Category Archives: Crime , corrections and law enforcement

A Simple Statement of Fact about the Public Schools

Posted on June 30, 2023 by | 24 comments

by James C. Sherlock

I know. Schools. Again.

But Virginia’s schools have been shown to be getting worse faster than those of other states.

Perhaps we should do something.

Read the National Assessment Board’s press release from June 21st. One paragraph drew my attention:

The LTT assessments in reading and math measure fundamental skills among nationally representative, age-based cohorts and have been administered since 1971 and 1973, respectively.

Students were generally making progress until 2012, when scores started declining.

Scores took a sharp downturn during the pandemic. Today, the average score for 13-year-olds on the LTT reading assessment is about where it was in 1971.

Despite the large decline in math, the average score in 2023 remains higher than in 1973.

Declining since 2012 nationwide.

Virginia’s have been declining since 2017. In a hurry.

Continue reading →

24 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, DEI, Education (K-12), General Assembly, Law enforcement

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Check Out Which New Virginia Laws Go Into Effect July 1st

Posted on June 30, 2023 by | 11 comments

by The Republican Standard staff

The Virginia General Assembly passed several small bills due to the split between the Republican-led House of Delegates and the Democratic-controlled Virginia State Senate. Yet the areas where they did find co-operation could matter to many Virginians as we head into Fourth of July weekend.

Enhanced Penalties for Fentanyl Manufacturing or Distribution
Reeves SB1188 Senate 35-5 House 50-42
Provides that any person who knowingly and intentionally manufactures or knowingly and intentionally distributes a weapon of terrorism when such person knows that such weapon of terrorism is, or contains, any mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of fentanyl is guilty of a Class 4 felony.

Universal Occupational License Recognition
McDougle SB1213 Senate 40-0 House 99-0
Establishes criteria for an individual licensed, certified, or having work experience in another state to apply to a regulatory board within the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation and be issued an occupational license or government certification if certain conditions are met.

Police Chiefs May Enact Local Curfews during Disturbances
Norment SB1455 Senate 27-12 House 53-45
Enables the chief law-enforcement officer of a locality to enact a curfew under certain circumstances during a civil disturbance.

Making Sure Every District has a Legislator
Suetterlein SB944 Senate 39-0 House 99-0
Requires special elections to fill a vacancy in the membership of the General Assembly be held within 30 days of the vacancy if the vacancy occurs or will occur between December 10 and March 10 which coincides with time right before and during the General Assembly session. Continue reading →

11 Comments

Posted in Business and Economy, Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Economic development, Elections, Finance (government), General Assembly, Governance, Government Oversight, Government workers and pensions, Law enforcement, Politics, Regulation, Uncategorized, Virginia Law

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Old Law Coming Back to Bite Virginia?

Posted on June 28, 2023 by | 34 comments

Voting booths in Portsmouth. Photo credit: Virginian-Pilot

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

On behalf of three Virginia residents, the Virginia ACLU, along with a large D.C. law firm, has filed suit in federal court challenging the provision of Virginia’s constitution that disenfranchises anyone convicted of a felony, providing that their voting rights can be restored only by the governor.

Such a legal challenge is not necessarily new, but the basis for this one is novel and fascinating The plaintiffs claim that the provision of the Virginia constitution is illegal because it violates the provisions of the federal law that allowed for the Commonwealth’s readmission to the Union after the Civil War.  That law included this provision, similar to that included for laws applicable to other member states of the Confederacy:

That the State of Virginia is admitted to representation in Congress as one of the States of the Union upon the following fundamental conditions: First, that the Constitution of Virginia shall never be so amended or changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens of the United States of the right to vote who are entitled to vote by the Constitution herein recognized, except as a punishment for such crimes as are now felonies at common law, whereof they shall have been duly convicted under laws equally applicable to all the inhabitants of said State.  [Emphasis added.] Continue reading →

34 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Electoral process, Virginia history

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Policing Ain’t Bean Bag… Or Maybe It Is

Posted on June 27, 2023 by | 35 comments

Upon hearing that the Fairfax County Police Department had scrapped conventional shotgun shells in favor of “bean bag” projectiles, my initial reaction was to mock the change. Bean bags? What’s the next tool in the police arsenal — pillows? Given the approving tone of the article in The Washington Post, I was tempted to dismiss the idea as the latest excrescence of politically correct dogma.

