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