Virginia Democrats: Criminals First

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ne of the first things Governor Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., did when she took office in Richmond was to repeal an executive order from her predecessor, Republican Glenn Youngkin. That order directed state and local law enforcement to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other immigration enforcement agencies. “State and local law enforcement should not be required to divert their limited resources to enforce federal civil immigration laws,” Spanberger said about signing signing her Executive Order 10.

While Spanberger characterized the decision as being driven by “limited resources,” her actions; and those of other Democrats in the Virginia State Government, indicate that they want Virginia to be overrun with even more illegals. However, the very same Virginia Democrats also appear bent on pursuing a policy to help aliens get away with crime.

“We know how it is in Northern Virginia with some of our prosecutors out there who want to look the other way and coddle criminals,” Virginia House of Delegates Minority Leader Terry Kilgore said.

“Folks need to be able to walk their street at night without fear of being either shot or kidnapped or raped. It’s a wrong way to move with public safety in Virginia. When Gov. Youngkin had the agreement, we were able to catch all those MS 13 gang members up in Northern Virginia. If we’re not cooperating with ICE, folks are going to get harmed in Virginia.”

There is only one county in northern Virginia, Loudoun, which acts on ICE detainers, and it’s something Sheriff Michael Chapman said he plans to continue doing despite the Democrats taking over in Richmond.

“We’re still going to honor ICE detainers,” Chapman told ABC 7 News earlier in January.

“I can tell you this because, as you know, in Fairfax, they let somebody out who had an ICE detainer, and within a day, committed a homicide or allegedly committed a homicide. We don’t want that to happen in Loudon County. We want to do everything we can in Loudon County to keep our citizens safe.”

Spanberger’s executive order repeal is hardly the only recent Democrat move upending law and order in the state. A bill introduced from Democrat Delegate Katrina Callsen would go even further than the catch-and-release style “law enforcement” practiced in Democrat-run counties by banning the civil arrest of illegal aliens attending unrelated matters in courthouses.

While not explicitly mentioning illegals or Third World imports hellbent on defrauding American taxpayers, like the Somalis in Minnesota, Democrat Delegate Jessica Anderson has introduced a bill blocking state agencies from requiring nonprofits to prove their legal eligibility before receiving taxpayer dollars. In other words, the measure effectively removes any barrier to fraud and ensures such fraud is untraceable.

In another suspect piece of Democrat legislation, those who make frivolous “hate crime” accusations in Virginia could be protected under a bill sponsored by Delegate Laura Jane Cohen. The legislation would allow the accuser to hide his identity throughout all levels of legal proceedings; a concerning development in light of the numerous hate crime hoaxes which have been perpetrated in recent years.

The brutal new reality for Virginians is that all criminals are going to have it easier under the new Democrat regime. As reported, one bill introduced would remove all mandatory minimum sentencing for rape, manslaughter, assaulting law enforcement, the possession and distribution of child pornography, and repeat violent felonies.

Another bill, offered by Delegate Vivian Watts, would reduce punishment and sentencing for robbery and retroactively make it easier for those already in prison serving sentences for robbery to be released. In addition, the proposed bill would reclassify certain types of robbery as somehow nonviolent by “limiting the types of robbery that are included in the definition of ‘acts of violence’ to the two higher degrees of robbery.” It would also limit “the application of the three-strikes law to the two higher degrees of robbery and making persons convicted under the three-strikes law eligible for parole if one of the three convictions resulting in the mandatory life sentence would constitute one of the two lesser degrees of robbery.”

In an apparent attempt to cover up crime statistics which will almost certainly rise as a result of these Democrat policies, a bill from state Senator Mamie Locke would kickstart a process to transfer juvenile criminals from the purview of the Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security to the Department of Health and Human Services; and in so doing, all juvenile crime would seemingly be categorized as a public health issue as opposed to a criminal issue. A potentially dangerous move considering the degree to which roving gangs of teenagers assaulting innocent people have terrorized neighboring Washington, D.C.

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The “working group” the bill creates to develop a timeline for the transfer would consist of “representatives from civil liberty organizations, organizations engaged in the daily work of youth justice and violence prevention, formerly incarcerated persons and their families, and mental health experts.”

Criminal sentencing may also become more lenient in other ways under legislation like Delegate Sam Rasoul’s bill which protects serial criminals by prohibiting the state from introducing prior criminal convictions to a jury during the “guilt phase” of a trial.

State Senator Saddam Azlan Salim, a man from Bangladesh who now represents part of Northern Virginia, wants to allow judges to ban all electronic devices of any kind in district and circuit courtrooms. Given the number of judges letting career violent criminals off the hook across the country, resulting in the injuries and deaths of countless people, it is not unlikely that such a measure is intended to shield those judges from public scrutiny and criticism.

Even if someone is actually convicted of a crime and punished, Senator Angelina Williams Graves has introduced another bill which limits the time period in which the state can collect court fines and costs; reducing it from 30 from the date of the original offense to just 10 years; whereafter the debt completely vanishes.

However, while Democrats are busy reducing sentences and generally undermining law and order in Virginia, the governments there still need to make revenue from law enforcement. So Democrats will take a page out of the playbooks of other leftist state and municipalities: They will opt to tolerate all serious crime, but become authoritarian in such things as the policing of traffic violations.

To this end, Williams Graves has introduced a bill to authorize the use of speed, stop sign, and “pedestrian crossing” cameras “in school crossing zones, highway work zones, and high-risk speed corridors for purposes of recording pedestrian crossing and stop sign violations.”

Because Democrats want to ignore the actions of the most serious criminals and reduce the legal consequences for them, they will instead turn their focus to people who drive five miles per hour above the speed limit. Virginia is about to become another microcosm of leftist “law enforcement.” That translates to protecting real criminals while making passive income from a side-gig of authoritarian crackdowns on upright citizens. ✪