Pubdate: Wed, 04 Feb 2004
Source: Style Weekly (VA)
Copyright: 2004 Style Weekly Inc.
Contact:  http://www.styleweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/430
Author: Lisa Antonelli Bacon

THE FRONT LINE

Lt. John Venuti And The Richmond Police Department's Violent Crimes 
Division Fight The Rising Tide Of Homicide.

Eleven o'clock on a bitter January night, and John Venuti is going back to 
work.

Never mind that he wrapped a nine-hour day just a little while ago. Never 
mind that it's the coldest night of the year to date. Someone's been murdered.

When someone is murdered in Richmond, Venuti puts on a tie and heads to the 
scene, day or night, freezing rain or stifling heat. There was a time when 
it was rare for a lieutenant to go to every homicide scene. But that was 
before Venuti.

By the time he gets to the scene in the East End, a phalanx of detectives 
is scrambling back and forth across the street, looking for evidence, 
possible witnesses, or any clues to why a 54-year-old nip-joint owner was 
shot to death in his apartment. Standing under a streetlight, a young 
assistant commonwealth's attorney is trying to take notes with stiff, 
frozen fingers. Although it's pushing midnight and the street is fairly 
empty, patrol officers are stationed around the perimeter, protecting the 
crime scene from the curious. As an unmarked van pulls up with the 
forensics team, a mobile command unit the size of a rock-star tour bus is 
making its way up Church Hill. Soon the area is buzzing like a bank lobby 
on a Friday afternoon.

A year ago, the scene would've been different. With the Richmond Police 
Department's Violent Crimes Division overworked and undermanned, the 
murderers were winning. "We were floundering and overwhelmed," says Learned 
Barry, deputy commonwealth's attorney and a veteran murder prosecutor. 
"There were too many killers and too few homicide officers to solve an 
ever-increasing backlog of murders."

In a town where some years have seen well over 100 killings, last year's 
final count of 94 was still alarmingly high. Now Richmond police officers 
believe they have just the plan to bring the tally down. It's a simple 
idea: find out who's behind the killings, and remove them from the street 
using any means necessary.

Last spring, when Venuti took over the Violent Crimes Division, he took a 
crack at restructuring the responsibilities of the unit. He added a layer 
of sergeants to lead the five detective teams (two to cover homicides, one 
for aggravated assaults, one for malicious woundings and one for 
robberies). That layer eased the load on detectives who previously had to 
track down enough evidence to take cases to court, keep witnesses alive 
and, oh yes, arrest killers.

Then Venuti began to reach out to any and every agency that could make life 
miserable for the bad guys. Eight months later, police say that results are 
beginning to show. The numbers vary. December 2002's body count was 12; 
December 2003's count was 3. January 2003 saw 9; in January 2004, the count 
was 10.

Since late last summer, the office of Commonwealth's Attorney David Hicks 
has tried and convicted more than 20 murderers, Barry says. "We've got 10 
more in the pipeline now," he says. "Nobody in the state does 30 murder 
cases in less than six months." More importantly, Barry says, the new plan 
likely is preventing murders. Although the homicide division's clearance 
rate (the cases resulting in arrests) was around 50 percent last year, "the 
percentage of getting known murderers off the street is much higher," Barry 
says. "That has a huge impact on the murder rate."

Around police headquarters, the plan is informally referred to as Murderer 
Removal. "We don't worry about clearance, we don't worry about conviction," 
Barry says. "Our sole goal is to get them off the street, one way or another."

According to Venuti, the difference is in the quantity and the quality of 
the resources at his disposal. True enough. But if you trace all the 
tentacles back to the center, you'll find Venuti working the phones, 
calling in favors, inviting any and everyone who can make a whit of 
difference to get in his game. Although he denies it like a guy facing 
triple murder, observers and participants say that Venuti is the mastermind 
of the strategy that might make a dent in Richmond's reputation as a murder 
capital.

Venuti deflects credit for Murderer Removal's success to Police Chief Andre 
Parker and Detective Division Capt. Peggy Horn. But if you look at Venuti's 
career path, you have to notice that he is the common denominator among the 
resources pooled for the program. As a Richmond detective, he's been 
attached to the Commonwealth's Attorney's Office and the U.S. Attorney's 
Office. He's also worked for the FBI and the Drug Enforcement 
Administration. So when Venuti can't drum up enough evidence to make a 
murder charge stick, he calls in adjunct team members from those places to 
close the deal.

"People don't realize that even if we can't catch the murderers, we often 
know who they are," Barry says. "And if we can't get them on murder, 
someone else can get them for something." He recalls a case when detectives 
were convinced that five drug dealers were responsible for at least one 
murder. Evidence was hard to come by. "We reached out to the federal 
authorities, and they were able to put together a drug conspiracy case," he 
says. All five went to prison. It's the strategy that Murderer Removal is 
based upon. "Venuti brings every arm of law enforcement to bear on a 
problem," Barry says. "That's the key: putting groups together."

Under the Murderer Removal plan, options aren't limited to traditional law 
enforcement. Now it's routine to begin an investigation with Community 
Assisting Police, known as CAPS, a program designed to eliminate nuisance 
slum housing.

