GoFundMe For Portsmouth Police Chief’s Legal Defense Close to $10k Goal

As we previously reported, On September 4th Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene was placed on paid administrative leave by the city manager, who has since resigned.

According to a GoFundMe that has been setup for her legal defense, Chief Greene is going to have to fight for reinstatement of her job and will have to use employment lawyers who specialize in wrongful suspension and termination cases involving public figures.

At the time of this publication, the fundraiser has raised $9,215 with 188 donors and has been shared at least 3,500 times. The goal is to raise at least $10,000.

The fundraiser states that “Her suspension from her job comes shortly after she made the decision to allow the Portsmouth Police department to criminally charged Senator Lucas and 18 other defendants who are charged with conspiring to commit property damage arising out of the destruction of a war monument in the city of Portsmouth in June 2020.”

A third rally was held on Sunday to support her reinstatement.

From GoFundMe:

Chief Greene was suspended for enforcing the rule of law on people that the city manager did not want prosecuted. This is political retaliation and it appears Chief Greene will have to clear her name and vindicate herself in a court of law. This fund is to support her legal fees. 100% of the proceeds will go directly to legal fees necessary for Chief Greene to offensively and defensively deal with the wrongful actions of the city of Portsmouth and others that have gone out of their way to defame her and intentionally damage her reputation.

As citizens we must support law and order. We cannot allow a political elite class to destroy the career of a police chief who enforces the laws of the Commonwealth. If we do not stand up now we will watch the political machine ruin the career of a chief of police who faithfully discharged her duties to enforce all laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

A recent HuffPost article claims to have done an investigation and says that Chief Greene has “cultivated an active right-wing fan base over email and social media.”

They say that “this cadre of followers has cheered the charges against the senator, a Democrat who wants to increase scrutiny on law enforcement and had called for the police chief’s resignation.”

From HuffPost:

Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene announced at an unusual press conference in August that her department had attempted to sideline the city’s elected prosecutor and gone straight to a magistrate judge to obtain felony warrants against Sen. Louise Lucas (D), local civil rights leaders and city public defenders for conspiring to cause “injury to” Portsmouth’s Confederate monument. A total of 19 defendants were charged.

Lucas, who had no role in the city government or authority over police officers, said that officers couldn’t arrest protesters who painted over the city’s monument to the Confederacy. Several hours later, some demonstrators beheaded four statues of Confederate soldiers and pulled one down, injuring a protester. Lucas has said she was there for about a half-hour and left around 2:45 p.m., while the monument didn’t come down until late into the evening.

Sergeant Kevin T. McGee of Portsmouth’s property crimes unit filed the charges, and stood behind Greene at a press conference where she announced them. He theorized that Lucas’ rhetoric on the afternoon of June 10 was part of a conspiracy to destroy the monuments, in violation of a 70-year-old state law that originally referred to the Civil War as the “War Between the States.” Greene previously praised McGee after he launched a political attack on Lucas and criticized the city’s public defenders, several of whom he’d later charge with felonies.

Greene, according to emails obtained by HuffPost through a public records request, took time to respond to those who were very excited to see felony charges against Lucas.

“I would love nothing more than to stay in Portsmouth and continue to serve my citizens and police officers!” Greene wrote to a supporter who had written that “there are lots of people out here who are 100% behind what you’re doing with the charges against Sen. Lucas.”

When another citizen wrote that Lucas had “blood on her hands,” Greene responded thanking the writer for her “words of encouragement and support.”

“The public support warms my heart,” Greene wrote in one email.

The idea to file felony charges against Sen. Lucas under Virginia’s monument statute, as well as the idea to file charges against Vice Mayor Lisa Lucas-Burke, Sen. Lucas’ daughter, were popularized online by Tim Anderson, a conservative attorney from Virginia Beach with a considerable social media following. 

And since her suspension, Greene has further aligned herself with Anderson and the movement he’s built online.

Anderson, whose law firm has more than 100,000 followers on Facebook, is a gun shop owner and lawyer whose practice focuses on restoring Second Amendment rights for citizens with felony convictions and bankruptcy. Just after the monument incident, Anderson started a petition to recall Lucas.

After Anderson suggested in a Facebook post and in a television interview that Lucas committed crimes by inciting a riot, Lucas sued him for $20 million.

Anderson said he doesn’t represent Greene, and he says doesn’t know what her politics are. At the time Lucas called on Greene to be fired after the Confederate monument’s destruction, Anderson said, he didn’t even know who Chief Greene was, only that he supported her for enforcing the law. 

They’ve since grown closer. Greene has appeared, via video call, at rallies Anderson has helped organize in her support, and is benefiting from a GoFundMe that Anderson has promoted.

At a rally in Greene’s support over the weekend, and with Greene’s children in attendance, Anderson said that Portsmouth officials “have no authority to tell the chief of police to stand down,” and said Greene had no conflict and was just enforcing the law.

“The chief of police is the quarterback of the city,” Anderson said. “This is law and order. Either we have law and order, or we don’t.”

Anderson told HuffPost in an interview he’s not sure exactly what role his Facebook videos had on the investigation against Lucas.

“What the police did, or what influence my videos may have had on them, I don’t know,” Anderson said. Anderson said that he “may have talked to” McGee “one time in passing” when he was talking to officers who were at the scene of the destruction of the monuments, but not after the case opened. (HuffPost, as part of a broad records request to the city of Portsmouth, sought emails that Greene or McGee may have exchanged with Anderson. The city withheld a large number of documents, but it’s not clear if any of the withheld emails were communications with Anderson.)