Category Archives: Public safety & health

Virginia Rail Safety Inspections

Posted on February 24, 2023 by | 16 comments

Courtesy Norfolk Southern

by James C. Sherlock

After the Ohio disaster, it is timely to review rail safety in Virginia.

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) of the U.S. Department of Transportation is the federal rail safety regulator in cooperation with state authorities.

FRA’s Office of Railroad Safety employs 400 railway inspectors. Federal safety management teams are organized by railroad or type of railroad.

The FRA summary of State rail safety participation states:

state programs emphasize planned, routine compliance inspections; however, States may undertake additional investigative and surveillance activities consistent with overall program needs and individual State capabilities.

FRA both conducts and pays for training of state inspectors.

Code of Federal Regulations 49 CFR Part 212 provides state rail safety participation regulations.

Railroad Regulation represents one of the original areas of responsibility assigned to the State Corporation Commission (SCC) when it was created by the Virginia Constitution of 1902.

Virginia statutory authority is found in Code of Virginia Title 56 Chapter 13.

Virginia today has two Class I (major) railroads (Norfolk Southern and CSXT), nine Class II (short line) railroads, and more than 6,700 miles of track. Continue reading →

16 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Efficiency in government, Federal, Government Oversight, Infrastructure, Public safety & health, Transportation

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Stop Coddling Bad Kids

Posted on February 24, 2023 by | 44 comments

by Kerry Dougherty

I have a new hero. I don’t know her real name but in her Southeast Washington D.C. neighborhood, they just call her “Grandma.”

Last Friday Grandma was on her way to chemo when a 15-year-old punk walked up and ordered her to hand over her car keys.

“I have a gun,” he said.

“Baby, you’d better shoot me because you’re not taking my car,” she shot back.

A struggle ensued — Grandma’s hand was sliced by the keys — but she screamed for help and help arrived. Her grandson and some other neighborhood boys heard the commotion, and ran to her defense.

The would-be car jacker was taken away in an ambulance.

Score one for the good guys. And for Grandma.
Continue reading →

44 Comments

Posted in Attendance, Children and families, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Discipline and disorder, Education (K-12), Homeschooling, Public safety & health, Uncategorized

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Petersburg Seeks State Funding for Projects Linked to Public Health and the Appomattox River

Posted on February 16, 2023 by | 11 comments

Courtesy Petersburg Virginia website

by James C. Sherlock

While all of the attention in the state press has been on Petersburg’s proposed casino, the estimable Bill Atkinson of the Petersburg Progress-Index provided insight into other Petersburg requests to the General Assembly for budget amendments.

Badly needed infrastructure projects and a tourism initiative are each tied to the health of both the Appomattox River and the citizens of Petersburg. Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Children and families, Economic development, Environment, General Assembly, Infrastructure, Leadership, Manufacturing, Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Water-waste water

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Moral Injury Is Driving Doctor Burnout

Posted on February 14, 2023 by | 15 comments

by Dr. Scott Armistead

Physician burnout is a major issue in the U.S., receiving attention in medical education, medical specialties and at various government levels. Moral injury, in my professional and teaching experience, is a significant and growing challenge to physician wellness. Moral injury happens when one’s personal convictions are unwelcomed and one is pressured to think, be silent, speak, act or not act in a way that compromises one’s conscience.

I graduated from the VCU School of Medicine (formerly Medical College of Virginia) in 1991, trained in family medicine and served in a mission hospital in Asia for 16 years. In 2015, I transitioned to a Virginia university practice and became heavily involved in the lives of medical students.

In the time that had passed since I was a medical student, I found the environment of medicine and medical education had significantly changed. One area of change was the emergence of the “provider of services model.” “Provider,” a relatively new term at the time, is now commonplace. Continue reading →

15 Comments

Posted in Culture wars, Education (higher ed), Environment, Ethics, Health Care, Individual liberties, Public safety & health, Science & Technology, Uncategorized

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Drink Their Coffee, Then the Kool-Aid

Posted on February 1, 2023 by | 19 comments

by Joe Fitzgerald

The only thing I remember from Howard Fast’s Lavette family saga is from the fourth book, The Legacy. A pragmatic leftist organizer is registering Black voters in Mississippi with two dewy-eyed liberals, and an older couple invites the three into their home. They drink coffee and the two liberals talk about the high-flown principles behind what they’re doing and what great things they hope to do for the Black community in the South.