If a house is a continual problem as a drug nest or a criminal refuge, 
explains Sgt. Emmett Williams, whose team is working tonight's murder, 
officials can shut it down for code violations. "I can lock up everybody in 
the house," Williams says. But such a solution is usually temporary, 
because people get out of jail, or new scofflaws move in. "CAPS has the 
authority to bulldoze the house," he says.

Barry recalls a situation last year in which CAPS investigated a building 
known to be a criminal hideout. After citing it for neglect and fire code 
violations, CAPS razed the building. "They actually physically took the 
house down," he says. "Suddenly those people were on the street and visible 
again."

By 12:30 a.m., the CAPS report is in: The apartment was leased to the 
victim, and the utilities are in his girlfriend's name. Although the 
apartment is a known nip joint, with the guy who poured the drinks dead, 
the building won't be a problem any time soon.

By 1 a.m. on this January night, three suspects have been apprehended. 
Shortly after a description of the getaway car went out over the radio, a 
Henrico patrolman spotted it at a Citgo gas station and notified Richmond 
police. Within 30 minutes, Richmond police cars have surrounded the vehicle 
and are headed back downtown, suspects in tow. When news of the 
apprehension spreads to the crime scene, tension at the scene drops a notch.

"You can feel the difference," Venuti says. If the suspects weren't 
in-hand, his chilled-to-the-bone detectives would be going door to door, 
waking neighbors, hoping someone had seen or heard something. Now, they're 
crammed into a couple of cars, trying to stay warm while they wait for the 
medical examiner.

Every square inch of floor or ground around the body is part of the crime 
scene for Venuti's team. But the body itself is the medical examiner's 
crime scene, and someone has to protect it until the examiner gets there. 
But the whole team? When they could be doing just as much or more in 
well-heated offices?

"The team is here," Venuti explains.

So?

"The team is here." That's how they work. End of conversation.

Even though it's closing in on 2 a.m., a visibly drunk, mildly cantankerous 
upstairs neighbor of the recently deceased hollers from a second-floor porch.

"Hey," she calls to Venuti, who doesn't hear her at first. "HEY!" she 
yells, getting his attention. "Can I go?"

"You have to wait a couple of minutes, OK?" Venuti tells her.

For all the bodies he's seen, for all the professional bad guys he's mixed 
with, he isn't inclined to raise his voice, and he doesn't take offense.

Back at headquarters, Venuti heads for the break room. He's about 6 feet 
tall and about 170 pounds, with fashionably buzzed hair and a mustache. He 
isn't physically huge, but he's got a big persona, with a quick stride and 
an unfiltered Queens accent. He pours the night's first cup of Joe. Calm 
and determined, his jitters don't show, even though he approaches 
coffee-drinking like it's an Olympic sport. A sign over the coffee pot 
reminds users to clean up: "The public might call us pigs, but we don't 
have to live like them."

The three suspects are isolated in separate rooms. Since police believe the 
three might be responsible for a string of robberies over the last several 
months, robbery Detective Mike Nacy has stayed way past the end of his 
shift. Two of the suspects are brothers. The younger one is 16, an 
eighth-grader at Tuckahoe Middle School. A third suspect, known as "Blimp," 
looks older and more experienced than the others. What the suspects don't 
know is that their every move is transmitted to television screens in a 
nearby monitor room. The picture on the screens is so clear you can see a 
silvery thread of drool running from Blimp's mouth to his lap.

After letting them foment a while, Williams comes into the frame and asks 
the juvenile what's all the red stuff on his jacket. "Throw up," the kid 
tells him, before going face down in his own lap. Meanwhile, the kid's cell 
phone is ringing in the monitor room. Nacy is checking the phone numbers 
that come up.

Soon, Williams is back in the monitor room watching both screens at once, 
as detectives in the interviewing rooms continue the questioning. "That 
one," Williams says, pointing to one of the brothers. "He's the one that 
will crack. He's leaning forward. He's paying attention." Everyone, 
including Mike Jagels, the assistant prosecutor on duty tonight, hopes 
Williams is right. Jagels is one of Hicks' pride of young lions in the 
Commonwealth's Attorney's Office. Until recently, commonwealth's attorneys' 
offices typically had one or two prosecutors who were murder-trial 
specialists, handling every murder that came over the transom. But last 
year, taking a page from Venuti's playbook, Hicks sought ways to more 
effectively use his office in Murderer Removal. He quickly saw the obvious: 
train as many energetic young prosecutors as possible to win murder cases. 
"Hicks now has 12 young Huns that go after any murderer they're assigned," 
Barry says. Since Murderer Removal began to take shape, every one on the 
murder trial team has put away at least one murderer.

To Barry's mind, there was one piece of the puzzle missing. The team needed 
funds to protect witnesses who testify -- money for food, sometimes 
lodging, and security. "I've been screaming about this for 25 years," Barry 
says. "If you don't protect witnesses, you don't win cases. Many times, we 
know who's committed the murder, and when we go to the average citizen and 
ask them to testify in court, they literally laugh and ask if we're crazy. 
They can't live in their neighborhood and testify in court."

