A large group of protestors amassed outside the home of Richmond councilwoman and mayoral candidate Kim Gray in the Jackson Ward neighborhood during a mid-July protest, Gray said during an interview with The Virginia Star.
Gray was first alerted to a possible threat via phone call from a someone at a protest in another part of Richmond who was told that Gray’s house had been burnt down. The councilwoman, who was in her home when she answered the call, immediately notified Richmond police, she said.
On the same day, Gray also received information that a planned protest in the area was gathering down her street, which she thought as an indication that protesters would be coming to her house.
Later that night around 10 p.m., Gray estimates there were roughly 200 protesters in front of her Jackson Ward home with four children in the house at the time. Gray said she was on the phone with a police lieutenant who told her to go inside and not come back out, she said.
The crowd of protestors was a mix of different groups with some people carrying firearms while others had laser pointers that were being pointed in her children’s bedroom windows, according to Gray.
In councilwoman Gray’s interview with The Star she had a direct message for the protestors.
“I am available to meet at any point in my council office to discuss relevant policy and that family is off limits,” she said. “People’s homes should be protected, not just mine but everyone’s. I had neighbors who were impacted, and the street was blocked so [the protestors] created an unsafe condition.”
Despite being on the phone with Richmond police during the protest, Gray said she had not see any uniformed officers amongst or around the crowd, even after elderly neighbors also called the cops.
Releasing a statement the two days later on Twitter, Richmond police refuted Gray’s claim that no officers arrived.
According to the published statement, Richmond police received calls from Gray and other residents in the area around 10:35 p.m., dispatching officers to the scene to monitor the actions of the crowd and contacting the councilwoman through the phone.
The statement also says that the crowd was only in front of Gray’s home for 15 minutes.
Gray maintains that no officers showed up and that the crowd of protesters were outside of her house for longer than 15 minutes. Gray said that she has over 35 minutes of security camera footage of the group and that one of her daughters was livestreaming the protestors on Facebook live for nearly 27 minutes.
The organizers of the protest sent out a statement the following day.
The statement said that the crowd was made up of “black feminists, disable people, clergy members and LGBTQ+ youth,” and protesters stopped in front of Gray house “to highlight her misrepresentation of the movement and her lack of action toward community demands.”
On the same day that Richmond Police released their statement to Twitter, Mayor Levar Stoney, who dealt with a similar situation in June when protestors gathered outside his home, put out a message about the incident speaking out against protesting outside of elected officials’ homes.
Almost a month after the event took place one of Gray’s primary issues is not with the protest its self, but more so that it occurred in front of her home and in a residential area.
“I support everyone’s constitutional right to freedom of expression and protest but, residential areas are off limits for these types of displays because its considered illegal picketing.”
Disturbing a person’s right to tranquility in their home is a class 3 misdemeanor, according to the Code of Virginia.
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Jacob Taylor is a reporter at The Virginia Star. Follow Jacob on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Kim Gray” by Kim Gray.
