The Richmond Police Memorial will be rededicated at a public ceremony 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, at its new site, Blanton Avenue and Tafford Road in Byrd Park, it has been announced.
   

Virginia First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe, Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones and city Police Chief Alfred Durham will be among the officials who will help dedicate the statue of a police officer holding a child.


The statue, which pays homage to Richmond officers killed in the line of duty, will receive an updated plaque, according to retired patrolman Glenwood W. Burley, who led the effort to move the statue from Festival Park near the Coliseum in Downtown.


Mr. Burley said the plaque would include the names of 39 officers. That’s 11 additional names to the 28 previously listed as having died in the line of duty between 1869 and 2003.

He said the 11 new names are those of officers research showed died in the collapse of a portion of the State Capitol during a trial in which former Confederates and Democrats were seeking to gain control of Richmond from Union supporters and Republicans around 1870, five years after the Civil War ended.


Mr. Burley said most of the $24,000 raised in private donations to move the memorial has been spent to improve the new location and provide the updated plaque.


The memorial dates to 1987. The private Police Memorial Fund raised the money and commissioned sculptor Maria Kirby-Smith to create the statue, which then was given to the city.

Mr. Burley found the statue neglected and hidden by overgrown shrubbery in May 2015 and began the effort to clean up the memorial and get it moved with help from others, including the police chief, the mayor and City Council.


The city paid to move the memorial in late June to the Byrd Park location.