Category: Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement
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Why Local Leaders Won’t Say The G Word
by Kerry Dougherty If you want to understand what’s going on with the surge in violent crime in Tidewater, you really need to watch the movie “Jaws.” Remember how the mayor of Amity wanted to keep the beaches open even after he knew that a massive, man-eating Great White shark was feeding in local waters?…
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Do Slumlords Contribute to Violent Crime?
by James A. Bacon In the previous post, I argued that the underlying cause of violence in the City of Richmond is social breakdown stemming from erosion of the family structure and the resultant failure to teach children the skills they need to avoid and resolve conflicts. In the great philosophical debate over the extent…
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VCU Police Department Signals Its Wokeness
by James A. Bacon A new “resource” will be available to the LGBTQIA+ community in Richmond. Virginia Commonwealth University — yes, the same institution that recently lost $470,000 in a cyber scam — has assigned two campus patrol officers as “campus LGBTQIA+ liaisons.” A recent university announcement noted that VCU Police Chief John Venuti has…
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Watch Out, Nigerian Princes Are Using Bitcoin and VPNs Now
by James A. Bacon Nigerian scam artists are upping their game. Ten or twenty years ago, they bombarded the Internet with tales of African potentates and lost fortunes that only the favored email recipient could help recover… if he or she could provide a small bank deposit first. There were so many of these entertaining…
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Norfolk Has a Crime Problem
by Kerry Dougherty It was a fabulous moment in Norfolk. On Friday night Old Dominion University clinched ANOTHER football victory over Virginia Tech, this one in the last minute of play. When the final whistle blew the ecstatic fans poured out of the stands and onto the field. One of the TV commentators gazed at…
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Those Violent Red States
by Dick Hall-Sizemore Crime is again a top story, both in the national media and on this blog. Many on this blog seem to think they have identified what is behind the recent rise in crime, especially homicides and other violent crimes. Two years ago, Jim Bacon pointed out that the Commonwealth had the fourth…
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A Chance for Petersburg
by James C. Sherlock The Youngkin administration is doing an unalloyed good thing the exact right way. In partnership with two Democrats. The Governor, in an extraordinary joint presentation with his cabinet secretaries and Democratic Mayor Samuel Parham, laid out a plan for broad state help to Petersburg. Standing on the stage with Democratic State Senator…
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Getting Rid of the Bad Apples
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There is a tendency in government to enact reform or establish new programs and then move on. Often, there is little or no circling back, by government or the media, to examine how the changes have been implemented or what effect they have had. Over the course of the next few weeks,…
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Pretrial Services Agencies: A Rejoinder
by Dick Hall-Sizemore My colleague, James Sherlock, recently posted an article in which he concluded that the Commonwealth’s pretrial agency program is a failure. I took issue with his basic conclusions, but did not have enough details handy to make my case. I now have more information. His conclusion was based on data shown in…
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Talking Crime
by Jon Baliles Candace Burns of CBS6 sat down with Mayor Stoney this week to talk crime, gun violence, and alleged plots. It was an interesting discussion, and while a lot of it is political fluff and rhetoric, Stoney does deserve some credit for some straight talk. What we recognize is that 26% of the…
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Youngkin on the Mar-a-Lago Raid
A stunning move by the DOJ and FBI. This same DOJ labeled parents in Loudoun County as terrorists and failed to enforce federal law to protect Justices in their homes. Selective, politically motivated actions have no place in our democracy. — Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) August 9, 2022 What do you think of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s…
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Welcome to America, Land Where Killers Roam Free
by James A. Bacon Adrian de Jesus Rivera Guzman, 48, and his stepson Juan Carlos Anaya Hernandez, 24, immigrants who had fled gang violence in Central America, were in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were innocent bystanders doing landscaping work outside the Assembly Alexandria apartment complex when they were killed by gunfire.…