SUFFOLK, Va. — City leaders in Suffolk are continuing to work to keep the city clean, and Commonwealth's Attorney Narendra Pleas is leading an initiative to prosecute environmental crimes when necessary.
The area behind the Food Lion off of Portsmouth Boulevard has long been known as a place where people dump trash and other belongings, despite signs prohibiting it. On Monday evening, News 3 found a mattress there.
Pleas is well aware of the problem and is working to spread awareness so people stop.
"If you only saw one mattress, that is progress. That is progress. We had what seemed like a whole household — dressers, mattresses, other household items previously. I hate to say if you only saw one mattress that is progress, but it is," Pleas said.
On Monday night, she provided an update to the community on her initiative to prosecute environmental crimes if needed. News 3 was there when she launched the initiative a little over a year ago and returned to follow through on how it's going.
"Why do you think this is such a challenge for Suffolk?" News 3 reporter Brendan Ponton asked. "Because we're so big. We're so big, and we are sparse in some of our areas, so there are a lot of places to dump things in our city unfortunately," Pleas said.
She says her office has prosecuted about two dozen cases since she launched the initiative. She highlighted several of them, including one where a dumpster went into a river during a storm.
"This particular case was accidental in how it started — the dumpster went in during a storm, however as the owner of a dumpster you have an obligation to remove it from a waterway, and for whatever reason, for some time they didn't until we went after them," Pleas said.
The case was later dropped once the owner paid fees and restitution and the business changed their practices.
"They learned from this lesson, which is what we want," Pleas said.
Latricia Russell Wilkerson and her husband Anthony were two neighbors who came to learn about the strategies to keep their neighborhood clean.
"We're not trying to get people in trouble. We just want to bring about awareness and just learn something in the process," Russell Wilkerson said.
Pleas says her office will continue to work on these cases.
"I think they're getting better in terms of people identifying issues in the community and for people to let us know. In our investigative process in terms of that, we are catching things that we weren't catching before," Pleas said.
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