Lawmakers in Virginia will take up the issue of police reform when they meet in a special session later this summer. The legislature joins the growing ranks of jurisdictions in the Washington region that are planning on tackling an issue that has taken increased urgency in the wake of widespread national protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd.

“We have seen and heard the pain of so many across the country and in our commonwealth,” Virginia House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn said Thursday in a statement to DCist/WAMU. “As leaders, it is our job to listen, but even more so to act. We will move forward on legislation to address police reform in Virginia in the special session this summer.”

She did not specify measures, however, she said “the bottom line is, we’re going to move quickly.”

Virginia lawmakers were already planning to hold a special session over the summer to discuss the state’s finances, which have been ravaged by the coronavirus. Gov. Ralph Northam said Thursday that the state’s revenues for May 2020 were about 20% below where they were a year before.

Activists have urged Virginia to take up police reform. The American Civil Liberties Union and 26 other organizations called on Virginia leaders to reduce the state’s policing budget, which the groups estimated at $400 million. The organizations demanded more accountability for law enforcement, transparency on police activity data, and alternatives to prosecution for low-level offenses in a letter.

In Arlington County, activists are calling on the police department to start using body-worn cameras — which are widely used across the Washington region — while in Fairfax County, the local chapter of the NAACP has laid out eight specific demands, including removing police from schools and strengthening the county’s Civil Review Panel.

In Maryland, Sen. Will Smith (D-Montgomery County) has laid out a number of reforms he’d like to see the General Assembly take up. Those include the disclosure of police personnel records, changes to use-of-force standards and training, a ban on the purchase of military-style equipment from the federal government, a requirement that police officers intervene when they observe another officer using excessive force, and the creation of an independent department within the attorney general’s office to investigate and prosecute police misconduct.

“It’s really time to seize this moment of national, international and local energy around this issue that was borne out of another high-profile tragedy to make real reform,” he said on Wednesday on The Kojo Nnamdi Show.

Discussions of police reform are also expected at the county level. Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks said on Thursday that her own grandfather had been killed by a sheriff’s deputy in South Carolina in 1956.

“The truth is … I have come to the conclusion that for African Americans having a negative interaction with the police is like a bee sting. Almost all of us have either had one in our lifetime, or we know someone who has had one in their lifetime,” she said. “It is time for us to reimagine the relationship we have between African Americans and the police.”

The reimagining of that relationship started this week in D.C., where the council passed an emergency police-reform bill that bans the use of chokeholds, speeds the public release of body-camera footage and names of officers involved in shooting, reforms the independent office charged with investigating police misconduct, and increases the threshold for the use of deadly force by an officer.

And while lawmakers set aside discussion on an amendment that would have cut 300 officers from the Metropolitan Police Department’s current tally of 3,863 officers, they also pledged to scour the department’s budget for money to redirect to other programs and services.

As the debate over policing reforms moves forward, there is likely to be increased opposition from some police officials and unions to the demand from activists that police departments be “defunded.”

Virginia House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) said his party agrees that “we should take this opportunity to take a fresh look at where reforms may be needed, but the speaker’s comments are so vague that we can’t comment on them.” But Gilbert noted that Filler-Corn has not condemned calls to defund the police.

Northam, however, said on Thursday that “I certainly don’t support” defunding the police.  Instead, he called for reform in the priorities of how police funding is spent. Northam said “it would be much better” if mental health professionals handled mentally ill people. He called for more emphasis on de-escalation techniques and more widespread use of body cameras.

“Body cameras — there’s a need for them, and it’s a great resource, but they cost money. And especially reviewing the film,” Northam said. “So when we talk about defunding, I wouldn’t look at it as defunding, I would look at it as, how do we best prioritize the funding that we have?”

In D.C., Police Chief Peter Newsham and Police Union Chairman Gregg Pemberton have both weighed in against defunding the department, saying it could have an impact on training and standards.

“I don’t know how people think that, ‘Hey, this is my police department. It’s not serving me right. It’s not working appropriately. Let’s make sure it has way less funding. And then hopefully on the other side of that, it will actually be providing me the services that I need,'” said Pemberton last week on The Larry O’Connor Show.

While the protests have caused a reckoning in the realm of public safety, some officials want to ensure that the conversations and changes inspired by the protests are not limited to policing.

Alsobrooks said Thursday that any discussions and reforms stemming from the current political moment had to look beyond just policing, and instead focus on schools, health care, jobs, housing, and other areas that impact public safety and racial equality.

“If we leave this moment and the only conversation we’ve had is about African Americans and police, we will have missed it,” she said.