After further examination, I have reconsidered. Tasers are one non-lethal  alternative, but they don’t always work, especially if the target is pumped up on drugs. Does anyone remember Rodney King? The bean bag projectiles aren’t perfect — they can cause injuries or in rare circumstances kill. Still, they inflict a lot less damage than bullets or buckshot. The Fox News clip above shows how Atlanta police used bean bag rounds to disarm a man with a hatchet and axe.

Giving police alternatives to beating recalcitrant suspects into submission is always a good idea.  — JAB

35 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement

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Predatory Virginia Nursing Home Owners

Posted on June 22, 2023 by | 22 comments

by James C. Sherlock

Merriam Webster:

Pred*a*tor: (noun) one who injures or exploits others for personal gain or profit.

The most medically vulnerable of us reside in skilled nursing facilities (SNF).

Nobody plans to be there, but that is where about thirty thousand Virginians find themselves at any one time. People who are moved from hospitals to save money for the insurers but are too sick or injured to go home yet.  

They are supposed to get the skilled nursing the name suggests. Many don’t.

Most are covered by Medicare. The rest by Medicaid or private insurance. It could be any one of us tomorrow.

These patients are at risk by design in some of these SNF’s. Put in danger by a perverted business model, a model that shows that returns can be juiced into double digits by stripping staff. The facilities can then be flipped in a couple of years at a profit based upon increased cash flows.

We will track their investments using government data. We will see a ritual, system-wide understaffing.  We will also see that the government accumulated and publishes staffing data but there is no evidence they use it for anything.

There are nursing homes in Virginia, for example, that provide less than 30% of the registered nurse hours per patient per day that CMS assesses they require.  Weekend statistics are worse. Nothing happens.

Today there are large systems not one of which is staffed to CMS norms.

There are real people who are harmed by those calculated violations.  Exceptionally vulnerable people are regularly denied at least their dignity, often their health and sometimes their lives.

The owners injure and exploit patients for personal gain or profit.

They are predators. Continue reading →

22 Comments

Posted in Consumer protection, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Ethics, Federal, Government Oversight, Health Care, Insurance, Long Term Care and Nursing Homes, Medicaid, Scandals

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Occupational Hazard, 1 of 4

Posted on June 20, 2023 by | 4 comments

by Joe Fitzgerald

Harrisonburg police rescued a possible abduction victim one day last month after shooting the apparent perpetrator. A city press release said a domestic dispute on Old Furnace Road around 6:30 p.m. turned into an abduction. Police pursued the suspect’s vehicle to downtown, where they shot the suspect, who was apparently armed. The suspect was flown to UVa hospital and the victim was safe.

At least that’s what I got out of a Daily News Record story that included the line, “The pursuit ended in front of the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office following an officer-involved shooting that ultimately injured the suspect.”

Journalism is dead. Or, in the same jargon as the press release, “Journalism ended following a Craigslist-involved financial loss that ultimately ate the newspapers’ lunch.”
Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Media, Uncategorized

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No Ready Answer for Increase in Police-Involved Shootings

Posted on June 19, 2023 by | 38 comments

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

I like to do what I call “poking around the numbers.” Breaking down datasets for large entities, such as statewide data, can yield enlightening, and sometimes surprising, results.

I was intrigued by the Virginia State Police report of officer-involved shootings that Jim Bacon reported on earlier. The big increase from 2021 to 2022 led to all sorts of speculation as to its causes. I thought it might help to break down the incidents by jurisdiction.

The 2016 General Assembly enacted legislation requiring the State Police to include officer-involved shootings in its annual Crime in Virginia report. The 2017 report was the first time such data were reported. Consequently, there have been six years of reports.

For some incidents, there was more than one law-enforcement agency involved.  In such circumstances, I counted both agencies. For those involving the State Police, I attributed the involvement to the State Police, rather than the jurisdiction in which it occurred. Continue reading →

38 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars

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Virginia Police Shooting Incidents Up 43% in 2022

Posted on June 19, 2023 by | 20 comments

by James A. Bacon

Along with the surge in homicides and assaults on police officers, the number of police shootings in Virginia jumped 43% last year, according to data from the Virginia State Police 2022 Crime in Virginia report. The shootings resulted in 22 fatalities, up from 18 the previous year.