The pragmatic leftist sees two things wrong. First, the couple is already registered; the organizers should move on to someone who’s not. Second, they’re drinking a week’s worth of coffee from a couple too proud to say anything.

Fast could be heavy-handed in his writing — but he made a good point. The people who thought they were doing the couple a favor just didn’t get it. The dew is in the eyes of proponents of the Bluestone Town Center (BTC) today.
Continue reading →

19 Comments

Posted in Economic development, Environment, Housing, Land use & development, Planning, Public safety & health, Uncategorized

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Virginia Senate Committee Passes Second Look Bill

Posted on January 26, 2023 by | 31 comments

by Hans Bader

Do all inmates deserve a chance for release? Even a serial killer, or a serial rapist who has been locked up and released before?

They may soon have that chance in Virginia. In the state Senate, the Judiciary Committee has just approved the Second Look bill, SB 842. It would allow offenders of all kinds to file petitions for release or modification of their sentences after they’ve served 15 years. Judges wouldn’t have to grant the petitions, but they could if they think an inmate has mended his ways.

Under the bill, an inmate could be released despite any “combination of any convictions” such as being convicted of both murders and rapes. The bill was approved in an 8-to-6 vote largely along party lines, over conservative opposition.

Supporters of the bill argue that “everyone deserves a second chance.” But to critics, the bill goes beyond giving offenders a second chance, because it gives even the most persistent re-offenders the opportunity to seek release — people who already had and squandered a “second chance.” As an objector noted, “most inmates doing more than 15 years have already had their second, third, fourth, and fifth chances — the typical released state prison inmate has five prior convictions, according to Rafael Mangual, who studies the criminal-justice system at the Manhattan Institute.” Continue reading →

31 Comments

Posted in Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, General Assembly, Individual liberties, Public safety & health, Uncategorized, Virginia Law

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Virginia Community Schools Redefined – Part 2 – Stop Trying to Provide Mental Health Services in School

Posted on January 25, 2023 by | 14 comments

by James C. Sherlock

In Part 1 of this series I described the current Virginia Community School Framework (the Framework) and found it not only lacking, but counter-productive.

Its basic flaw is that it assumes all services to school children will be provided in the schools by school employees, including mental health services.

When you start there, you get nowhere very expensively, less competently, and with considerably more danger in the case of mental health than if the schools were to partner with other government and non-profit services.

This part of the series will deal with child and adolescent mental health services exclusively.

Public mental health, intellectual disability and substance abuse services for children and adolescents are funded by governments at every level. For the federal view of the system of care, see here.

In Virginia, those services are organized, overseen and funded through a state and local agency system.

  • The state agency is the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) in the Secretariat of Health and Human Resources. The Department of Medical Assistance Services (DMAS) (Medicaid) plays a funding and patient management role as well;
  • Local agencies funded and overseen by DBHDS are the Community Services Boards (CSB’s) throughout the state.

Some schools and school systems seem to operate on a different planet from their local CSB’s. Indeed, the Framework mentions them only reluctantly and in passing.

The ed school establishment clearly wants to handle child and adolescent mental health problems in-house, with tragic results. They need to stop it now.

There is absolutely no need to wait. Continue reading →

14 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Education - Early Childhood, Education (K-12), Efficiency in government, General Assembly, Health Care, Mental illness and substance abuse, Psychology, Public safety & health, Social services

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Virginia Community Schools Redefined – Hubs for Government and Not-for-Profit Services in Inner Cities – Part 1 – the Current Framework

Posted on January 24, 2023 by | 5 comments

by James C. Sherlock

I believe a major approach to address both education and health care in Virginia’s inner cities is available if we will define it right and use it right.

Community schools.

One issue. Virginia’s official version of community schools, the Virginia Community School Framework, (the Framework) is fatally flawed.

