The problem with interviewing John Venuti is that there are more than a few John Venutis.
With his native Queens, New York accent still prevalent after 41 years of being Richmond’s most prominent cop, Venuti, 63, has been involved in nearly every conceivable enforcement role since he came to the Richmond Police Department. He’s been a homicide detective and unit leader, undercover narcotics agent, SWAT team member, Drug Enforcement Agency task force officer, commonwealth attorney detective—and that’s a short list. For a single season in 2009, he was also a reality TV show star on A&E’s “Crime 360,” beaming the darker side of Richmond to millions of viewers nationwide.
But arguably his most prominent role has been as Chief of Police of Virginia Commonwealth University, which boasts 95 sworn officers and more than 200 security personnel. Since his arrival in that position in 2010—the first hire in VCU President Michael Rao’s administration —Venuti has had the department accredited by the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators, instituted numerous community-based initiatives, including the successful Safety Ambassador program, and overseen a significant expansion of VCU Police into downtown Richmond and Oregon Hill. “He’s very actionable, consistent, authentic, all those things,” says Cher Stickels, who has served as Venuti’s assistant for nine years. “He certainly leaves an impression. I’m hearing from parents all the time, ‘He helped my daughter, my son.’ He’s touched a lot of people here.”
The mustachioed lawman is stepping down as chief this week, leading the way for Clarence T. Hunter, who has served in police leadership roles in both Henrico and Richmond, and whose previous job was as Deputy Chief of Virginia Union University’s police department. But Venuti isn’t leaving—he’ll serve as the associate vice president for public safety at VCU and VCU Health. In that new role, Hunter will work closely with him.
“Chief Venuti is one of the best hires I have been a part of since arriving at VCU,” said Rao in a statement for VCU News. “He has shown tremendous commitment to people and students in a learning environment. He has been dedicated to the safety of our students, faculty and staff, always thinking ahead with empathy and concern.”
Style Weekly recently caught up with John Venuti to ask him about his various roles, including his early life as a chef, graduating from the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in New York.
Just don’t call it an exit interview. “I’m not going anywhere,” he laughs.
Style Weekly: You were well on your way to becoming a high-end New York chef. Why did you decide to join the Richmond police?
John Venuti: I never had any desire to be a police officer. No one in the family was. I wouldn’t be lying if I told you I ran from the police a few times as a kid. But my wife had a brother that was a Henrico police officer, I think he started in 1976. I started talking to him and kind of fell in love with the history of policing and got this crazy idea that I would get on [the force] someplace, do it for a couple of years, and then open up a restaurant. I was living in New York so I applied to Suffolk County, a gigantic, very high paid police department, one of the ones that is harder to get into. So then I looked at Henrico, where he was. It wasn’t hiring. But the Richmond police were hiring. My police academy started April 1, 1984.
Did you learn anything at the Culinary Institute that you later took to law enforcement?
Preparation. It’s about preparation, time management, everything’s got to be right.
Richmond was known as one of the murder capitals of America when you arrived. It must have been daunting.
There were parts of the city that were dramatically underdeveloped compared to now. The thing about Richmond, for policing, is that you get the amount of experience in a year it would take 4 or 5 years to get somewhere else. And, yes, it’s a more dangerous environment. But it was the lure. All I ever wanted to do was work drugs.
Really? Why?
Drug work is where it’s at. My academy was in the basement of the Mosque and, halfway through the training, two narcs walked into our class wearing plainclothes, jeans, and long hair. They said, ‘Hey, we work narcotics, here’s what we do.’ And then they said, ‘We’re taking names if anyone is interested in working undercover.’ I’m, like, [excited] put my name down. I graduated and I remember it like it was yesterday. Doug Wilder was guest speaker at my graduation. I started out in the 3rd precinct and did my field training kind of bit. And I was working the 310 [beat], the most complicated environment in the third precinct. There was an open air drug market, violence, all of that.
I understand your cooking background helped you do some undercover work.
They came to me and said, ‘We know you have experience in cooking, would you like to go undercover?’ I said, ‘hell yeah.’ So we made it look like I quit the police department, and I assumed an alias, John Meola. I got a new driver’s license and everything. And then it was like, go find a job. So I worked in a variety of restaurants, like Benjamin’s. There was an after hours club three doors down called Fieldens, and folks from Benjamin’s owned Fieldens. It was an after hours club that opened at two in the morning, the only one in the city. I concluded a pretty successful undercover drug operation there. Also, when I got there, it had a sort of non-existent lunch crowd that I really kind of started. And then I went to Tony’s Supper Club.
