NORFOLK - On March 10, Greg Underwood assumed his new position as Norfolk, Virginia’s first black Commonwealth Attorney. After spending his younger years in the NAVY, this son of a farmer from Fayetteville, North Carolina began his law career working for the Virginia Legal Aid Society, a non-profit organization that provides free legal advice and representation in civil cases to low-income families and individuals in Central, Southside and Western Tidewater Virginia.  He remembers it fondly:

"That was one of the best experiences of my life…when I was getting out of law school a lot of my friends had jobs working with various silk stocking firms, and when I told them that I was going to work for Legal Aid they thought it was because I couldn’t get a job…I come from a poverty background…The reason for working with Legal Aid was to give back to the community from which I came."

 Mr. Underwood is now the top prosecutor in the city of Norfolk at a time when crime rates are higher than averages for both Virginia and the United States.  By the time we met, 42 days after he’d taken office, he’d already employed many of the strategies he promised during his campaign.  The firm yet fair efficiency with which he works is the result of nearly 17 years experience in the Commonwealth Attorney’s offices of both Norfolk and neighboring Virginia Beach.  He knows by now that “people want a prosecutor who’s going to be hard on crime, but people also want a prosecutor who’s going to be fair.  I’ve prosecuted murder cases where the defendant’s mother said ‘Well, Mr. Underwood, thank you.’

A few years later, one mother approached him at the mall and asked if he remembered her.  “No,” he replied. 

“You prosecuted my son.  I just want to tell you that I think you’re very fair,” she explained.  That meant a lot to him.

The previous Commonwealth Attorney, Jack Doyle, mentored Mr. Underwood while he served as Senior Deputy Commonwealth Attorney.  “I learned a lot from him about how to deal with people, how to treat and interact with people,” he recalls, “I could be rough around the edges sometimes, and I have been very pro-prosecution at one time.  But when you’re a young prosecutor it’s about reputation building…about doing the hardest cases.”

According to Mr. Underwood, young prosecutors tend to always go for the maximum penalty for crime.  “Once you age in the system, you realize that there’s a balance [between crime and punishment],” he says.  “You begin to realize that it’s about people respecting you not because they fear you but because they think you’re fair.” 

During his campaign, Mr. Underwood declared that he would combine experience with vision to make the dream of no violence in Norfolk a reality by providing for safe schools, safe neighborhoods and safe businesses.  I asked him to explain how he planned to do this:

"Most schools have what they call a school resource officer.  What I’d like for my prosecutors to do is meet at least on a monthly or quarterly basis with those school resource officers to identify potential problems in the school and potential problematic students.  That hasn’t been done before."

He also wants his prosecutors to be a regular part of school events and serve as mentors for kids.  His goal is to see kids “not for the first time not in court but for the first time in the community…that’s how I want my prosecutors to think, that’s how I want them to be engaged.  I want them to have the same passion that I have.”

Educating about the real consequences of criminal activity involves discussing the facts, for instance, that if you are riding with someone in a stolen car or driving a passenger that has a gun and tries to rob a store, you will be prosecuted as a participant in that crime whether you knew about it or not.  For our new top prosecutor, if people understand the law, they’ll give greater consideration to whom they hang around.  He elaborates that it’s all about choice:

I think that we don’t necessarily have all bad children, those who get caught up in crime.  I think a lot of them are good kids that…make bad choices.  I think that if they know the consequences of their decisions and the choices that they make I think they’d think twice about those choices.

Mr. Underwood plans to promote safe neighborhoods by combating the rise in violent crime involving firearms. “We have already implemented the prosecution of all brandishing of firearm charges.  That’s a misdemeanor that hasn’t been prosecuted in the past.” 

Since taking office, Mr. Underwood has also mandated the prosecution of all misdemeanor concealed firearms charges.  He explains, “If you have a concealed weapon on you, and it’s a firearm, before the defendant – if we can stop people from concealing firearms we might stop some of the shootings from going on and we may be able to get some guns off the street.”

In order to promote safe businesses, the Commonwealth Attorney’s office also works with Retail Alliance’s Loss Prevention Task Force to teach businesses how to avoid victimization.

Mr. Underwood also feels that churches and faith-based organizations play a special role in creating safe communities.  He says:

Churches have an obligation to the members of their congregation and to the community…not only to be aware of the social harms like crime and homelessness and feeding the hungry, they need to be proactive…and I think most churches believe that they have that obligation.

When I asked Mr. Underwood if there was anything keeping him awake at night, he paused before revealing, “The thing that bothers me the most is the youth violence…it doesn’t keep me up but it’s a constant bother because everyday you read about some young person being killed…or arrested for murder.”

While we discussed crime prevention strategies, Mr. Underwood acknowledged the success of the arts in preventing young people from participating in or returning to violence, drugs and crime.  He supports Young Audiences, a national non-profit started in Norfolk that has presented performing and visual artists and programs to children since 1955 and often works with at-risk kids and young adults.

As far as what leads kids into lives of crime, Mr. Underwood had the following to say:

I think some of it is peer pressure…there are gangs or association of gangs, whatever you want to call it, where kids might not feel as if they’re getting the attention that would otherwise get at home, so they associate with these groups. I don’t think it has anything to do with single-parent households and I don’t think it’s necessarily poverty related… That’s not to say that those aren’t factors that might contribute, but I don’t think that’s the overriding cause.

I know too many single moms who work hard to raise their kids correctly, and then I know kids that have both parents in the home and they come from affluent families and [for them] it’s a thrill thing. 

Mr. Underwood doesn’t believe in the statement that in order for things to get better, they have to get worse.  When I ask for his thoughts, he said it was “ironic” that I mentioned the phrase, because:

This past Sunday in church my pastor talked about a scripture that talked about [how] we can get God’s blessings…that we can get his grace, perhaps [if] we commit more sin.  And that’s kinda what that statement is saying: things need to get worse before they can get better…I don’t agree with that at all.

After our recording devices were off, our Commonwealth Attorney printed me an email sent to him by a girl he had prosecuted for robbing an 80-year-old man in 2006.  In it she told him she had moved to Maryland and was trying to move on with her life after serving time.  She asked him for advice about how to get the felony expunged from her record, which was preventing her from finding employment.  Expunging her record is impossible, and he reiterated the fact that kids don’t understand the lifelong consequences of their actions. “We have to reach kids before they reach court,” he repeats. 

The email is one of his main motivators. He brings it up often with his prosecutors.  “I want them to remember it whenever they have to decide whether a juvenile should be prosecuted with a felony.” He’s not soft on crime; he sees the big picture.

Until the dream of no violence in Norfolk becomes a reality, residents can be assured that our new Commonwealth Attorney, Greg Underwood, has the experience, determination and compassion to work toward such a lofty goal.  The challenge doesn’t seem to daunt him. 

For Mr. Underwood, prevention and rehabilitation can break cycles of crime by buffering both sides of the legal system to reduce both first time and repeat criminal offenses. They are necessary compliments to fair, firm enforcement of the law.

For comments or queries, email vjmelissa@norfolk.va.mycitytalk.com. 

Collective Media
Video: Eric Newton
Photography: Brian Callan
Source: Abhi Ahmadadeen