UVA committee briefed on new public safety agreement with Albemarle and Charlottesville

Since 1995, Albemarle County, the City of Charlottesville, and the University of Virginia have been under a contract where the public safety agencies of each cooperate with each other for mutual aid.

This year the contract is being updated and the Finance Committee of the UVA Board of Visitors had a briefing on September 11.

“[UVA Police] Chief Tim Longo, Barry Meek from the General Counsel’s office and a team of leaders from the city and county got back together and said boundaries have changed, jurisdictional areas have changed and we need to upgrade this agreement,” said J.J. Davis, UVA’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Davis said the new agreement will give law enforcement agencies more ability to cross jurisdictional lines in the case of immediate threats. The program builds off the Community Oriented Police Squad (COPS) initiative which began in the fall of 2021 to put four officers on the street Wednesday through Saturday.

“The goals of the COPS program is to build relationships, assist in the creation of a safe environment around Grounds, and provide for a more sustained police presence in the neighborhoods bordering Grounds where students live and gather with the community,” reads a response to a Frequently Asked Question on the UVA website.

Davis said under the agreement, the agency that first enters into an incident in a joint patrol area will take responsibility. There is also a framework for planning for incidents known to be coming up.

“For example, football games, you have city, county, state and us,” Davis said. “We will be lead in that situation. There are times where we’ve had an emerging situation, life safety, where initially it might be us and it gets ultimately turned over to state police or FBI based on the circumstances.”

The Albemarle Board of Supervisors adopted the agreement on the consent agenda for their September 3 meeting. You can review the document here.

The Rector of the Board of Visitors thanked Chief Tim Longo and others for upgrading the agreement.

“It is incredibly important and unfortunately incredibly necessary that we have coordination with our city and our county and around public safety and I thank him for the efforts he’s taken to make sure that this board and everybody in this entire community is safe,” said Rachel Sheridan.

The Finance Committee and the full Board of Visitors approved a resolution giving Davis the power to enter into the agreement.

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