New Police Chief Takes Questions At ‘Meet’ Event
A small collection of Lexington residents gathered at Lylburn Downing Middle School on March 26 for a “Meet The Chief” event where Lexington’s new Police Chief Justin Doll answered several prepared questions and took some from those in attendance, talking about his approach to law enforcement and challenges the Lexington Police Department is facing, among other things.
Doll, who was hired as the city’s chief of police on Jan. 5, began by talking about his experience in law enforcement at the Anchorage Police Department where he served from 1996 until his retirement in 2021.
He served in a variety of roles within the department, eventually rising to the rank of chief in 2017, a position he held until his retirement.
He noted that there were obvious differences between Anchorage and Lexington, such as the size of the city – Lexington’s population of just over 7,300 residents (according to the 2020 census) is a far cry from Anchorage’s more than 290,000 citizens – and the number of crimes that occur. Doll noted that only one burglary was reported in Lexington in the whole of 2025, while it was common for an officer in Anchorage to respond to “three or four” burglaries in a single shift, but said that he believes that the “baseline of policing is the same everywhere.”
“That’s always part of the desire, to build relationships with the community,” he said. “We want police officers out engaging with the public and building those interpersonal relationships. That’s what we know is effective when it comes to public safety. That was the objective in Anchorage, but it’s much more difficult on that scale to try to make that happen.”
That kind of community based policing, he said, is something that attracted him to the job with the Lexington Police Department, believing that it is “more achievable” in a smaller city with a smaller department, and that it is something the officers in the department are already engaging in.
Doll said he is a “huge believer in relational policing” or relationship-based policing, which puts emphasis on officers building relationships with the communities they serve and works to address the roots of crime in an effort to be pro-active in preventing it, as opposed to traditional policing, which is more reactive to crimes as they happen.
“A police department really can’t function without a functional, good relationship with the community,” he said.
When asked what he believes is the Lexington Police Department’s biggest challenge, Doll pointed to staffing, noting that there are currently six open positions within the department. Recruitment and retention is a challenge for departments across the country right now, he added, and not exclusive to Lexington.
Part of the reason that the department has so many open positions, he said, is the higher threshold for training and certifications required for law enforcement in Virginia, which can make it difficult to recruit officers from out of state, though he is actively looking for officers to fill the open positions, both from within Virginia and out of state.
City Manager Tom Carroll weighed in, noting that the department had just hired a new recruit on Monday (March 23), who wouldn’t be able to act as an independent officer within the department until they had graduated from the police academy, which they will attend this summer. After that, there are other certifications they will need to receive, so it could be “six to 12 months” before that recruit was able to operate as an independent officer within the department.
One Lexington resident in attendance who spoke said that, generally, she’d had good interactions with Lexington police officers, but noted two occasions where officers with the department had made comments about political signs in her front yard, and asked if there was any training for officers regarding interacting with people who have different opinions.
Doll said that there was some required training at the state level about how to treat citizens which placed emphasis on treating everyone with respect. He went on to say that he felt that he, as the city’s police chief, “should be apolitical” which is a mindset he hopes to instill in the officers in the department because “the police department has to be here for every single person in Lexington.”
“No one should know what’s going around in my head in regards to politics, because it doesn’t have anything to do with my job,” he said. “And I think a wise chief pushes that down through his organization. When we’re at work and we’re [in uniform], whatever our personal opinions are on politics or anything else don’t matter. We’re here to serve that function for the community.”
Several of the questions dealt with specific types of crime or current events.
In one of the prepared questions, Doll was asked if the Lexington Police Department had received any requests for support from the Department of Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) and what the department’s policy for such a request would be.
Doll said that the department had not received any requests for assistance from ICE since he became chief and that he wasn’t aware of any requests from them before that.
He noted that it was common practice for state and federal law enforcement agencies to request assistance from local law enforcement whenever they needed to conduct an operation in their jurisdiction and that local departments had discretion over whether or not to provide assistance based on the department’s available resources and the nature of the request.
So, he said, whether the Lexington Police Department would assist with ICE operations would depend on the nature of the operation, if the LPD has the resources to assist in the operation, and if the request “aligns with the values” of the department.
If ICE reached out to the Lexington Police Department for assistance with serving a warrant on a known criminal with a history of violent crime, for example, Doll said that would be something his department would probably assist with, but it would very much depend on the nature of the request.
One resident asked if there had been any reports of human trafficking victims being moved through Lexington, and Doll said that he wasn’t aware of any reports of it, but noted that victims of human trafficking aren’t always able to make contact with law enforcement.
Another resident asked Doll how he felt about the interagency cooperation in the area, specifically in relation to drug-related crimes.
Doll said that that sort of relationship with other agencies is something that he “really cares a lot about,” and that he communicates with the Rockbridge County Sheriff’s Office and Buena Vista Police Department regularly. As for drug-related crime, Doll noted that Lexington does not currently have any staff devoted full-time to the regional drug task force that serves the area, but it is something he hopes to do if he is able to hire more officers.
City Councilman David Sigler asked Doll his thoughts on school resource officers. He noted that Sgt. Harlie Curry, who has served as the resource officer for Lexington City Schools since 2024, will be transitioning out of that role and the schools won’t have an on-site resource officer going forward – though the department will have a school liaison officer that will work with teachers and staff and be on-call should incidents occur at the schools – due to the department’s staffing issues.
Doll said that he was in favor of resource officers and having one for the Lexington City Schools – provided the funding and staffing were available – if it was something the community was interested in.
Sigler recalled there being members of the community who were against having a resource officer due to it being presented as an officer enforcing laws in the schools, but that Curry had taught classes and the role had been more about connecting with students than policing them. Doll emphasized that that is how it should be with school resource officers.
“If a SRO program is sold as a law enforcement program, you’re already failing,” he said. “It’s not [a law enforcement program]. It’s a mentorship program and it’s a good outreach program.”
