Charlottesville, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Charlottesville Police Chief Mike Kochis held his third annual town hall meeting at the Carver Recreational Center on Tuesday, January 15.

He took questions both sent in advance and from people who attended.

One of those who attended said that the department is failing to release the information needed for the public to assist in the identification of suspects.

“The city, the police department and the media never publish suspect descriptions from victims, photos or video pictures from security cameras, Ring cameras or any other medium,” he said.

“We don’t do it in every case because sometimes we may not have enough to put out there,” countered Chief Kochis. “We need to have some type of identifying information before we put it out to the public or put it out on social media. And we have to have some type of information to believe that that person is associated with a specific crime.”

Another participant spoke of how he and his wife lost their son to fentanyl.

“Tony was a good kid, a bright kid, a happy kid. He thought he was getting a Percocet, but it was press fentanyl.”

Percocet is a prescription pain killer. Criminal drug networks use pill presses to make fake pills that look like legal drugs but contain fentanyl. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Mexico and China are the primary source countries for fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked directly into the United States. A dose of illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF) small enough to fit on the tip of a pencil is considered a lethal dose, according to the DEA.

“What can we do with this Mexican and Chinese scourge of fentanyl that’s 20 times stronger than anything people are used to in our corridor from Richmond to Roanoke, which is horrendous. What can we do to try to knock this thing down? Because it’s killing our kids, and we’ve got to stop it.”

Kochis says his department is putting great effort into finding and keeping drugs out of the community and made major seizures last year.

“You don’t always hear about them because of the nature of that work,” he said. “It’s not something that’s typically put out there in the public, but they have done some significant seizures.”

Chief Kochis also gave a rundown of last year’s figures compared to 2013. Apart from a 3% increase in larceny, all other crimes have gone down, some significantly.

  • Aggravated assault down by 13%
  • Burglary down by 17%
  • Homicide down by 75%
  • Robbery down by 13%
  • With sex offenses down by 30%
  • Shots fired down by 30%.