be able to be
responsive to every time a reporter calls. When a reporter calls, they already have the
information. Like she said, they asked for PREA. If your kid, you’re going to research,
you’re going to find everything there is to find about juvenile detention and how it works,
and all the applicable laws. So, as someone else said, instead of just not answering, and
waiting for the Board, you do have to tell them that, “I can refer you to this whatever
statute that pertains to juveniles.” You can direct them to some other information, instead
of answering the question, if you’re not sure what position it will put you in, based on
what this attorney is saying. And I don’t think we should stymie the Superintendent’s
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ability to make a statement without the Board. We hired him because we respected his
ability to run this jail, and I think he needs a little flexibility in how he does that. Now, as
the Sheriff said about the policy, maybe there should be some policy, but I don’t think we
should tie his hands.
Sheriff Baron – I agree, to an extent. But there’s some things that, 1) take some time,
and say, is this really something that I need to respond to right away? Is this something
that is of urgent nature? We had a death in the jail or something like that. Versus a
question in reference to, you know, housing juveniles and how does the affect the rest of
us? Because it’s not just that. When you take it in light with also the fact that Cliff Hayes,
who works here, is also presented legislation at the Capitol, in reference to juveniles, the
housing of juveniles, in reference to that any facility that’s housing the juveniles, must
have been inspected or have a review by the Department of Corrections, I believe it is.
And that if they’re going to be the determiners on whether we can hold juveniles now.
And that doesn’t just affect Hampton Roads Regional Jail, that affects all of us. And if we
can’t send them here, which is what the push seems to be, and then we’re pushing it
back to the cities, in trying to figure out what we’re going to do with the juveniles.
Because if none of us can hold them, who’s going to hold them? And some of these
facilities are not built to do that. And they’re holding murderers, and they’re holding
robbers, and they’re holding rapists. Some of these folks, they may be 17 years old, but
they’re not 17 years old.
Scott – My point is, they already know they’re here, so we need to be able to speak to it.
I do agree that he shouldn’t be rash in making a statement, but they’re here. And since
they’re here, we need to be able to talk about it.
Sheriff Baron – State law says we can have them here.
Scott – What we need to decide on is how we talk about it.
Sheriff Baron – I think the response, honestly, would be, state law allows us to hold them
here and we’re governed by state code. It just goes back to what Martin was saying,
don’t get out in front of the Board on a lot of things. We’re out in front of the Board on
legislation in reference to trying to get more people; we’re out in front of the Board in
trying to make it so that juveniles can’t come here, and we’re getting out in the media
and we’re talking about something that affects all of us, all of us.
Sheriff Morgan – Two thirds of this Board is elected, that’s the other issue. Two-thirds of
this room, they’re elected. They have to answer to their constituents. So it affects in
more ways, than most folks understand. And it’s not about, winning an election, it’s
about doing what’s right. And at the end of the day, what Joe is alluding to, is that the
pushback from this institution to not hold juveniles. And I’m going to tell you right now,
that’s problematic for every single jurisdiction. And to have someone, that works here,
pushing that legislation, that’s not good. We haven’t had that conversation.
Myers – Let me address that. We have not pushed back to take juveniles. What we’ve
asked the jurisdictions is to make sure the judge understands that, when we hold a
juvenile, we don’t separate them. We’ve had juveniles come in at 14, 15. And here’s my
thing, PREA, and I know what the standard says. I’m not… Us pushing juveniles away is
never the case. We bring the juveniles in. What I said, and I what I told the Board last
time, we’re keeping them, to accommodate that, we’re keeping them locked down the
whole time they’re here. Especially the frail ones.
o Sheriff Morgan – That’s no different than any other facility. We all face the same
problem. But the state law, which we are governed, says that’s what we’re
supposed to do, because they’re adjudicated as an adult. In this state at 14, you
can be adjudicated as an adult. Now granted, what we end up doing, is we try to
keep them separated for their protection and those things – we get that, but we’re
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not the enemy. We’re suffering the same issues, and the fix is not, to put us out
there like that.
Geis – Echo about having SOP to handle it. We have a Public Information Officer, it’s an
additional duty – right that’s not your full time job, it’s an additional duty? This is kind of a
general statement, all of the localities have, full staffs of Finance people, and Budget
people, and I think we have 5 people in our Public Communications Office – we have a
lot of help. What I would like to, as the City of Chesapeake, and I’m sure all of us, are
interested in the success of this institution. And we’re all paying members, we’re all
board members, we’re all in the same team. And what I’d like to offer is our expertise.
Whether it be on the Budget & Finance side, whether it be on the Public
Communications side. There’s help available, if we all think – or more importantly, the
Superintendent thinks – that you all need assistance, I would offer that we are here to
help. And we ought to. We’re all in this together. We’re all rowing the same boat
together. We’re gonna succeed together, or we’re gonna fail together. We’re only gonna
succeed if we’re all rowing at the same time, the same way. And we have a lot help that
we can offer. Whether it be, again, Budget & Finance, whether it be Public
Communications. I think the time to talk about these things. And I’ll just speak to my
experience on the Finance Committee, we had a very short period of time, to try to work
through some very heavy issues. And honestly, it was hard. And I’d like to not do that
again. What I’d like to do, is start working that, start working on next year’s budget, now.
What I’d like to do, and what I’d like to recommend – the same thing for Operations – I
think all of us believe we need to get a better handle on OT and on…
CW Snead – I think we’re getting into almost performance type issues.
o Geis – No, I’m trying to help.
CW Snead – I think too, that that’s a conversation – there are some things that are being
said here – are conversations that I think the Board needs to have alone. Not with his
whole full staff here. OK? I think out of sensitivity, we need to do that. You know, then he
can lay it out on the line, to us too. Because now it appears that, everybody’s trying to
put out their issues, today. And so, what I’d like to do is call an Executive Session in a
few minutes, so that we can finish discussing whatever it is we need to discuss.
CW Snead – Are you done with the update on the budget amendment?
o Myers – Yes ma’am.
CW Snead – The City of Portsmouth has something that they want to share.
Robert C. Ike – Our Mayor, John Rowe, received a letter which is a 7 page letter, from
inmates here in this facility. And it was written in the form of a petition with numerous
allegations of this facility.
o Sheriff Morgan – Do we have copies for the Board members?
Ike – I don’t have any copies, all we have is one right now.
o Sheriff Morgan – Well I would ask that we get copies please.
CW Snead – So we’re gonna take a 5 – 10 minute break.
Ike – Is this something that we need to go into Closed Session to discuss because it
references inmates?
o Myers – Yes.
o CW Snead – Is that a Closed Session something we can do?
o Myers – Yes, because possible litigation.
o CW Snead – Do we have a lawyer here that can tell us.
o Sheriff Morgan – Well, this is just my opinion. This here is some sovereign citizen
stuff that we get all the time. And I didn’t see anything, and I didn’t read every
single word – I tried to get through it as quickly as possible – I didn’t see anything

