Buena Vista has received state recognition this summer for efforts to improve the city’s safety and stop crime before it happens.
The city is one of fewer than 20 Certified Crime Prevention Communities in Virginia and the first in the Rockbridge area. The state’s criminal justice department awards the certification to towns, cities and counties that meet a series of standards.
Cpl. Joshua Guttmann, community resource officer for the Buena Vista Police Department, oversaw the application process. He said the application was officially approved in June. A representative from the Department of Criminal Justice Services presented the certification to Buena Vista at a City Council meeting on July 16.
“We wanted to ... present it to City Council because it’s not a Buena Vista police department thing,” Guttmann said in a conversation with The News-Gazette. “It’s a city of Buena Vista thing.”
Tina Sumpter, accreditation coordinator for the DCJS, told Council on July 16 that getting the certification requires community-wide support.
“This isn’t an easy task and takes a tremendous amount of dedication, not only from the city of Buena Vista Police Department, but from your whole community,” Sumpter said. “This is an accomplishment that the police department and your community should be very proud of.”
Guttmann told The News- Gazette that he started the application process after a conversation with then-Police Chief Wayne Handley about a year and a half ago.
Since then, Guttmann has completed the documentation to show that Buena Vista meets the certification’s 12 core elements. The city also had to achieve the standards of seven optional elements chosen from a longer list.
The 12 core elements are creating a community safety council, employing a DCJScertified “crime prevention specialist,” supporting a neighborhood watch initiative, engaging in “community policing,” distributing safety information, performing security checks on some residential and business areas, using data to analyze crime, performing standard school safety checks, working with businesses through a council or Business Watch program, providing access to a program that helps crime victims and witnesses, overseeing a “delinquency prevention program” for young people who meet certain risk factors, and pursuing either national or state accreditation.
Buena Vista has met the standards for the following optional elements: educating students about the law through the “Virginia Rules” curriculum, participating in a TRIAD program to help senior residents, holding a National Night Out, providing school resource officers to schools, keeping track of potential speakers or presenters through a “Speakers Bureau,” offering a program to help domestic violence victims and entering into crime prevention or safety agreements with nearby communities.
Some of the core and optional elements were already present in Buena Vista, Guttmann said. It was just a matter of formalizing or documenting programs and practices.
For example, Guttmann said the police department was already offering presentations for the community about safety topics. But the department started keeping track of attendance, feedback and other details so that the talks could count toward certification.
The Speakers Bureau was made formal in 2026, according to a briefing from the police department.
Other elements of the certification were met using brand-new programs. Earlier this year, BVPD worked with law enforcement in Lexington and Rockbridge County to establish a regional branch of TRIAD, which seeks to protect and improve life for older adults.
To help Buena Vista receive the certification, Guttmann also put in at least 120 hours of training to become his department’s crime prevention specialist, according to the police department’s briefing. Guttmann said he’ll have to continue to receive training for Buena Vista to stay certified.
But he said he wasn’t the only one who made participation in the program possible.
“It takes buy-in from the whole community,” he said.
Jen Carpenter, executive director of Main Street Buena Vista, told The News-Gazette she’s seen a “doubledown initiative” by the police department in how it engages the community.
“I didn’t know that they were working toward something like this, but I am not surprised in the least that they qualified for something like this,” Carpenter said. “Not only do I see them everywhere, but they’re finding any opportunity that they possibly can to bring about positivity to the community.”
Carpenter said Guttmann and the department have gotten involved with the community in several ways — including by offering safety checks and trainings to Buena Vista businesses — over the past year and a half.
“There’s been so much that they’ve actively been engaged in,” Carpenter said.
DCJS will provide Buena Vista with signs recognizing the community’s new status. Guttmann said the certification could help residents get lower insurance premiums and might give the city a boost when it applies for some state grants.
The certification lasts for three years, Guttmann said.
In his interview with The News-Gazette, Guttmann repeatedly used the word “proactive” to describe the city’s efforts. He said the certification is about thinking ahead.
“Police work ... you get a call, you go answer it. You go, you get a call, you go to answer it,” he said. “We are trying to be preventative. We are trying to be proactive.”