What was it like to live undercover? Was it hard on your wife, Tina?
No, my wife was plugged into what was going on. I did it for 11 months, almost a year. And then it got to the point where it was time to pull the plug. I remember being in Blockbuster Video and looking at all the movies and feeling like I was living in a movie. It was a little bit unnerving.
You eventually became the head of homicide and had real success bringing the murder rate down. How did you do it?
There were 92 [murders] in 2003, and over the course of seven years, we significantly increased clearance rates and arrests. The year I left in 2010 the number was 33. It was about completely transforming every aspect of business over those seven years, everything. Bringing new people in… collaborating with the commonwealth attorney. This was the [Chief] Rodney Monroe era. There was no one thing except recognizing who was responsible for multiple homicides, who we would call card-carrying killers. We put strategies in place where we looked at all of those cases and started targeting and plucking a lot of the card-carrying killers off the street and that sent a message. And we would move to close cases as soon as we possibly could.
In your tenure at RPD, who would you say was a transformative figure for the department?
I don’t know how many chiefs I’ve worked for—six or seven. Nothing bad to say about any of them. But when Monroe came in, from D.C., and I can’t say this about a whole lot of people, he was never wrong. I’ve never seen a leader that was never wrong. And his ability to read and respond to the community was second to none. Everybody’s different but Monroe was very, very community focused and in this business, you’ve got to worry about what’s going on within your agency but you also got to worry about what’s going outside your agency, and he brought that to the city of Richmond. [Current Chief] Rick Edwards was one of my homicide detectives. I pushed him to take the sergeant’s [exam]. I’m a big fan. He’s the right guy for the job.
Why was A&E interested in filming a police reality show set in Richmond?
We were rapidly closing cases. When you tell a story, you need a beginning, middle and end, and we were providing the end with apprehensions and closures to cases. I really wanted the show [‘Crime 360’] to highlight the commitment and dedication of the detectives. I see how detectives work for the families, I see how hard they work to provide closure and support. All of these other shows on TV … none of them were showing that.
[“Crime 360” episodes can be streamed at https://www.aetv.com/shows/crime-360/season-1]
Was it difficult working while a TV crew was trailing you around?
My agreement with them was that when that door opens, either you’re behind us or you’re not getting it. There’s no retakes. They were embedded with us for a year, a year and a half, usually two in a crew. The first episode was a missing person that ultimately was found deceased in the trunk of a vehicle; another one on Franklin Street where individuals were killed and the house lit on fire. Another one in Highland Park, probably my favorite episode, where a card-carrying killer gunned somebody down, and when the suspect was sitting in the interview room, he had admitted to being out there but didn’t admit to being part of the murder. I got my detectives to go pull eight photos of individuals who were incarcerated on the date of the murder and they showed them to him, and he identified one of them as the killer. But all of them had been in jail. He subsequently got 23 years based on that and other circumstantial evidence.
Did you start getting recognized in public because of the exposure?
It’s why I stopped doing it. I mean, I was getting gas in New Jersey and someone would be like, ‘Hey!’ People in Richmond would be asking me if a particular detective could work their case. So I made the determination to do just one season. Still, it gave the community a whole ‘nother look at what happens behind the scenes and how police effectively respond to homicide. We didn’t do it for any reason other than we wanted to show behind the curtain what happens.
What was the impact of the show on Richmond?
I thought that we needed to start putting the same attention into preventing this stuff from happening rather than just responding to it. I told A&E that when we’re not doing the show, I wanted to use their resources to create a youth anti-violence initiative. We put together a high-impact, multimedia [campaign] called Stop the Pain 804. All of the music was pulled from talent on the street in Richmond, we made the title song and worked on this for a year and a half to launch this social revolution to change the way that youth look at violence in Richmond. It started with a high-impact video, and we rolled out and premiered Stop the Pain 804 at the Byrd Theatre. I was trying to change the way that violence is looked at, using music… A&E made the video. The same camera that was shooting all these murder scenes was shooting our thing.
“[Current Richmond Police Chief] Rick Edwards was one of my homicide detectives. I pushed him to take the sergeant’s test. I’m a big fan. He’s the right guy for the job.”
Was it hard transitioning from the RPD to VCU Police?
