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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The pitch was a slice and a conversation: grab a piece of pizza, talk to the chief, and talk to the officers standing along the wall, because those are the officers who work this community.
About 50 residents and business owners turned out, alongside seven uniformed officers, for a two-hour community conversation Tuesday evening at Piece Out Del Ray, 2419 Mt. Vernon Ave., hosted by the Del Ray Business Association and the Del Ray Citizens Association. Police Chief Tarrick McGuire walked through the department's G.R.E.A.T. public safety framework, then opened the floor. City Councilman John Taylor Chapman was among those in attendance.
Organizers credited him with spending two years assessing the department, gathering data and building the plan he came to present, and thanked the officers in the room. The room applauded.
McGuire spent his first minutes not on the framework but on those officers.
"I'm the police chief. I'm the agency leader. I'm the guy you see on television," McGuire said. "But these are the people that are out on the streets. They're the ones that answer calls for service at your home."
He told the room he had been in Del Ray a week earlier for National Night Out, and that he has been in the neighborhood enough now that the cap and plain clothes no longer work.
The technology question
His longest answer of the night came for a resident who asked what the department is doing to understand the risks of police technology, citing the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and international human rights bodies. With great power, she said, comes great responsibility.
McGuire went to license plate readers.
Department staff sit down weekly and review every logged use of the readers, he said, and officers must enter a corresponding case or report number for each query. Data is purged after 21 days unless tied to an ongoing criminal investigation.
The department's governing policy sets that review at a different interval. Directive 10.40, which McGuire signed Oct. 28, 2025, requires the Mobile Computer Unit sergeant to conduct an internal audit "once every 30 days." The version it replaced, effective June 2024, required a weekly audit. McGuire's description matched one Mayor Alyia Gaskins gave in a video posted hours earlier Tuesday.
He acknowledged misuse elsewhere, citing officers in other jurisdictions fired for running plates to track former partners.
"I can speak for APD," he said.
He told the room the department does not share data with the federal government and that Virginia law does not permit it. The directive is narrower: data may be shared with other Virginia agencies, and provided to state or federal agencies only under a search warrant or court-issued subpoena.
"I'm committed to listening. I'm committed to getting feedback," McGuire said. "But I also recognize everybody's not going to agree across the board. I want to be constitutionally sound and responsible."
Chapman, who along with Mayor Alyia Gaskins called earlier this year for a dedicated council discussion of police technology, was in the room. A department proposal for a real-time crime center has stalled.
No one raised ICE Out of Alexandria's call Monday for a citywide ban on automated license plate readers.
Dogs, children and where the kids are
Dan Roth of the DRBA board asked how shrinking youth cohorts in Alexandria schools — fewer kindergartners than eighth graders, fewer eighth graders than seniors — figure into the plan.
McGuire's answer detoured through what the department doesn't have. No police cadet or Explorer program. No youth ministry effort. No chaplaincy program for death investigations, in a city with the largest high school in the Commonwealth.
"Where are the youth parents at?" he asked, before turning to what does exist: the Alexandria Initiative on Mentoring, which completed its first year at George Washington Middle School with 21 participants, and a police foundation summer camp run with the YMCA in rural Virginia. A new mentorship program launches this fall.
He also offered the line that landed best in a room full of Del Ray residents.
"I'm from Texas," he said. "I see more dogs in the city than I do children."
That, he said, is the case for Dog Walker Watch — the program APD launched this spring and featured in Del Ray's National Night Out dog walk last week. Not that residents stop crime, he said, but that people already out twice a day are the eyes the department doesn't have.
Alexandria hosted 54 National Night Out events this year, up from 52.
Staffing
Asked about vacancies, McGuire described a hiring market he barely recognizes from his own start in Arlington, Texas, on a salary around $40,000 with no bonus, no incentives and no take-home car.
He said he hopes the department reaches optimal staffing by next spring. A raise took effect in July, and he credited labor groups and city leadership with keeping APD among the three highest-paid departments in Northern Virginia — a moving target, he said, with Arlington County, Fairfax County and Prince William County competing for the same candidates.
"We're kind of known as the Big 4 in Northern Virginia," he said. "All the chiefs, we're all friends. But we're all competing for the same" applicants.
He cited a starting salary of $76,000; the department's 2025 annual report put starting pay at $75,000 after a 17.21% collective bargaining increase. About 20% of APD officers grew up in Alexandria, he said. Authorized strength is 322 sworn and 114 non-sworn.
He also noted how much the job's surface has changed — beards, tattoos, tennis shoes — gesturing at an officer in the room who, he said, "would have never got hired 20 years ago."
What he wanted from the room
Asked how Del Ray residents and business owners actually fit into five pillars, McGuire gave the answer the evening was built around.
"When the community shows up, it's not a problem. It's the most effective sign of partnership," he said. "We have significant dialogue when a critical incident has occurred. But it doesn't start there. It starts right here."
What residents raised Tuesday feeds a department report due in September. More neighborhood meetings are planned in Old Town, Arlandria and the West End.
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