The approach successful elsewhere brings government professional healthcare and social services and not-for-profit healthcare assets simultaneously to the schools and to the surrounding communities at a location centered around existing schools.

That model is a government and private not-for-profit services hub centered around schools in communities that need a lot of both. Lots of other goals fall into place and efficiencies are realized for both the community and the service providers if that is the approach.

That is not what Virginia has done in its 2019 Framework.

The rest of government and the not-for-profit sector are ignored and Virginia public schools are designed there to be increasingly responsible for things that they are not competent to do.

To see why, we only need to review the lists of persons who made up both the Advisory Committee and the Additional Contributors. Full of Ed.Ds and Ph.D’s in education, there was not a single person on either list with a job or career outside the field of education. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in Attendance, Charity and philanthropy, Children and families, Civil Rights, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Discipline and disorder, Education (K-12), Efficiency in government, Entitlements, General Assembly, Health Care, Infrastructure, Law enforcement, Mental illness and substance abuse, Not-for-profits, Political Influence, Poverty & income gap, practice of, Psychology, Psychology, Public safety & health, Social services, Threat Assessment

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School Discipline, Part III: Reframing Discipline in Virginia and Considerations for Making New Policy

Posted on January 20, 2023 by | 39 comments

by Matthew Hurt and Kathleen Smith

Reframing School Discipline

The Student Behavior and Administrative Response (SBAR) data collection was implemented in response to reframing school discipline from that of criminal, punishment, and exclusionary practices from 1991-2020 to that of restorative, intervention, and inclusionary practices in 2021 and beyond. The SBAR reports on behaviors that impede academic progress, behaviors related to school operations, relationship behaviors, behaviors that present a safety concern, behaviors that endanger self or others, and behaviors identified as persistently dangerous.

The SBAR records responses to discipline such as class removals, suspensions, expulsions with or without instructional services, and loss of privileges; behavioral interventions such as parents contacts, referrals, restorative practices; and instructional supports such as changes in placement, virtual programs, and support with and without face-to-face teacher contact.

The collection will always have inherent problems. Some data are clear: suspension or expulsion. Some data are not clear: support with or without face-to-face teacher contact. What if that contact was made by an administrator? Would removal for the last five minutes of class period be considered a removal? The reporting individual could inadvertently make the data very unreliable.

A cursory literature review demonstrated that “reframing discipline” occurred not only in Virginia, but throughout most educational institutions and juvenile justice organizations. Tight discipline policies in the late 1990s and early 2000s were replaced by less rigid or loose policies as early as 2010. After expulsions and suspensions catapulted, deterrent policies that used police, cameras, metal detectors, and locker searches were replaced by progressive policies that allow for a continuum of responses, prevention, intervention, supports, and consequences that foster positive behaviors.

Unintended Consequences of Both Tight and Loose Policies

Tight discipline policies do not allow for mitigation. The teacher uses minimal discretion for enforcement of rules. Breaking a rule, no matter the circumstance, is followed by a prescribed consequence. Loose discipline policies allow for more teacher and principal latitude over managing students. Loose discipline policies allow them to navigate the circumstance and use their professional judgment and expertise to decide on how much or how little  consequence should be received.

Our efforts to address disproportionality through looser policies that allow more educator discretion and at the same time provide better reporting and hold schools accountable may have inadvertently caused additional problems. Continue reading →

39 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Discipline and disorder, Education (K-12), Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

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Virginia Medically Underserved Areas for General Assembly Consideration

Posted on January 14, 2023 by | 31 comments

by James C. Sherlock

We have a new General Assembly session. With that comes lots of healthcare bills.

I will not examine each one, but I have a suggestion for criteria to be applied by the Senate and House committees that do.

Ask yourselves how, if at all, each bill helps the federally designated medically underserved areas (MUAs) in Virginia.

Then ask how can any bill be a priority for funding ahead of those that do help that problem.

Then remember that providing primary care to underserved areas is proven to save a ton of Medicaid money net where it has been tried, as in Maryland, because of inpatient care avoidance.

