Category: Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement
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Revisiting Virginia’s Public Accommodation Laws
Virginia is for lovers haters. A sad scene unfolded in Lexington, Va., last Friday evening. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, President Trump’s press secretary, tried to enjoy a meal with her family at the Red Hen restaurant. The owner, a New York transplant named Stephanie Wilkinson, asked the Sanders party to leave the restaurant after starting their appetizers.…
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Will the Real Corey Stewart Please Stand Up?
Minnesota Confederate? Corey Stewart was born in Duluth, Minnesota. He grew up in Minnesota attending St. Olaf College before transferring to Georgetown University to finish his BS degree. He then went back to Minnesota to attend law school before moving permanently to Northern Virginia. So it comes as something of a surprise that this transplanted Minnesotan…
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What happened to Bijan Ghaisar?
Tragedy in Fairfax County. Bijan Ghaisar was a McLean-based accountant and graduate of Langley High School. On Nov 17, 2017 he was driving southbound on the George Washington Parkway north of Old Town, Alexandria. His vehicle was rear-ended by an Uber driver and, for reasons nobody can understand, Ghaisar fled the scene in his Jeep. It…
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No Excuse for Immigrant Child Abuse
Governor Ralph Northam has ordered state authorities to investigate allegations that guards at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center beat and otherwise abused children held at the immigration detention facility. The claims, if true, are shocking and must be addressed immediately. Allegedly, teenagers were restrained, handcuffed, and made to sit with bags over their heads. Some…
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What Now for Separation of American Women from their Children?
Some 25 years ago I was living in Church Hill, then a sketchy Richmond neighborhood in the early stages of gentrification. One night police lights were flashing in my front window, so I stepped outside to see what was happening. Halfway down the block, a woman on the sidewalk was clutching an infant and bawling…
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Being Dealt A Losing Hand That Lingers
There are times in life when four aces is a tough hand to hold. Common themes on this public policy forum include poverty and its causes and cures, school failure and related discipline matters, health problems and the difficulty understanding why these conditions remain so widespread in this great nation and commonwealth. I invite you…
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Murders, Arrests and the Politics of Racial Grievance
The Washington Post had what could have been an interesting idea: Map more than 52,000 homicides and arrests in major American cities over the past decade. Sadly, the newspaper floundered with the data, unable to identify any meaningful trends other than the entirely predictable finding that some cities do a significantly better job of clearing its…
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Medicaid Fraud Unit Grows With Program
It would be interesting to know which is growing faster, the Medicaid program itself or the state-run legal and investigative team charged with rooting out and prosecuting the fraud, waste and abuse that appear on pools of dollars like algae on a still pond. My guess is the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU), now around…
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The Hidden Expense of Police Body Cameras
When police departments began equipping their officers with body cameras, I thought it was a great idea. Capturing a video record of police encounters could settle a lot of controversies. It never occurred to me that reviewing the video would be so exorbitantly time consuming that local prosecutors would have to hire additional employees —…
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The Veiled Racism in the School Shooting Debate
An axiom of Bacon’s Rebellion is that while progressives (progs) and social justice warriors (SJWs) oppose racism in their rhetoric, they support policies that have the unintended result of being racist in effect. Nowhere is this clearer than in their approach to the criminal justice system, in which they decry the criminals as victims while…
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“Torture” and “Dehumanization” in Virginia’s Prisons?
The Virginia Department of Corrections has won kudos from the Obama administration Department of Justice and the Southern Legislative Conference for limiting the use of long-term “restrictive housing,” the administrative euphemism for solitary confinement. In 2011 the maximum security Red Onion prison in Southwest Virginia held 511 prisoners in long-term restrictive housing. Today, the number…
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Time to Reform Practice of Cash Bonds
Earlier this month Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Herring announced that his office would no longer recommend requiring cash bond for people charged with crimes. Instead, prosecutors would recommend defendants either be held in jail or be given their freedom until the trial. Too many people are unable to raise cash for the bond, and Herring…
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Wow, that Stop-and-Frisk Policy Sure Looks Suspicious. Let’s Stop and Frisk It.
Citing Charlottesville Police Department data, the Cavalier Daily, the University of Virginia’s student newspaper, has found that African-Americans are stopped and frisked at a rate nine times greater than whites. The statistical report from the 2017 calendar year detailed that of the 173 total recorded stop incidents, 70 percent of the individuals were black. Of…
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Pulitzer Recognition for Three-Strikes-and-You’re-Out Articles
Congratulations to Tim Eberly with the Virginian-Pilot for winning recognition as a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his investigative reporting on Virginia’s three-strikes-and-you’re-out law. He was up against some stiff competition — the Washington Post won the award for its investigation of Senate candidate Roy Moore’s history of sexual harassment of teenage girls. Here’s the kick-off of…
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One Man’s “Domestic Terrorist” Is Another Man’s Social Justice Warrior
Del. Marcia Price, D-Newport News has teamed with the Virginia Attorney General’s Office to add “domestic terrorism” to the state’s list of criminal charges. Her bill, HB 1601, would make it illegal in certain cases for people associated with domestic terrorist groups to hold a meeting, reports the Daily Press. Price refused to comment for…