The increase since 2019, the year before the George Floyd riots unleashed a wave of anti-police denunciations, anti-racism rhetoric, and criminal-justice “reforms” designed to reduce mass incarceration, amounted to 79%.

That raises a critical question: how is it possible that, despite all the media attention, all the police cultural sensitivity indoctrination, all the de-escalation training, and all the other criminal-justice “reforms” in Virginia, officer shootings increased so markedly over three years? Have none of the reforms worked? Or could the left-of-center critics of policing, who have driven the policy changes, be overlooking something?

Police-shooting incidents need to be viewed in a larger context. Although general crime rates have remained stable or even declined since 2019, the number of homicides has spiked by 73% and the number of assaults on officers has jumped 41%. I would suggest that these numbers are related. Continue reading →

20 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement

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Perspective Needed on the State Crime Report

Posted on June 18, 2023 by | 32 comments

by Dick Hall-Sizemore

The 2022 increase in the Virginia crime rate in all categories except drugs reported by Jim Bacon in an earlier article on this blog is indeed worrisome.

In the short term, crime rates can fluctuate. However, Virginia, and the nation, have experienced an overall decrease in crime rates over past two decades or so.  If the increases over the past couple of years continue, at some point in the future, statisticians will be able to say that the overall trend line has significantly changed and will point to this period as the point at which something happened to change the overall trend in the crime rate.

There are some on this blog who blame the rise in the crime rate on changes in criminal laws and policies, such as early release of offenders from prison, reducing bond requirements for nonviolent defendants, progressive prosecutors pursuing social justice objectives, etc.  They offer no evidence to substantiate the relationship of these changes, to the extent they actually exist, to the increase in the crime rate.  In effect, their claims are based on their personal ideological predisposition.  I could offer a set of proposals for the increase in the crime rate that would differ substantially from that offered by these other commentators.  However, I would have no evidence to back up my claims, either.  Therefore, I will desist. Continue reading →

32 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars

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Assaults on Virginia Police Up 62% Last Year

Posted on June 17, 2023 by | 29 comments

by James A. Bacon

Alongside the continued rise in the number of homicides in Virginia, the year 2022 saw a dramatic increase in the number of assaults on police. Two officers were killed and 2,903 assaulted, according to data released by the Virginia State Police in its 2022 Crime in Virginia report.

The number of injuries spiked as well: 703 officers experiencing minor injuries and 61 suffering major injuries ranging from severe lacerations and broken bones to internal injuries and loss of consciousness.


Continue reading →

29 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement

What Hath Wokeness Wrought?

Posted on June 16, 2023 by | 58 comments


by James A. Bacon

The surge in homicides in Virginia continued unabated for the third straight year in 2022, with number of deaths from homicide and non-negligent manslaughter reaching 621.

The homicide epidemic in Virginia disproportionately affected Blacks. Blacks accounted for 90% of the increase in the number of murder victims since 2019, the year before the George Floyd protests sparked an outbreak of lawlessness, a crescendo of anti-police rhetoric, and a wave of legislation designed to reduce Black incarceration rates.

The toll in Black bodies has increased from 253 in 2019 to 436 last year, a three-year increase of 183 victims and a one-year increase of 54. By contrast, the number of White murder victims climbed from 157 in 2019 to 173 the following year and has plateaued at that level since.

The latest data from the Virginia State Police compiled in the 2022 Crime in Virginia Report demolishes the argument proffered by many on the left a year or two ago that the spike in homicides could be attributed to COVID-related lockdowns rather than the wave of leftist rhetoric and public policy changes.

The COVID hypothesis was never credible to begin with — the lockdowns affected everyone, but the jump in homicides occurred overwhelmingly in the Black community, was muted among Whites, and was invisible among Asians. (The report did not break out Hispanics as a separate racial category.) But the continued increase in homicides among Blacks in 2022 after the lockdowns ended indicates that something besides COVID was responsible. Continue reading →

58 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Race and race relations, Uncategorized

The Problem Isn’t Guns, It’s Richmond

Posted on June 14, 2023 by | 40 comments


by Shaun Kenney

Do you ever sit around and wish that a public figure would actually stand up and call out a problem for what it is? Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears is out there doing just that when it comes to Richmond’s rising tide of violence.