Then ask the not-for-profit health systems that serve those areas to testify how, exactly, they can be medically underserved when that is what the health system tax exemptions are meant to prevent, and free cash flows have been extraordinary for decades.

And, finally, if you have no bills that help provide additional primary care to those areas, you aren’t doing it right. Continue reading →

31 Comments

Posted in General Assembly, Governance, Health Care, Public safety & health

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Preparing for the Costs to Government of Virginia’s Generation COVID

Posted on January 4, 2023 by | 90 comments

John Littel, Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources

by James C. Sherlock

To justify her insistence on keeping schools closed, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in February of 2021, “kids are resilient and kids will recover.”

She brought that same message to Virginia.

In one of the strangest choices in Virginia political history, Terry McAuliffe brought Weingarten to Virginia to campaign with him on the last weekend of his losing gubernatorial campaign.

Thus sealing his defeat.

It turns out, as it was always going to, that you can’t keep kids out of school for up to a year and a quarter, homebound, and expect all of them to “recover.”

I will call here those in K-12 during COVID school shutdowns Generation COVID (Gen C).

I wrote the other day of an estimate by a renowned educational economist that the 1.2 million Gen C kids in Virginia public schools would lose several hundred billion dollars in lifetime earnings because of un-repaired damages to their learning of all types.

His critics here argued into the night about study methodology, but none denied costs at some level would be there. They did not offer their own estimates.

John Littel, Virginia’s Secretary of Health and Human Resources, has the job of preparing his agencies for the lifetime social costs of those children. Continue reading →

90 Comments

Posted in Budgets, Children and families, Culture wars, Education (K-12), Governance, Health Care, Mental illness and substance abuse, Psychology, Public employee unions, Public safety & health, Resilience, Unions

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RVA 5×5 – New Year’s Nuggets

Posted on December 30, 2022 by | 2 comments

by Jon Baliles

Left In The Cold

The Richmond Free Press Editorial Page ends the year batting 1.000 and goes two for two this week. The main editorial covers the disgraceful lack of attention, urgency and concern by the mayor and the administration for those in need of shelter during last week’s arctic blast. It opens with two sentences any “leader” should be ashamed of:

“Here’s the good news: So far, there have been no reports of unsheltered people freezing to death in the arctic blast that hit the Richmond area just before Christmas. With private and city-supported shelters full, people were left in the cold.”

It goes through the debacle over the past few months (you can read more here and here) and questions why zoning and special use permits were held out among the excuses as to why shelters in certain parts of town were unable to open. I recall a time not too distant when the mayor used “emergency powers” for numerous other issues during the pandemic; I guess emergency shelter for the homeless in 10-degree weather does not qualify.

The editorial also notes that the Council approved a special use permit two years ago for a shelter by a different operator in the same spot on Chamberlayne Avenue in Northside, but this year they are still waiting to get through the red tape.

“It would seem simple enough to create a legal fig leaf that would have allowed CCC (Commonwealth Catholic Charities) to fully open. No, it was more important that CCC gain its own permission slip, even if that took forever and left desperate people in the cold.”

And then, the brilliant denouement:

“Mayor Stoney has lectured everyone about how this city’s goal is to create One Richmond and equity for all. Apparently, you had to read the fine print on his messaging: Legal niceties are more important than people. Alas.”

Jon Baliles is a former Richmond City Councilman. This column was published originally in his blog RVA 5×5 and is republished here with permission.

2 Comments

Posted in Government Oversight, Homelessness, Public safety & health, Uncategorized

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One-Size-Fits-All COVID Policy Vs. Precision Medicine

Posted on December 29, 2022 by | 51 comments

by James A. Bacon

What a revelation. It turns out that a person’s genes have a big influence over how or his or her immunological system responds to the COVID-19 virus. A Charlottesville company, Ampel Biosolutions, has developed a blood test, which it claims predicts with 90% accuracy if a COVID-infected patient is at risk for a serious, life-threatening case.

Ampel executives say that the test, dubbed CovGene, could help physicians tailor treatments depending upon the patient’s genetic profile. It might make sense, for example, to implement anti-viral therapy such as Paxlovid for someone at acute risk, while patients at low risk could forego the expensive treatments.

