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Data shows police use-of-force encounters are rare but disproportionately involve black people
Over the course of two years, 9,587 people were arrested in Harrisonburg, and during that time 86 encounters involved use of force— amounting to less than 1% of the arrest totals. But the confrontations in which an officer used force beyond handcuffing a person disproportionately involved black people, according to arrest and use-of-force data the Harrisonburg Police Department released Friday.
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Reed says she’s ‘still in this race’ after missing filing deadline; Democrats file extension request
Mayor Deanna Reed, the top vote getter in the last month’s Harrisonburg City Council Democratic primary, said she still plans to run for re-election and for her name to be on the Nov. 3 election ballot even though her election paperwork wasn’t submitted by Virginia’s June 9 deadline. And the state Democratic Party has stepped in to ask the state for a filing extension in the wake of other election-related postponements this spring.
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‘It’s like putting Band-Aids on a broken house’
Even after Harrisonburg’s police chief has spent much of the nearly two years in the job reviewing and implementing department policies, the efforts haven’t prevented black JMU students from fearing the police.
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Facing $6m budget hit, city council makes cuts to education, public safety and public works
The city of Harrisonburg expects to take a hit of about $6 million in the next fiscal year that begins July 1, mostly in lost revenue from local taxes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the Harrisonburg City Council unanimously approved an amended budget that reduces spending for schools, public safety and public works.
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For local artists, pandemic has created struggles but also a ‘coronaissance’
Local rapper Gabriel Curry started using the term “coronaissance” as a joke term with friends as a way to describe the effect that the global pandemic was having on local art and culture. But it soon became apparent it was more than a joke. Something was happening.
Community Perspective: The Steps and The Square
Friday night, June 5th, hundreds of people gathered in downtown Harrisonburg. Stan Maclin of the Harriet Tubman Cultural Center organized the event and called it Peace Rally Part 2, a sort of sequel to one that occurred a week earlier. This rally was also described as a community forum, a chance for conversation and a time to ask questions of some powerful people in Harrisonburg: Commonwealth Attorney Marsha Garst, Chief of Police Eric English, and Judge Anthony Bailey.
Local high schools’ class of 2020 get their diplomas to go
About 1,300 local students graduated over the last several days, with Harrisonburg High School seniors receiving their diplomas one at a time in a near empty football field and county grads celebrating in front of a sea of cars at the Rockingham County Fairgrounds.
Community Perspective: Oscar Online
A retired acting teacher from JMU reflects on coming out of retirement for his grandchild’s theater class online.
