Chesapeake's police chief is moving on

CHESAPEAKE

Richard Justice does not know how retirement will suit him. He does not know what it will be like to go to sleep and wake up without the career that has largely defined him for 42 years.

Policing has been with Justice since the evening of April 1, 1966, when a senior officer picked up the newlywed for his first shift.

Even when Justice was away, the job was there, a weight he embraced and rarely, if ever, dreaded. It got heavier nearly a dozen years ago when he became chief of the Chesapeake Police Department, then 400-plus members.

On Tuesday, another April 1, Justice will hand over responsibility of a force that has grown to more than 500.

He does not feel like 42 years have gone by. He never planned to stay for so long. He did not plan on becoming a police officer in the first place.

Justice was going to make a career working for the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. That's the job he took after an overseas tour in the Army, but then some friends started talking about becoming police officers.

It was satisfying work, they told him. You were out on the street, involved in real life, real issues, and you could have an impact. Justice surprised his family when he took a pay cut to join. None of his relatives had been a police officer.

He'd grown up in South Norfolk. Justice's stepfather worked for the Ford plant. His mother was a grocery store cashier.

Justice received no formal training during his first three months as a police officer; then it was only for a week after work. That's how things were done back then, Justice said in an interview last week. "They gave you some uniforms, a badge, a gun, six bullets. They told you, 'Don't load that gun in here, and when you do, don't shoot yourself.' "

But a movement to educate and train police officers more formally was under way - a change that Justice says affected the profession nationally.

He enrolled in college with a half-dozen others on the force. "The old-timers referred to us as 'those college boys,' " he recalled.

As Chesapeake grew and changed from rural to suburban, to a place with complex problems such as gang violence and illegal drug use, Justice said, education became vital. By the time he rose up to deputy chief in 1990, then chief seven years later, "I tried to carry on that important legacy."

Justice believed the city's growth meant the department no longer could be run from one central location. It meant that police would have to work with the community on a personal level in order to succeed, that officers would have to take advantage of technology in order to spend more time on the street. He is credited with establishing five geographically based precincts, for pioneering community policing, for outfitting each officer with a laptop.

He helped create six community advisory groups but stopped short of citizen oversight, which would have allowed citizens to investigate policy and complaints.

That did not sit well with the Chesapeake chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. March Cromuel Jr., president of the chapter at the time, said he believed oversight would build community trust.

"I would like to see cameras in all police cars and a citizen review board before he leaves," Cromuel said.

Justice opposed it, and still does. "At any time, a complaint can be lodged against us that can bring in the state police, the FBI. The department is open. We don't operate in any clandestine fashion now. We can't have citizen groups running a police department," he said.

The chief's retirement comes less than three months after Detective Jarrod Shivers was shot and killed while serving a drug search warrant - the second officer to die in the line of duty in three years.

Critics lambasted the department for serving the warrant in the first place; enough marijuana was found at the home to charge resident Ryan Frederick with first-offense possession. He also has been charged with first-degree murder and use of a firearm.

Justice drew further criticism for remaining largely silent in the wake of Shivers' death.

The fallen officer's photograph sat at the edge of the chief's desk recently.

"I don't send officers out there to be beat on, spit on, shot at, knifed, whatever," Justice said. "I don't always jump on interviews on these hot topics. There are times when I can't comment. I won't try criminal cases in The Pilot."

But to say he is a chief who keeps to himself is inaccurate, Justice said. "I'm very involved in the community. I'm very accessible."

Cromuel, who led the Chesapeake NAACP for two decades, agreed.

"I don't think we resolved as many issues as I would have liked," Cromuel said. But "we had an open-door policy. I must say that."

Retirement has been a long time coming.

Justice said he considered it a dozen years ago. But then his predecessor, Ian Shipley, died unexpectedly. The department supported Justice for chief, and an organization of retired city workers endorsed him.

On Justice's first day in the new job, officers and civilian employees applauded his arrival from the sidewalk.

"I've never heard officers say anything negative about him," said Burnie Mansfield, president of the city's Council of Civic Organizations. "The police department is the community's friend under him."

Eight years ago, Justice's son joined the Chesapeake Police Department. When his grandson followed six years later, "I stuck around a little longer. Not that I was all that anxious to leave."

Justice always felt like he'd know when it was time to go. Police work has not been what he expected as a new recruit more than four decades ago, but it has never disappointed.

Justice announced his retirement in September. So far, the city has not named a replacement. Justice wants to do some fishing, work on lowering his golf handicap, spend more time on the woodworking projects he always has been able to lo se himself in - the jewelry boxes and the desk clocks and the furniture pieces.

He wants to travel. He wants to see New England with his wife.

Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5208, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com