The company based its findings on research conducted in collaboration with researchers at the University of Virginia hospital based on a longitudinal study of two-dozen COVID patients in UVa’s intensive care unit and a study of 100 patients from Duke and Harvard. The results were published in the Frontiers in Immunology journal.

Ampel officials make no claim beyond the efficacy of their blood test. Their pronouncements do not address broader issues regarding public health policy. Assuming its claims stand up to scrutiny, however, some conclusions about U.S. COVID policy seem warranted. Continue reading →

51 Comments

Posted in Public safety & health

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Handling Threats in Schools is Hampered by Progressive Cultures and Lack of Individual Initiative

Posted on December 7, 2022 by | 47 comments

Bice House at UVa

by James C. Sherlock

Virginia’s school threat assessment and mitigation processes are broken, putting entire school communities in danger.

The University of Virginia shootings and the rapes at two Loudoun County high schools were each preventable had the focus been on intervention by authorities responsible to do so. It was clearly not.

School cultures are an issue, but not an excuse.

One signal in progressive jurisdictions is the creation of committees and teams to define and enforce progressive cultural orthodoxy. At the extremes, leaders will even assign cultural enforcers with serious threat deliberation and action responsibilities to these teams.

Like threat assessment teams.

But that is insufficient excuse here. I see four factors at play in all three tragedies.

  1. Special situation policies and plans — like those that failed in Virginia’s pandemic response and more recently in school threat responses — usually fail without executive interest, oversight, and the training, exercise, accountability and inspection of action agencies prior to need.
  2. The chief executives of the Loudoun County Public Schools and the University of Virginia failed to set a clear tone and show by their actions that school safety took precedence over extraneous considerations and values.
  3. Second-tier executives with specific responsibilities for safety at UVa and in the Loudoun school system (at least one principal) failed to do their duties.
  4. The individual members of threat teams do not shed their personal executive authorities and responsibilities upon meeting as a group. They remain personally responsible and have to carry out their duties against cultural headwinds and enforcers. They failed in the UVa case. It is nowhere clear they were even used in the Loudoun cases.

There was a price paid for those failures. But only a single member of that hierarchy has been fired, and that happened yesterday in Loudoun County.

Five UVa students and two Loudoun County girls paid very high prices indeed. Continue reading →

47 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Public safety & health

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An Open Letter to the Mayor of Roanoke

Posted on December 5, 2022 by | 25 comments

(This letter was first published by The Roanoke Star.)

Mayor Sherman Lea:

I called your office last week in an attempt to speak with you about the current state of affairs and my recent experiences in Roanoke City. Your secretary took my information. I asked for a return call; I’ve heard nothing from you.

What are you doing about the decline of Roanoke City? I frequently shop and support businesses around Valley View Mall and the airport, and have been doing so for over 10 years. However, things are happening now that indicate I should take my business elsewhere.

Last Tuesday I was pumping gas at the BJ service station at 10:30 AM when a homeless man approached me, panhandling. When I refused him, he became angry and agitated. He retreated behind the pay center and emerged shoving a shopping cart through the parking lot filled with over-stuffed trash bags…cursing to himself.

I spoke to the employee in the pay center and shared what happened. She said, “it happens here numerous times a day. We tell them to leave. The Roanoke police occasionally come but they are powerless to do anything.”

Friday I was in my car in the Kroger parking lot on Rutgers St. A staggering woman made her way over to my car, and stood next to my window begging for money.

I’m sure you’re aware of the large homeless encampment in the woods between Aviation Drive and Lowe’s. Bags of trash, overturned shopping carts and homeless individuals are strewn across the truck exit from Lowe’s to Hershberger.

Why have you let these problems metastasize?

On numerous streets in Roanoke City, individuals are camping, squatting, or panhandling drivers. We do not see this in Roanoke County, Salem or Vinton. Police vehicles are more prevalent in these areas. I rarely see a police car in Roanoke City. What have you and City Council done to drive away and disenfranchise our police force? Continue reading →

25 Comments

Posted in Public safety & health

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