Democrats and Republicans have different approaches to fighting crime. And those differences are emerging on the campaign trail.
Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares never misses an opportunity to talk about Operation Ceasefire. That's a grant program in 13 Virginia cities aimed at preventing young people from getting involved in gangs and prosecuting repeat violent offenders.
"In some of these localities, you have some of these social justice prosecutors that don't want to do their jobs," Miyares recently said on the campaign trail in Northern Virginia. "So, we took assistant AGs out of our office, and we said we're going to bring these cases in federal court if we need to, and in these targeted Ceasefire cities, the murder rate dropped 66% – a one-third drop statewide in our murder rate."
Shawn Weneta at the Humanization Project says the success of Operation Ceasefire isn't the prosecutions. He says it's the money that’s gone to local governments.
"The dollars that have been dedicated to the localities like Hopewell and Petersburg have gone to interventions and to NGOs. They haven't gone to [prosecutors’ offices.] They haven't gone to the attorney general," Weneta says. "In fact, the General Assembly specifically carved out the attorney general's office from receiving Ceasefire dollars in this last budget because they knew that he wasn't going to appropriately dedicate those dollars to intervention rather than prosecution."
Jay Jones, the Democrat running against Miyares, declined multiple requests for an interview on this topic or even a statement outlining his position on Operation Ceasefire.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