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in here that would require us to get into, in my opinion, Closed Session. But I
yield to the attorney.
o Vice Chair – My malpractice coverage, does not cover me for this, but I would
agree.
Ike – So I’ll go ahead with the history of where this came from; basically this letter was
sent to our Mayor, John Rowe, for the City of Portsmouth. So he in return, copied to our
City Manager, Dr. Patton, who had to leave, because she had another appointment. It
went to our City Attorney, myself, and Sheriff Moore, because we’re all on this Board. So
basically, through our City Attorney through receiving this letter, they wanted us to come
and make a request of this Board, and make a motion that this be investigated, and at
least have a report back on the outcome of this letter.
Sheriff Morgan – What specifically would they like us to investigate, can you articulate
that, please?
Ike – Well there’s just numerous allegations in here, if you want us to go through and
read the entire letter, but basically.
o Sheriff Morgan – No, just outline what they find egregious that we need to
investigate.
Ike – Let me find something, because it was several of them in here.
Sheriff O’ Sullivan – Yeah but it’s: neglect, prejudice, medical malpractice, internal
corruption, lack of proper medicine
Ike – I know, it’s a laundry list.
o Sheriff Morgan – We see this every day.
o Ike – oh, I understand.
Sheriff Morgan – There’s nothing specific in here, they just took a broad brush and
painted.
Ike – And I agree.
Geis – So the only thing I read in here: “I myself has suffered these post and present
indifferences watching an detainee get beaten to death unmercifully, while administrative
officials onlooked the situation.” I mean that to me, is the only allegation, that I read,
that’s a specific allegation.
Ike – I think part of the point is, the fact that the letter was sent to our Mayor, and our
City
o Sheriff Baron – It happens in every city.
Ike – And I understand that, but then our attorney advised us to come and request there
be an investigation. Because, I guess, since this does happen all the time, I was a
previous deputy working in corrections, so I understand this is a daily thing. But I guess if
it’s just looked upon, that, “Well this happens every day, we’re not going to look into.”
Should us, as a city, notify other outside agencies to look into, because our Board that
we’re a part of is not looking into it? That’s just, ya know…so we have to do basically,
what our attorney’s advising us. So that’s why I’m bringing it to the Board.
Sheriff O’Sullivan– In my mind, there’s a couple ways that you can handle this, you can
kick it to the counsel for the jail; let them make an answer, because this is a legal
document. Or, you turn your Internal Affairs Unit loose, and interview every one of these
folks, and come up with a statement and try to do that. I don’t know if you’d get
anywhere. But at this point, that, to me, that’s really the only 2 options you got.
Sheriff Roberts – And I also suggest, as part of it, is the SOP just take a look at it
through their committee and report back to us along with the Lt. in Internal Affairs, so we
can just take a broad look at it and say that’s what we had done.
Sheriff O’ Sullivan – We got some allegations, the staff looked into it. I think this is
perfectly fine for Investigations to handle.
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CW Snead – Can we, at some point, get a list of everything we’ve asked the SOP to do.
Because, invariably, somebody’s gonna come back and wanna know why they haven’t
done something.
o Sheriff Roberts – Karen has it.
 CW Snead – OK. So that’s resolved. We’re going to have it investigated. Everybody OK
with that?
o Ike – Yes, that’s all they were asking for, that’s very appropriate.
 CW Snead – OK, now, we need to go into Closed Session for just a little bit. So I need a
motion to go into Closed Session and cite the motion pursuant to 2.2 – 3711.A.7 of the
Code of Virginia for briefings pertaining to a personnel matter and possible litigation. Can
I get a motion?
o Motion was made by Robert C. Ike Jr. 2nd by Robert Geis
 Pre – Roll Call taken at 3:45
Closed Session
 After the Closed Session Roll Call was taken to confirm that everything that was talked
about was what was agreed upon beforehand. Taken at 4:34.
 Michael Moore was introduced and welcomed to the Board.
 Sheriff Morgan thanked Chairwoman Snead for her service as Chair. She thanked the
Board for their support.

4:35 Adjournment.

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