Green Rock neighbors concerned over incoming inmates

CHATHAM — While Virginia irons out a contract with Pennsylvania to transfer 1,000 inmates to Green Rock Correctional Center, residents less than a quarter mile from the facility along Beverly Heights Road wonder how the move will impact their community.

Travis Fitzgerald, a 26-year-old married father of four who serves in the National Guard, grew up in the neighborhood and remembers a time long before the facility opened here in 2007. Sparse traffic made it safe for him and his friends to drag a basketball goal to the middle of the road and shoot hoops.

“Looking at it now, it’s completely changed,” Fitzgerald said during an interview at his home Wednesday.

Vehicles dart through the area at 60 miles per hour. A car once wrecked in Fitzgerald’s front yard.

With the prison came heavier traffic, including out-of-area visitors to Green Rock speeding up and down narrow Beverly Heights Road, Fitzgerald said. Also, the state-to-state transfer could attract inmates’ visiting street buddies to the neighborhood. Though it’s unlikely, they might get unsavory ideas about this quiet, safe, predominantly black neighborhood and decide to break into someone’s home, Fitzgerald said.

That’s one reason why the Pittsylvania County branch of the NAACP has expressed concerns about the transfer. The organization’s branch president, Willie Fitzgerald, said the local NAACP is considering circulating a petition opposing the move.

Willie Fitzgerald said the transfer could pose a security risk for the neighborhood and will burden local inmates’ families, forcing them to travel farther when their incarcerated loved ones are moved to another facility to make room for the incoming prisoners.

The NAACP didn’t oppose Green Rock coming to the area in 2007, Fitzgerald said. However, higher-level, possibly more dangerous criminals transferred to the medium-security facility could be a threat to staff trained for lower-level inmates, he said.

Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, said Tuesday that most of the 1,015 inmates at Green Rock are not local, but come from the Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia areas. The deal between Virginia and Pennsylvania will save jobs and keep facilities in Virginia open, he added.

A contract between the two states has not been signed yet.

The commonwealth picked Green Rock for the Pennsylvania transfer because it’s one of Virginia’s newer facilities and is a more secure center with celled inmates instead of a dorm-style system with dozens of beds in one large room, Traylor said.

Also, Green Rock is a facility that is adaptable to higher levels of security if necessary, he said. Staff within the state’s prison system are constantly trained and re-trained for varying security levels and transferred to different facilities where needed, Traylor said.

As for inmates, they are constantly moving up and down the six-level criminal classification ladder, depending on their behavior in prison, he said. A once-violent criminal achieves the safest classification, level 1, if he or she shows exemplary behavior over time, Traylor said. Conversely, a petty criminal could become level six as a result of constant disciplinary problems while incarcerated.

But Delora Bobbitt, who lives along Beverly Heights Road close to Green Rock, said the prison should be located somewhere else.

“I just don’t think it should be where homes are,” Bobbitt said, adding that she hasn’t encountered any problems from the facility.

If the NAACP circulates a petition, Bobbitt would sign it, she said.

Eighty-two-year-old James Toran said the state’s decision makes him feel unsafe. However, he has no problem with having a prison nearby. Though there may be no danger to the move, “I’m against it,” Toran said.

“If we have good guards (at Green Rock), some of them (the inmates) still might get loose,” Toran said.

Another Beverly Heights resident, John Martin, said the state will do what it wants regardless of his opinion. However, “I think they should leave them (the Pennsylvania inmates) where they’re at, though,” said Martin, who’s lived in the neighborhood 32 years.

Martin, whose niece works at Green Rock, voiced concerns about a possible escape.

“What if they decide they want to come out from in there?” he said, adding that he would sign an NAACP petition.

Martin’s wife, Janet Martin, said she would want to find out more details before signing a petition. However, she said she fears for the guards at Green Rock, especially female guards, who will have to face more hardened criminals from larger northeastern cities.

Beverly Heights resident James Taylor said he opposed the idea of bringing a prison to the neighborhood before, especially with children and the elderly living in the community.

“I really don’t like it being there, period,” Taylor said.

It’s unsafe to let children outside to do anything anywhere without keeping an eye on them, and having a prison nearby adds more danger, Taylor said.

In addition, who knows the illegal acts the Pennsylvania inmates have committed, he said.

“I don’t know what their crimes are,” Taylor said.

Travis Fitzgerald, the father of four who serves in the National Guard and has served overseas, fears for his families’ safety if he is deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan again. “I worry about that,” Fitzgerald said.

“What if they (the prisoners) have a riot?” he said, adding that prisoners once escaped from Alcatraz.

If the NAACP knocks on his door with a petition, Fitzgerald said he is ready.

“If it comes my way, I’d definitely sign it,” he said. “I don’t like having it (Green Rock) here.”