Category: Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement
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Don’t Blame Pandemic for Rise in U.S. Violent Crime
by Hans Bader Recent spikes in violent crime aren’t due to COVID-19 or the economy, as suggested recently in a Virginian-Pilot article exploring causes of a spike in violence in Hampton Roads. Murders frequently fall during recessions and times of economic hardship. In the U.S. homicides fell during the 2007-2009 recession. In many other countries, murder rates actually went…
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Car Crashes Down, Fatalities Up in 2020
by James A. Bacon Virginia transportation officials are puzzling over a divergence in road safety statistics during the COVID epidemic last year. The number of crashes on Virginia roads fell 15% to 20% below the level of a normal year while the number of fatalities climbed by 2.4% and serious injuries by 5.3%, reports The…
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Virginia’s Parole Board Squirts WD-40 on That Revolving Door
by Kerry Dougherty Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A guy commits murder and is sent to prison for decades. Like everyone else in the pen he insists he’s innocent. Finally, a gullible, soft-on-crime parole board buys his sob story and turns him loose on society. Next thing you know the ex-con’s committed…
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Fairfax Group Forms to Defend Police
by James A. Bacon When Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano ran for office in 2019, he promised to reform the county’s criminal justice system by offering defendants greater transparency about the evidence against them. “Virginia’s rules force defendants to try to craft a defense without most of the information one would need to do…
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Inexplicable — What Could Be Causing the Surge in Violence?
by James A. Bacon Wow, you know the crime surge is getting bad when the wokest newsroom in the Commonwealth — which apologized for the whiteness of the reporters writing a series about continued racial segregation in Hampton Roads — starts publishing articles about it. What’s hilarious about today’s article in The Virginian-Pilot is that…
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Who’s Setting Car Fires in Norfolk’s Ghent Neighborhood?
by Kerry Dougherty Who’s setting those car fires in Ghent? Oh, you haven’t heard about the arsons? Buckle up. Last Friday night, as rain drenched Norfolk, Patrick and Tiffany McGee and their two young sons were watching TV in their picturesque Cape Cod with a picket fence on the corner of Redgate and Claremont Avenues…
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Does Richmond Have a Police Shortfall?
by James A. Bacon Two billboards have popped up in the City of Richmond suggesting that poor pay and understaffing of the police department were putting public safety in jeopardy. Police Chief Gerald M. Smith responded in a public statement that, yes, violent crime is up this year compared to 2020 but that’s mainly because…
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How’s Descano’s Social-Justice Prosecution Policy Working Out?
by James A. Bacon Steve Descano was elected Commonwealth Attorney of Fairfax County in 2019 on the promise that he would end mass incarceration by winding down the prosecution of marijuana possession and raising the threshold to $1,500 for larceny prosecutions. As he stated in his reform platform, “I will not ruin someone’s life because…
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Do Fatal Police Shootings Indicate Racism?
by James A. Bacon As protesters marched in many Virginia cities last year in protest of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minn., many Virginia politicians suggested that the kind of police abuses occurring in other states were endemic here in Virginia. The General Assembly enacted numerous laws to reduce mass incarceration and…
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Wait, What? Virginia Law Enforcement Employment Increased 13% in 2020?
In conservative media, we often hear how law-enforcement morale plummeted last year in the face of withering criticism from politicians, media and even the public. We read of rising retirements and resignations and of shrinking recruitment, especially in big cities where anti-police rhetoric is strongest. So, what’s the story in Virginia? If the data from…
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Assaults on Police Up Slightly in 2020
by James A. Bacon Last year was unprecedented for the number of street protests and anti-police rhetoric in Virginia. Police morale plummeted in the face of public hostility. How did the wave of unrest translate into physical danger for police? According to the Crime in Virginia 2020 report, which tracks the number of Virginia police…
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Stop Asian Hate? What Hate?
by James A. Bacon Asian Americans living in Virginia have been able to rest easier since March knowing that Virginia’s Attorney General Mark Herring has entered the the battle against anti-Asian hate crimes. Not only did he set up a website, NoHateVa, in which he proclaimed, “The rise in violence and hate against Asian Americans…
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Virginia Murders Surged in 2020, Mostly Black Victims
by James A. Bacon Against the backdrop of COVID-19 shut-ins and anti-police protests last year, violent crime in Virginia declined 1.9%, but homicides increased by 23.4%, according to the Crime in Virginia 2020 reported released by the Virginia State Police today. The spike in killings was mainly, though not exclusively, an African-American phenomenon. The annual…
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Southwest Virginians Rebel Against “Defund the Police” Rhetoric
by James A. Bacon Southwest Virginia, long the most consistently “red” in its voting patterns, has become downright scarlet over the past year with the switch of three county sheriffs from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. The most recent of the three defectors, Sheriff Chip Shuler of Smyth County, filed a formal membership…
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Progressives’ Justice: Criminalize Small Business, Descriminalize Theft
by Hans Bader Progressive “reform” prosecutors want more criminal prosecutions of businesses for red-tape violations and so-called “wage theft,” and fewer felony prosecutions of criminals for stealing from businesses and homeowners (such as shoplifting, which some progressive prosecutors have essentially stopped prosecuting, resulting in an explosion of shoplifting). Prosecuting “wage theft” was one of the…