It’s hard to explain how bad you have to be acting to get all of these people on the same side.

Sentencing guidelines called for 1 day to 6 months of incarceration, yet Shebri Dillon was sentenced to 30 yrs in a Virginia prison! We’ve filed an amicus brief highlighting how old mandatory jury sentencing laws support Shebri’s ineffective counsel claims. 1/4 justiceforwardva.com/blog/2025/9/...

Law enforcement agencies across the U.S. accessed Bridgewater,VA’s surveillance data 6.9MILLION times. “I’m concerned with the degree to which this kind of data could be used to suppress dissent, to suppress freedom of opinion,” said a resident. vcij.org/stories/stat... @whropublicmedia.bsky.social

When in ten years my kid asks me why we couldn’t save democracy, I’m going to have to tell him who Chuck Schumer was

The Lookout was finally able to get Richmond City Council President Cynthia Newbille on the record about RPD's use of the AI-powered surveillance tech that ICE loves. As far as I can tell, this is her first comment to press about the city's Flock LPR network, for which it paid nearly $400,000. More:

Pritzker: "I refuse to pretend that any of this is normal ... I refuse to fall into the pundit trap that demands we sacrifice vital constitutional rights if it's being done in the fake guise of fighting crime."

Polls show most Americans think crime is rising because 'crime' is a catch-all term. But, there are dozens of evidence-based ways to reduce disorder and fight crime, and many of the most effective approaches do not involve the police. open.substack.com/pub/johnkrom...

Join us at the 2025 Virginia Justice Conference in RVA Sept. 11-12! The event hosts a resource fair, expungement clinic, and panels & workshops focused on VA’s 3 constitutional amendments, probation, parole, higher ed in prison, the politics of crime, and more: www.virginiajusticeconference.com

Outside of electoral politics, legislative advocacy, and grassroots activism, what can ordinary citizens do about unjust laws? Thanks for supporting our t-shirt fundraiser! @joshuaerlich.bsky.social www.bonfire.com/google-34jur...

Crime panic never worries about statistics.

One thing that didn't make it into today's piece: Washington, DC already has by far the highest number of law enforcement officers per capita of any city of 250k+.

Violent crime in D.C. is at a 30-year low. www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/v...

There’s still time to register. Join Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers today at 3PM. Register here: vacdl.org/event-6271649

DEFENSE ATTORNEYS: Register for VACDL’s virtual 1.5 hour MCLE credit—The State of Record Clearance in Virginia. The webinar, presented by @rpogge.bsky.social, covers updated record clearance information that lawyers MUST know. Wednesday, August 6th from 3PM-4:30PM: vacdl.org/event-6271649

This is what these systems are intended to do. Don’t act surprised Mr. Police Chief.

Regulation is good until you realize the federal government has stopped complying with the law. Credit to @dinfontay.com www.wric.com/news/local-n...

NEW: Approximately 1hr after I submitted an inquiry to Richmond Police Department asking if the city's Flock Safety ALPR data had been shared with/accessed by feds, a spokesperson issued a statement acknowledging an ATF "analyst" in June "had made queries for immigration enforcement." Full release:

No arrest is made in 92% of vehicle thefts, 73% of rapes, 72% of robberies, 54% of assaults, and 42% of murders. Our ostensible peer nations solve crimes at a *far* higher rates. U.S. police are simply really bad at solving crimes.

"Baltimore is seeing the city’s fewest homicides in 50 years. Here’s why." Gift link: archive.ph/3ajyY "The strategy was to approach gun violence as a public health threat instead of simply a crime issue & to treat that threat at the source"

I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.

part of what infuriates me about this is that if the person with the million dollar home who complained to the news moved here three years ago, there is an extremely good chance the homeless people he is complaining about have resided here longer than he has

I do not like cops in a tank www.charlottesvilledtm.com/p/militarize...

Just heard Bill Kristol, former chief of staff for Dan Quayle, say he thinks ICE should be defunded and that the entire DHS should probably be disbanded, which puts him to the left of maybe the majority of elected Democrats. Truly wild times we’re living in.