I was entering the realm of higher education and I really had no idea what I was stepping into. I was a municipal guy. I quickly realized that there were a lot of campus law enforcement agencies that operated as if they were a municipal police department, and that is a bad way to operate. Our primary function here is meeting the needs of the VCU community and ensuring they are safe. We partner with neighborhood groups and our primary focus is VCU, and so while I work very well with my friends at RPD, there’s two circles. They’ve got their goals and objectives, we’ve got ours. And we’ve never butted heads. I came from Richmond and they know that. I know what our role is within the city of Richmond and I will yield to Rick all day along, or whoever else is over there, just because I understand and I’m going to be the best partner that they have.
You’ve overseen a large expansion of VCU Police’s jurisdiction since you took the helm. Why was that necessary?
As soon as I got here to VCU, I walked into a lot of conflict between the neighborhoods and VCU students because, quite honestly, VCU hadn’t really been responding [to complaints]. One of the things we immediately did was put together a neighborhood team that met on a regular basis at VCU and would look at and attempt to mitigate a lot of the off-campus issues. We installed an external relations officer that goes to every single community meeting, and responds to the needs. One of Dr. Rao’s priorities was that VCU be a good neighbor but there was little if any focus on that.
We have the same authority as RPD in all of these areas now, and it was because some council folks came to VCU with the idea of us expanding into Oregon Hill and Randolph. But before we were connected here, if something happened in an area between [departments], they’d call us and we’d have to turn around and call Richmond because we didn’t have jurisdiction, which is awarded by the circuit court.
There was some controversy last year when VCU Police arrested protesting students at a pro-Gaza rally. How do you balance the first amendment considerations with the peacekeeping mission?
We have very clear policies on space usage here at VCU. All of that is overseen by the dean of students office; what students are and aren’t allowed to do, what external people are allowed to do. So generally if there’s an issue involving free speech, we will get the dean of Students office to go and make sure the individuals are informed about what’s allowed and not allowed. We try not to involve police initially. But, in that case, they were in violation of the space use policy.
Did you think the force reacted well to the Black Lives Matter protests?
I think one of the things that we really tried to do was ensure the safety and well being of our community. We have the health system and everything that goes on there—these life saving services they provide on a daily basis. We did have some public assemblies on that campus as well, and we took steps and measures to ensure that emergency services could still be provided. There was the one incident where a public assembly came through VCU and broke out $100,000 worth of windows, but for the most part we were just basically, on a daily basis, prepared and ready to provide assistance to the VCU community.
One of your key initiatives was starting the Safety Ambassadors program. Was that a reaction to those protests?
Following the murder of George Floyd, during that period of time, Dr. Rao assembled a multi-disciplinary group [VCU Safety and Well Being Advisory Board]. This committee worked quickly and came up with a list of recommendations for the VCU Police. At that point in time, the concept of alternative response for law enforcement was a big issue, still [is] a big issue. One of their recommendations was to create a co-respondent unit, with people trained in things like dealing with mental health issues. So we came up with the concept of the non-sworn, non-security safety ambassadors. And when I looked at all of the mental health responses from VCU Police, less than 4% resulted in emergency custody. So as police officers, if a person is displaying signs and symptoms that show they are a danger to themselves or to others, we take them into custody. Because less than 4% resulted in custody, 96 was this other alternative. We decided not to go with a typical co-responder unit but with a model that could pick up a lot of the responsibilities that sworn officers were doing at VCU. This was also in response to the Marcus David Peters case.
What did you think about that case and how the Richmond Police responded to Marcus David Peters?
I never opine on what happens elsewhere. I just worry about the VCU Police department.
Looking at our current political environment, what will VCU Police do if federal ICE agents come on campus and start harassing and detaining students?
What’s really important to understand is that, as a law enforcement officer, we take an oath to uphold the law. And so we work with partners, state police, RPD and so forth, for everything that we do. If federal or state entities come to VCU with valid arrest warrants and things like that, we’ll have to navigate that situation when we get to it. But at the end of the day, we’re sworn law enforcement officers and we take an oath to uphold the law. I’ll just tell you in the 15 years I’ve been here, that I’ve had no contact with immigration, ICE, zero.
What’s something people don’t understand about being a police chief?
When you get to high ranking roles in police departments, you have literally no one to talk to other than peers in other agencies. I spoke about my brother-in-law, a Henrico sargeant [J.J. Riani], now retired, and he has really been, throughout my entire career, my guidance, my counsel, you know what I mean? Looking at options, alternatives. Occasionally things will come up and you want to be sure that you are making the right decisions. He’s really been my go-to.
And the other thing—I’ve been married for over 40 years and it is a miracle that I’m still married. It’s a miracle because of all of the positions that I’ve had, and I work with a lot of people in this profession with those same kinds of pressures and strains.
It can be tough for a family, so that’s why I say it’s a miracle.
