Tag Archives: Social breakdown

Photo credit: Richmond Times-Dispatch

by James A. Bacon

In a protest that will never make the national news, an estimated 75 people turned out for a weekend march in Richmond to denounce the latest killing of a child in a drive-by shooting. Fifteen-year-old Tynashia Humphrey was walking to the store from her grandmother’s home near the infamous Gilpin Court housing project when she was struck by a stray bullet. “Stop the killing! Save the children!” the marchers chanted.

From January to June this year, the seven largest localities of Hampton Roads have seen 115 homicides — up from 88 the same time last year, a 30% increase. Newport News and Hampton experienced a dip, but homicides have surged in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Virginia Beach and Suffolk, reports The Virginian-Pilot.

— JAB

by James A. Bacon

Virginia recorded its highest murder rate in two decades in 2021, reports WTVR. Other than noting that homicides hit the murder mark of 90, however, the article reported no specifics.

I don’t know how the Richmond television station came by those particular data points. The Virginia State Police has not yet published its 2021 Crime in Virginia report, although it will be made public any day. I expect that key bottom-line findings are circulating in the Youngkin administration, which has made crime fighting a top priority.

“We have a crisis in Virginia right now. We’ve got to go to work right now. We are absolutely going to make Virginia safe again,” WTVR quoted Governor Glenn Youngkin as saying.

The Governor has launched a violent crime task force. Part of the solution, he said, is to increase police pay, presumably to reverse the exodus of officers from local police forces.

WTVR also quoted Attorney General Jason Miyares as pledging to use the authority of his office to get violent repeat offenders off the street. In an initiative he has dubbed Project Ceasefire, he plans to bring back parts of the federal Project Exile initiative, which sentenced criminals convicted of using illegal firearms to a minimum of five years in prison. He also plans to create a fund to invest in crime reduction strategies, training, and equipment for police and other organizations. Continue reading →

Little Chicago. Three people were killed and one critically injured in a shooting in Portsmouth this morning, reports The Virginian-Pilot. No details are yet available. The incident follows a day of mayhem in which four people were shot, one fatally, last week.

Refund the police. Also from The Virginian-Pilot: “Norfolk is set to receive $1 million from the Virginia state budget to help stop gun violence in the city, while Portsmouth will get $500,000. A total of $8 million is in the budget for gun violence prevention, of which $1.5 million is earmarked for ‘localities with disproportionate firearm-related homicides.’ Norfolk and Portsmouth are receiving the money ‘to support crime intervention and prevention through community engagement,’ according to budget documents.”

What’s good for Virginia is good for the country. Democratic Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner are pushing the “Virginia Plan to Reduce Gun Violence” to bring to the federal level changes the General Assembly enacted in 2020, reports the Virginia Mercury. The legislation would impose background checks for private gun sales, require gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms, limit handgun purchases to one per month, and boost penalties for leaving guns accessible to children.

— JAB

by James A. Bacon

Mass shootings have become so common in the United States that incidents with only five or six victims warrant no national attention and are soon forgotten even in local media. A barrage of gunfire Friday night at a graduation party in Chesterfield County, which left one dead and five others injured, falls into that category.

More than 50 shots were fired. Police have identified four different calibers of shell casings at the scene, indicating that four different guns were used, and suggesting that up to four different assailants might have been involved. The shooting victims were all males. Two females were injured when struck by a vehicle as they fled the scene, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

The party held for a Thomas Dale High School student attracted between 50 and 100 people, including many underage, from the Richmond and Petersburg areas. Police inquiries found that, prior to the shootings, two separate “fights or disturbances” had broken out between females. The shots were fired very shortly after the second fight.

Most media attention focuses on incidents in which the mass-shooting perpetrators are isolated, alienated loners, often suffering from mental illness. As mental illness is on the rise, this phenomenon is a legitimate source of concern. But the Chesterfield incident was of a different type — indiscriminate shooting by young people getting into heated arguments — that gets far less commentary. Continue reading →

Whoops, wrong kind of orc.

by James A. Bacon

Is California-style organized retail theft coming to Virginia? I have been making the argument, based upon admittedly anecdotal evidence, that it might be. While one must be careful extrapolating from individual incidents, which might be outliers, it struck me that the type of retail crime being reported in Virginia was undergoing a phase change. We’re seeing crimes the likes of which we’d never seen before. Furthermore, I suggested that the trend may be aided and abetted by several progressive commonwealth attorneys in Virginia declining to prosecute crimes that offend their social-justice sensibilities, as has been the case in California.

In a column this morning, Dick Hall-Sizemore counters that some of what we’re seeing — the recycling of “frequent flier” petty larcenists through the criminal-justice system — has been around for years. I thank Dick for presenting an argument based on facts. Others attack my argument by attacking me. Bacon, you see, is one of those conservative curmudgeons pining for the good ol’ days when crime barely existed, therefore his observations can be dispensed with no need for further argument!

But it turns out that others are seeing a trend. Yesterday Attorney General Jason Miyares convened a working group to take a look at Organized Retail Crime (ORC) in Virginia. Retailers are reporting that pilferage is a growing problem. Thieves are getting more brazen, and they find a ready outlet for their goods as illegal resellers — in the old days, they were called “fences” — who exploit online marketplaces.

“We saw in Fairfax last month, over 20,000 eyeglasses frames were stolen just in Fairfax,” Miyares said, as reported by Virginia Public Media. “Arlington detectives recovered over 89,000 stolen goods from just T.J. Maxx alone.” Continue reading →