California has the largest death row in the U.S. The death penalty has no place in any society that values fairness, justice, and human rights. We call on @gavinnewsom.bsky.social to #CommuteTheRow #UniversalClemencyNow #ConfrontRacism #deathpenalty

I joined Cville/Albemarle Nextdoor for fun and am trying to make sense of this comment in response to “Can’t he do something about all the bad going on in this town!???” Slow growth and … more affordable housing?

Mahmoud Khalil nails U.S. law: “If you have money, there is rule of law. If you are abiding by the very narrow definition of what this administration is defining an American value to be, you may get rule of law. Otherwise you have to fight tooth and nail to get your due process and your rights.”

Institutionalism and respect for unwritten rules is going to doom us for years.

The Flock trial ends in October and the new Council does not get seated until January. So we will need to keep the pressure on to make sure they don't sign up in a lame duck session.

The Minnesota shooter apparently used data broker websites to find the home addresses of the people he shot and murdered. Congress has had years to do something about data brokers and they've sided with the tech lobby over and over again. Their inaction is deadly.

It's pretty notable that mainstream, establishment discourse never ever ever considers giving liberal politicians credit for crime reductions. It's almost axiomatic that if crime goes down under a center-left leader it's either unremarked upon, or must be driven by something else.

There is no “the criminal law” there are a bunch of jurisdictions with criminal statutes and procedures and local rules and practices

Despite warnings from the law enforcement not to attend today’s No Kings rally after this mornings shooting of Minnesota lawmakers with the killer on the lose, the No Kings Rally is happening at the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul.

What a contrast: On the one hand, one grandiose spectacle in the nation's capital, a panorama of propaganda put on by an aspiring autocrat. On the other hand, thousands of assemblies of free citizens across the nation, authentic celebrations of the proposition that here the people rule.

I’m teaching my 5 1/2-year-old and 3-year-old how to play chess, and it’s going about as well as you’d expect.

One question about the timing of the criminal charges against Mr. Abrega Garcia, which are tied to a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop, was answered by a DHS special agent now testifying. The agent said he was asked to begin his investigation on April 28 of this year. @tennesseelookout.com

Fantastic to see the chief justices of 35 state supreme courts (including VA) plus DC and Puerto Rico tell Congress that legal aid is essential to protecting people living in poverty. Eliminating the Legal Services Corporation would be a colossal mistake. lsc-live.app.box.com/s/p5zyylywmm...

Talking to my dad in LA this afternoon about the ICE raids that happened in the area yesterday. He is so enraged, he can’t formulate words—and he can’t seem to understand why Americans aren’t connecting the dots that the power to disappear immigrants grants the power to disappear everyone else.

Good news! The same company building the domestic intelligence data panopticon is going to check you out at your local grocery!

This should be a much bigger story. Murder has *plunged* across the country—so much so that the U.S. may see the lowest murder rate *ever recorded.* That this is even possible after the 2020 murder spike is truly amazing.

WITAODW: Who is the administrator of DOGE’s weed????

NOT VERY EFFICIENT TO THROW THE DRUGS AWAY ANNA

FBI agents are now visiting Charlottesville’s public defenders *at their homes*. It’s naked intimidation of our justice system.

How could any person, let alone an elected official, think like this? 10 years ago, when I got my start in criminal justice advocacy, I stumbled upon a group of state lawmakers in Virginia. A naïve small-town Iowa kid, I hadn't met people like this before. 1/ www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

For I was hungry and fearful of starvation, and you shrugged and said we’ll all die some way or another.

Endorse all of this. Even if the state places limits on how state and local law enforcement use the data, we cannot stop the Feds and other states from getting hold of it.

Could not agree more!

Scoop: Texas police used Flock's license plate cameras to search *nationwide* for a woman who had a self-managed abortion. Claim it was "about her safety" www.404media.co/a-texas-cop-...

This is exactly what we & other immigrants' rights advocates said would happen. Police said they needed the cameras to "stop child abduction," but our Gov signed a statewide 287(g) to deputize state law enforcement as ICE agents. Yr privacy was sold for profit as fuel for Trump's war on immigrants.