Farmville Police Department

The Farmville Police Department is located in Farmville, Virginia along with Longwood University. Longwood University does have its own police department but the two departments do work together in some aspects. They work together primarily by sharing jurisdictions and helping each other on police calls throughout the Farmville neighborhood. On the other hand though, the Longwood Police Department and the Farmville Police Department have different policies and structures that are private from one another, according to Longwood's officer Joel Abernathy. This being the reason that Farmville's Police Department has dramatically transformed their policies and Longwood's has not.

The students of Longwood University came back to school in August 2009 entering their Fall Semester. A good majority of the students could notice after just a week, without any direct interaction with the police, that something had changed with the Farmville Police Department's dealings in the town. Babur Kohy, a senior in The Fraternity "Phi Kappa Tau", exclaimed that after two weeks of school, his fraternity had not received one noise violation from throwing parties. In previous years, Phi Kappa Tau would, at a minimum, be charged with "at least" 1-2 noise violations after the first two weeks were over.

The assessment on the Farmville Police Department

Gregg E. Jarvies is a retired police chief from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Retired Chief Jarvies came to Farmville and did an assessment of Farmville’s Police Department submitted April 29, 2009. The report did not shy away from stating the truth and really had an effect on Farmville, Virginia. For example, in one section Chief Jarvies states that the Farmville Police “…has failed in many ways of keeping up with the practices and principles of modern policing”. In each section of the assessment, there are specified “Findings” then his “Analysis” and finally his “Recommendations”. The fact that he gave recommendations is the reason why Farmville has changed; he is an accredited retired chief with recommendations that could be a value to Farmville. Basically, this report is the primary reason as to why the Farmville Police Department has changed in so many ways. In his conclusion of his report he iterated the fact that their Department is split and unorganized without a vision. When saying split, Chief Jarvies is saying that the officers of Farmville shared different opinions on the way they acted and were not united as one. Mr. Jarvies found through his interviews that just two officers believe that the department is “Perfect”, whereas the rest of the officers believed that “significant changes” must be made.

Chief Jarvies was tasked by the Farmville Town Council to perform this assessment on the Farmville Police Department. After the assessment went public, Mr. Gerald Spates, the Town Manager of Farmville, was pleased that this had occurred. Mr. Spates was glad to see the assessment go public because he wanted the Farmville Police Department to see the Town of Farmville’s perception of them. Mr. Spates also stated that the Farmville Police Department’s policies, procedures, and standards have been “visited and revised”.

The changes

According to an interview of Farmville's Captain and acting Chief Wade Stimpson, the changes are as follows. The first change was that they “got rid of a lot of personnel and hired a lot of new personnel". Another change is that there is now simply “no alcohol patrol”. Captain Stimpson explained that this didn’t mean they wouldn’t enforce drunk-in-public or drunk-and-disorderliness or noise ordinances, but they are not on patrol to specifically seek for it any more. According to his words, they won’t write a citation or arrest someone unless they are making an “[...]” of themselves and endangering themselves and others. Captain Stimpson said several times that their number one concern is safety and that they want the public to know that they are there to help the citizens of Farmville. Finally, he explained that there will be a new Chief (as of right now it is him), they want to focus more on the community, will be giving significantly less traffic tickets, conducting an internship program, and “ride-a-longs”.

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