A week after abruptly submitting his resignation as Portsmouth's interim police chief, William Corvello changed his mind and agreed to stay on the job until at least January. It's a welcome move that should give the city stronger footing in its search for his replacement - if, and only if, leaders at City Hall earnestly address the veteran law enforcement officer's complaints.
Corvello, a retired superintendent of the Virginia State Police, became the city's interim chief this spring following the departure of the embattled head of the force, Edward Long.
City officials and police officers say Corvello, a respected figure in law enforcement statewide, had an immediate effect on morale and began work on long-overdue structural changes. But, in his now-withdrawn resignation letter, Corvello said he sensed support was fading at City Hall.
City Council members, however, expressed surprise at Corvello's resignation last week. They wisely joined other community leaders in aggressively lobbying for him to reconsider. At a news conference Tuesday, Corvello credited the council members with talking him into staying.
If nothing else, the council's push to keep Corvello was a face-saving measure; had he followed through with his resignation, Portsmouth would have been on its way to its eighth chief in six years - hardly the mark of a city on the rebound.
Corvello, who already had agreed to help the city find a new chief, will now proceed with that search, as well as take care of other unfinished business.
The unfinished business includes controversy. When he stepped down last week, Corvello took issue with what he described as a competition for dollars with the Sheriff's Department, which launched a pilot program last year that assigns deputies to help the police monitor crime-riddled neighborhoods.
The sheriff's neighborhood patrols are funded primarily with money derived from housing federal inmates at the jail, not city tax dollars, and have won praise from civic groups. But Corvello criticized the "overlapping" functions of the two departments, indicating there was - at best - a significant communication breakdown.
Others, notably Commonwealth's Attorney Earle C. Mobley, have raised specific concerns about the quality of work by the Sheriff's Department team. According to a report Wednesday by The Pilot's Matthew Bowers and Janie Bryant, the veteran prosecutor cited problems with unconstitutional stops and inadequate evidence-gathering, among other things.
Sheriff Bill Watson's response wasn't exactly measured. "I'm tired of Earle Mobley's crap," he said. "He's like a spoiled little kid who doesn't get his way and wants to take his ball and go home." Watson said the criticism of his department stems from partisan politics.
Clearly, shoring up communications - and reassessing the division of duties between the Police Department and the Sheriff's Department - should be among the top priorities for the chief, the council, City Manager Kenneth Chandler and Sheriff Watson.
It's in the long-term interests of the city, its neighborhoods and its next chief to ensure Corvello's concerns are fully resolved. If they aren't addressed, the next chief probably won't last long either.
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This really shouldn't be about the Chief or the Sheriff
It should be about the City of Portsmouth. It's been taken over by drugs and gangs, and the PD is expected to perform miracles with a largely understaffed and poorly led department. The sheriff had good intentions, but it's a bandaid on the problem, not a solution. We need to pay the officers better so we retain their experience. Nobody in PPD expects to be paid what they would make in VBPD, but not being able to afford to buy a home in any but the worst neighborhoods in the city does not help to attract, or retain good officers. This causes the department to have to spend an inordinate amount of time training new officers, who are not fully productive until near the end of their second year of employment, and during the first year, are a hindrance because of the need to train them. The fact that such a large percentage of recruits defect to other departments is not the problem. It's the SYMPTOM of the problem, and unfortunately it's just one of the problems.