Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Amy Ashworth sparred with Republican challenger Matt Lowery during an election forum Friday, where the incumbent defended her record against criticisms of rising violent crime in the county.
Ashworth, a Democrat seeking a second term in office, touted her investment in units specializing in violent crime, sexual and domestic violence, human trafficking, drugs and guns, while also working to enforce the law within what she described as an ethical framework that oftentimes emphasizes rehabilitation and treatment over punitive action.
Lowery, a Woodbridge resident who practices criminal defense and family law at Tobias Iszard PC, previously worked under Ashworth’s predecessor, Democrat Paul Ebert. Lowery took aim at the rise in violent crime across Prince William and attempted to pin blame on Ashworth for the trends, saying her prosecutorial philosophy isn’t tough enough.
“It doesn’t matter how nice the commonwealth’s attorney’s office looks. It matters what’s going on in the street,” Lowery said at the forum, which was hosted by the Prince William Committee of 100. “And right now, we have a giant crime spike. Violent crime is up by huge numbers. Other crimes out there are rising high, due in part to prosecution policy.”
Matt Lowery previously worked in the Prince William prosecutor’s office from 2016 to 2019 and then was a deputy commonwealth’s attorney in Fairfax County for about three years.
As it has across the country, crime in Prince William has risen sharply since 2020, when Ashworth took office. In 2022, all crime rose by about 14% from the year prior, though the county’s crime rate remained below where it was in 2014 and still below the state’s crime rate in 2022, according to the county’s annual police report for last year.
Most notably, the countywide murder number rose to 20 in 2022, double what it had been the year prior. So far this year, the county’s logged 18 homicides.
Citing Prince William Police Chief Peter Newsham, Ashworth said that despite the crime spike, the county remains a safe place to live, as rates are still lower than similarly sized jurisdictions elsewhere. Prince William’s crime rate is also 10% lower than the state average, she said.
Ashworth called Lowery’s characterization of rising crime in the county a “salacious misrepresentation” of the data and said many times throughout the forum that the Republican candidate lacks commitment to facts and truth.
“If you want to stop crime, put more police on the streets, put cameras in places where you think that the crimes are there,” Ashworth said. “Start a summer job program for kids, increase access to mental health care.”
She also said the commonwealth’s attorney’s office can’t control the crime rates. “If we did, we would stop it,” Ashworth said.
Amy Ashworth was elected to a four-year term in 2019 as the first new commonwealth’s attorney in a generation, replacing Democrat Paul Ebert, who was the longest-serving commonwealth’s attorney in Virginia history and had held the post since 1967.
Lowery claimed criminals in the county speak amongst themselves and are under the belief that county prosecution is weak, leading them to not fear consequences of their actions. He also took issue with a shortage of police on the streets, which stems mostly from persistent staffing issues at the police department but also from what he described as a cultural belief among some that police are disrespected for doing their jobs.
To address the decline in police staffing, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors approved a salary increase for officers, bumping the minimum officer pay from $52,749 to $62,000 a year. That starting salary also comes with a $10,000 hiring bonus. Newsham said in July the salary increase dramatically slowed staffing attrition and increased hiring. Still, the agency as of July remained understaffed with about 60 vacant positions, down from 85 vacancies in April.
“The way you start building trust between law enforcement, the community and stakeholders is to start building trust between law enforcement, the community and stakeholders and stop treating the cops like they’re bad guys,” Lowery said. “We need to immediately re-partner the commonwealth’s attorney’s office with the police agencies.”
If elected, Lowery said he would “stop denigrating” the police, although he also accused some police of not enforcing traffic laws because they worry their case won’t be prosecuted under Ashworth in court.
Ashworth responded to Lowery’s comment, saying, “Nobody in my office denigrates the police.”
“It’s absurd to sit here and tell you that police don’t patrol and do their jobs,” Ashworth said. “They come to court. And [Lowery] knows it because he’s a criminal defense attorney that walks into the courtroom every day and watches us do it. In fact, your client just went to jail today for a crime he committed assaulting a police officer. So, the lies need to stop.”
To reform the criminal justice system, Ashworth celebrated her efforts to do away with cash bonds, which she said favored wealthy people who can afford to pay their way out of jail time.
Lowery didn’t say what he hoped to reform, but he denied the existence of mass incarceration in American prisons, claiming that the term is an indefinable “feeling.” According to The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, “mass incarceration” is a shorthand term used to explain how the U.S. incarcerates more people than any nation in the world while also being the global leader in the prison population rate.
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