Virginia Democrats have responded to last week’s tragedy at Monroe Park, which killed 2 and wounded 17, with the usual tropes. Blame guns — which if one believes other leftist tropes about fearful gun owners clinging to their firearms and Bibles, you might wonder why all of rural Virginia isn’t some dystopian hell scape.

Instead, the dystopian hell scape seems to be centered in polities where Democrats are imposing their own utopian visions of a safe and secure society only to discover their policies are delivering neither safety nor security.
Continue reading →

40 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Gun rights, Political Influence, Politics, Uncategorized

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Judge Orders LCPS to Turn Over Investigation into the Assaults and Rape at Two County Schools

Posted on May 31, 2023 by | 9 comments

by Jeanine Martin

Loudoun County Circuit Court Judge James P. Fischer has ordered Loudoun County Public Schools to turn over its internal investigation into the assaults and rape that occurred in 2021 at two Loudoun County high schools.

The school system had argued that it was privileged information that they need not share with the public. Judge Fischer disagreed and ordered the report to be turned over to the public within 7 days.

From WTOP.com:

The ruling is a win for Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, who has been fighting to expose how he says the school district mishandled the incidents.

The judge agreed with prosecutors from the Miyares’ office that the internal report on the 2021 sexual assaults and rape on school grounds was not protected under attorney-client privilege — noting that then-Superintendent Scott Ziegler gave the perception that any findings from the independent investigation were for the public’s benefit.

In a statement, Miyares’ spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said in part, “We appreciate the courts time and attention to this matter.”

More on the story here.

This piece was originally appeared in The Bull Elephant and is reprinted with permission.

9 Comments

Posted in Courts and law, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Discipline and disorder, Education (K-12), Parental Rights, Uncategorized, Virginia Freedom of Information Act

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FIVE QUESTIONS: Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares

Posted on May 30, 2023 by | 3 comments

by Shaun Kenney

Last week, TRS was able to sit down and talk with Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares (R-VA) about the challenges he is facing from opioid and fentanyl abuse to the FBI Richmond’s targeting of Catholics in the public square.

Miyares — a longstanding conservative in the tradition of Ronald Reagan and a leading thinker in his own right — shares his convictions, his hope for civility over violence, and some discussion on what he rightly calls the American Miracle.

So it seems as if some congratulations are in order. Russian President Vladimir Putin has put you on the Russian sanctions list. What did you do to earn such an esteemed award?

Yeah, I keep making lists!

I keep visiting with the Uigurs in Northern Virginia. I find it interesting but not surprising because we have such a different worldview. I detest autocracy and tyranny in all forms. When Putin said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the single greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, I view that as Ronald Reagan’s greatest victory.

Yet the reality of any autocratic regime is that ideology trumps the individual. C.S. Lewis said that of all the tyrannies in the world, the tyrannies that are for your benefit are the worst in the world. Solzhenitsyn writes about this in the Gulag Archipelago.
Continue reading →

3 Comments

Posted in Children and families, Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars, Education (K-12), Elections, Governance, Immigration, Leadership, Parental Rights, Uncategorized

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Retail Politics and the Social Compact

Posted on May 25, 2023 by | 57 comments

by Richard Tangard

While I waited in the grocery store checkout line, a scowling, angry-looking man walked in through the automatic door. As I placed my items on the conveyor, his purposeful stride took him into a nearby aisle. Moments later he emerged carrying two cases of beer, snarled at several employees, and stomped out without paying.

None of them said anything or lifted a finger to stop him, and I can’t really blame them. He telegraphed that interference would be met with violence. I don’t think anyone called the police, although that may have happened later.

Not long ago, a social compact was generally accepted in this country. Stealing is wrong. Initiating or threatening violence is wrong. Follow the rules and you will be treated fairly. Those who break the rules will be sought out, prosecuted and tried. If convicted, especially in the case of a repeat offender, the perpetrator will be removed from society both to teach a lesson and for public safety.

The social compact had value because nearly everyone followed it. That near-universality seems to be gone. I suspect it will take decades to re-establish.

Richard Tangard is an avid cyclist, three-time Ironman triathlete, and a mostly retired CPA. He says his wayward youth was spent in Connecticut but he has lived in the Richmond area for 28 years.

57 Comments

Posted in Crime , corrections and law enforcement, Culture wars

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