Barry believed Murderer Removal "could make another dozen cases a year, if 
we could just convince witnesses to testify." So following Venuti's lead, 
Barry reached out to a former assistant commonwealth's attorney. As Barry 
tells it, one phone call to City Councilman Manoli Loupassi was all it took.

 From his days as a prosecutor, Loupassi knew the value of keeping 
witnesses alive to testify. "Witness testimony is a huge part of getting a 
conviction," Loupassi says. By late last summer, City Council had dedicated 
$100,000 witness protection. The next piece of the puzzle was in place.

As morning bears down, Jagels heads for bed so he can face another day in 
court. In the monitor room, Nacy appears at Williams' side with a trash 
can. Inside is a tissue one of the suspects used to blow his nose. The idea 
is to test the DNA to determine if this suspect can be connected to any 
pending crimes.

The door cracks and Venuti slides in, careful not to spill from the 
Styrofoam cup that seems glued to his hand. He lays a digital photo down in 
front of the monitors. It's a picture of a woman's watch resting on the red 
leather seat of the car in which the suspects were arrested. The victim's 
girlfriend has just identified the watch as the one taken from her by the 
two young men who shot her boyfriend.

The pieces are finally coming together. Thanks to the first patrolman to 
reach the scene, detectives know that the suspect with the pistol fired 
first, followed by a few blasts from an AK-47 assault rifle by the other. 
"That officer did a really good job," Venuti says of the patrol unit. "The 
witness was hysterical when he got there. He calmed her down and got a 
really good description of the suspects and what went down." Don't 
underestimate the power of patrolmen in Murderer Removal, he says. "We 
can't do it without those guys."

But murder cases aren't built on eyewitness testimony alone. There has to 
be more. But even nuanced interrogation techniques aren't getting cogent 
answers from these suspects. The guys are apparently drunk or stoned or 
both -- or acting. Frustrated, the detectives and a couple of uniformed 
officers gather in twos and threes, in offices and in the hall. Everyone 
whispers, because the walls don't block sound well.

"The gun has to be somewhere," Williams says. In the brief period of time 
between the shooting and the arrests, "they had to go someplace not too far 
to get rid of the gun." Someone notes that both brothers have said in 
questioning that they had been at Blimp's earlier in the night. Without 
pause, Venuti dispatches a unit to search Blimp's mother's house for the gun.

Williams goes to his office to take a breather. Posted on a sheet of paper 
in the sightline of his desk is a list headed "Goals for 2004." Williams is 
concerned with three:

- -- Robbery unit & FADE (Firearms and Drug Enforcement).

- -- Reduce murders in public housing communities.

- -- Sustain clearance rates.

He's beginning to elaborate on goals when Chris Moore, a bright, young 
detective who has been interviewing one of the suspects, seeks him out. 
Moore isn't giving up, but he's frustrated. "He's driving me all over 
town," he says of one suspect. Williams just smiles. "Walk him through the 
garden a few times," he tells Moore. "Then hit him hard."

On the monitor, Williams watches as Moore gives the suspect a bottle of 
water, the first step on the garden walk. In the monitor room, the sound is 
so good you can hear the suction of the kid's lips on the bottle. Moore 
applies gentle pressure in his questions, then gradually turns up the heat. 
When it's time to bring the hammer down, Levin White, another sharp young 
detective, joins Moore. When conversation stalls, Venuti, in the monitor 
room, sends instant messages to the interrogators via pager to take a 
different direction or try a new tactic.

"Your brother is telling me one thing, and you're saying another," White 
tells the kid. Then White moves his chair around so he's sitting right next 
to the suspect. It's hard to tell if White is acting concerned or just 
crowding him a little. Clearly, the kid can't tell either, but it's 
working. He's becoming more talkative.

Before the water bottle is empty, the suspect's initial story has begun to 
morph into something else. And the new story includes a couple of guns. He 
seems ready to cave. Then the garden gate closes. "I want to talk to the 
superintendent," the kid says abruptly.

Williams takes the cue and comes into frame again. He lets it drop that 
they got a footprint at the murder scene. Then he leaves the room. In the 
monitor room, Venuti chuckles as the suspect lifts first one foot, then the 
other, to check the soles of his shoes.

White moves into frame next. He throws down the digital photo. "What is 
that lady's watch in your car?" he asks.

The kid thinks for a second, but he doesn't have the right answer. "I 
dunno. I ain't shot nobody and robbed nobody." No matter. The police have 
the footprint and the stolen watch, and investigators discovered the weapon 
in an abandoned car at Blimp's. So there's more than enough evidence to 
file murder charges.

By 3 a.m., the case is well in hand. As the guys bundle up to face the 
early morning freeze again, Venuti seems to be pondering that umpteenth cup 
of coffee for the ride home. But before coats are buttoned, another 
homicide call comes in. The guys resume buttoning up.

Venuti's eyes sweep the faces before him. He'd love to tell them to go 
home. But since he can't, he smiles tightly, tilts his head in an "Oh, 
well" fashion, and heads for the coffee pot. S
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman