The relationship between Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and gun control groups is quickly souring after critics say he caved to pressure form the National Rifle Association.

Virginia will now recognize concealed carry permits from dozens of other states with what critics say are weaker gun laws than the commonwealth.

The move, announced by McAuliffe on Friday, represents a sharp departure from the state’s decision shortly before Christmas to block many out-of-state gun owners from carrying in Virginia.

McAuliffe hailed the deal as a bipartisan compromise.

“This bipartisan deal to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and people who cannot pass background checks will save lives,” McAuliffe said Friday in a statement. “Give and take is essential to every negotiation, but the balance of this deal changes Virginia law permanently in ways that will keep guns away from people who would use them for harm.”

The National Rifle Association (NRA) was able to beat down the Virginia measure that would’ve restricted what it sees as law-abiding gun owners from carrying in its own backyard. The group’s headquarters are in Fairfax, Va.

The NRA did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but the group’s top lobbyist, Chris Cox, told The Washington Post it “commends leaders in the commonwealth for moving forward on a bipartisan package that will benefit Virginia citizens.”

The move comes as a shocking betrayal for gun control advocates.

McAuliffe has touted his “F-rating” from the NRA, but Everytown for Gun Safety accused the governor of “caving to the gun lobby’s demands.”

“Terry McAuliffe has been a good friend and strong ally to those of us in the gun violence prevention movement in Virginia,” said Lori Haas, director of the Virginia chapter of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

“Unfortunately, this deal with the NRA and pro-gun politicians is a mistake that, on the whole, would do far more harm than good,” she added.

Last year, McAuliffe campaigned for stronger gun laws alongside Andy Parker, a Virginia resident whose daughter, Alison, was shot and killed on live television while broadcasting the news.

“Many of us have spoken with you at rallies,” Andy Parker and other gun violence victims wroteFriday in a letter to McAuliffe. “We’ve backed you in your election for governor. You’ve comforted us and our families in some of our darkest moments. You have been a true friend to each of us and your support has meant so much to us. Over time, we’ve come to see you as a true champion of our ideals. A courageous fighter who stood up to the callousness of a gun lobby that for too long exerted undue influence over our political process here in Virginia.

“This isn’t the first time that we’ve been disappointed in a Virginia politician, but when you campaigned on this issue, [we thought] you were different,” the letter continued.

In December, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (D) announced the commonwealth was severing ties with 25 states that had weaker gun laws. The concealed carry permits they issued would no longer be recognized in Virginia.

Herring feared that dangerous people who would not pass a background check in Virginia could obtain firearms in states with weaker gun laws and bring them into the commonwealth.

Those states included Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

The ban was scheduled to take effect Feb. 1.

“I have recommended the state police terminate the reciprocity agreements with 25 states whose laws are not adequate to prevent issuance of a concealed handgun permit to individuals that Virginia would disqualify,” Herring said in a statement.

At the time, McAuliffe threw his support behind the decision. But a pressure campaign from Republicans in the state assembly and the gun lobby ensued.

McAuliffe agreed Friday to reverse the concealed carry decision in exchange for concessions from Republicans.

While Virginia must now allow gun owners from other states to carry in the commonwealth, state police will be instructed to confiscate firearms from people convicted of domestic abuse and will expand voluntary background checks.

Despite these concessions, gun control advocates say it is a bad deal that will endanger the public.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence called it a “mistake” that would allow people from other states who have been convicted of stalking, assault, sexual offenses, drunkenness, and people who are dangerously mentally ill to bring carry guns in Virginia.

The group scoffed at the “optional” background check provision McAuliffe negotiated in the deal that “would not require a single private seller in the commonwealth” to comply.

The Portsmouth police officer charged with first degree murder for killing an unarmed 18-year-old man during a shoplifting investigation in April was freed from custody on a $75,000 bond, a judge ruled Friday.

The judge also ordered Officer Stephen Rankin to hand over all of his personal firearms. However, his wife is still allowed to possess them.

Stephanie Morales, Portsmouth’s commonwealth’s attorney, argued against bond. When the judge decided to grant it, Stephanie Morales asked for it to be set no lower than $200,000.

Before that point in the hearing, a Va. State Police agent read statements prosecutors said Rankin made an hour before the shooting that killed 18-year-old William Chapman: “The city sucks, but so does the rest of the world. People are just bad.'”

Rankin turned himself in Thursday afternoon after being indicted by the Grand Jury. A couple dozen officers were in the courtroom. Rankin’s attorney said they were there to support their co-worker.

During the hearing, his attorney requested bond, arguing Officer Rankin was not a flight risk or danger to community.

Morales disagreed, saying first degree murder is “the most serious charge we have.”

She also said there were too many unknowns about Rankin’s mental stability and character to allow him to be freed.

The city manager has sent a termination letter to Rankin and he has five days to quit or be fired. He has already surrendered his badge and service weapons.

Early in the morning of April 22, Rankin responded to a shoplifting call at the Walmart on Frederick Blvd.

When Rankin arrived, he saw Chapman leaving the store.

Police say there was a struggle and the officer opened fire, killing the teenager. Police have not said whether Chapman was the suspect in the reported shoplifting.

The attorney for Chapman’s family says he was shot in the face and chest. Citing information from the autopsy report, he says Chapman did not appear to have been shot at close range.

Rankin was also indicted for use of a firearm in the commission of a felony.

Morales held a press conference Thursday to announce the charges.

“It is paramount for everyone to respect the judicial process,” said Morales.

Chapman’s mother called Rankin a “psychopath” and a “murderer’ as she left court furious following the judge’s decision to grant bond.

“He needs to be locked away! We are not safe, nobody is safe!” screamed Sallie Chapman.

Ultimately Rankin’s attorney, Nicole Belote, swayed the judge to free him citing his family and local ties to the area, and that he posed no flight risk or danger to the community.

“I’m pleased that the court agreed with the argument that the presumption against bond was in fact overcome,” Belote said. “Officer Rankin I would say is quite relieved at the moment that we have overcome this first hurdle.”

A rally was scheduled for the Chapman family Friday night. However, a family friend told 13NewsNow the victims mother was too overwhelmed to attend.

NAACP Statement:

The announcement made today regarding the indictment of Stephen Rankin sends a strong message throughout our community that the badge is not above the law and those who betray the public trust by not valuing the dignity of human life will be held accountable.

We are pleased that William Chapman II will finally have his day in court. Though the announcement today is just one step of the necessary legal journey, we are pleased that the wheels of justice are still moving forward for the Chapman family.

The work to ensure that justice reigns throughout every aspect of our city still remains, and we will continue to be vigilant to that ongoing work for the Portsmouth community. In lieu of today’s announcement and several other incidents we are currently involved with, we believe that further actions of accountability should ensue throughout our law enforcement community and we will have further comment on that within the next few days.

Rankin’s attorney, Nicole A. Belote, statement:

 

A Virginia State Police (VSP) officer forced a reporter to delete footage of the scene where Vester Lee Flanagan crashed his vehicle on the side of a Interstate 66 on Wednesday after allegedly killing two TV reporters in Virginia. The cop also threatened to have the reporter’s car towed.

Franz Strasser, a video journalist with BBC (who, full disclosure, I met at a conference in June), and his colleague Tara McKelvey were en route to Roanoke to report on the shooting when they happened upon the crash site near the tiny town of Linden, Virginia. They pulled over into the median of the highway and Strasser began rolling.

“By the time I came to a full stop I was probably 200 yards away,” he explains. “So I took my camera and I went through the brush towards the police cars.”

He says about a dozen cop cars, lights flashing, surrounded the crashed silver vehicle, but that the officers were mostly just standing around—until they saw him walking up.

“Maybe half a dozen police officers started running towards me,” he says. “I could hear them shouting, ‘Get back to the car! Get back to the car!'”

He retreated back through the brush toward his car where McKelvey was waiting, but a number of cops followed, yelling that he needed to “get out of here.” One in particular (not pictured) was angry.

“I was about to put my camera back in the trunk when one officer closed the trunk,” he says. “I looked at him and just thought, ‘What’s going on?'” Strasser says the cop then told him his car was going to be towed for being illegally parked and his camera seized because it “might contain evidence.” The VSP officer took the camera out of the reporter’s hands.

When Strasser said he was willing to go but that he needed his car and camera to do his job, the cop forced him to delete the footage he had just recorded first. “He was very close to me, looking at the screen and looking at every step I took, making sure that I did hit ‘delete’ and did hit ‘submit,'” Strasser says. “Towing the car wasn’t brought up again.”

Strasser and McKelvey didn’t get the name of the officer who insisted the footage be deleted, but their bureau chief has filed a formal complaint and a spokeswoman for the state police tweeted that they were looking into the incident “as such actions violate VSP policy.”

As Strasser tweeted right after it happened, “Reason for confiscating camera was that it was evidence. … But why they are then okay with deleting ‘evidence’ makes one question their reasoning.”

He says VSP has already assigned an officer from the internal investigations unit to the case. He’ll meet with that officer in person on Monday. “At this point, I don’t want to pass any judgment,” he says. “I’m really happy that Virginia State Police is looking into this.”

A BBC spokesperson also emailed me this statement: “We’ve spoken to Virginia State Police, who have taken our concerns very seriously, and we are now awaiting the outcome.”

Strasser and the BBC are “pretty confident” they’ll be able to recover his deleted footage, which, since he kept filming throughtout the confrontation, would at least provide an audio record and may help investigators identify the rogue cop.

After leaving the the scene of the crash, he and McKelvey continued on to Roanoke, where theyproduced a story for BBC on the shooting. “We honor the work of @WDBJ7 in this video and text feature. Hats off to you and how you handled things amid tragedy,” Strasser said in a tweet yesterday when it was released.

By Stephanie Slade, for Reason Magazine

Albemarle County Courthouse in Charlottesville, Virginia (h/t Bill McChesney)

By Dahlia Lithwick

Three years ago, one of the strangest criminal cases in recent memory began in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I live, when a young woman sent a series of text messages telling her boyfriend that a man had abducted her, followed by a series of texts, allegedly from her captor, taunting her boyfriend with threats of sexual violence. Her story was strange, and the case was fraught with complications from the get-go, but the accused ended up in prison long after the doubts outweighed the evidence.

This story is bizarre, but it’s not all that unusual: Prosecutors can prosecute even the weakest, most clearly flawed cases relentlessly, and innocent people can end up in jail.

This week, after two and a half years in prison, Mark Weiner saw his conviction vacated. It finally ended a saga in which Weiner was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to eight years in jail on charges of abducting a woman with the intent to sexually harm her.

(Disclosure: Weiner’s son and mine attended the same preschool. I have had no contact with him or his family in several years.)

The story began on a December night in 2012. Weiner, then a 52-year-old man who managed a local Food Lion and attended night classes at a local community college, stopped and picked up 20-year-old Chelsea Steiniger, who was walking from a convenience store to her mother’s house. Steiniger’s boyfriend, Michael Mills, had just informed her that she could not sleep at his apartment, which did not permit guests after a certain hour, so she was angrily headed to stay with her mother. It was cold, it was dark, it was late. Weiner saw her and offered to drive her to her mother’s house, picking her up directly across from the local police station.

Mark Weiner’s version of events: He drove Steiniger to her mom’s house and went home.

Most of the rest of the trial narrative unfolds through the sequence of texts Steiniger sent her boyfriend as they drove to her mom’s place.

At 12:10 a.m., Steiniger texted her boyfriend that “some dud[e]” was giving her a ride. At 12:18 a.m., she texted, “he tried to get in my pants.” At 12:21 a.m., she texted, “just pulled up he wont let me out of the car.”

At 12:23 a.m., the texts allegedly start coming from Weiner instead of Steiniger, the first one reading: “[S]he doesn’t have her phone.” And at 12:27: “Shes so sexy when shes passed out.” At 12:28: “She was a fighter ill give her that much.” At 12:36: “Ill let her wake before i let you talk to her.”

When a panicking Mills texted back at 12:38 a.m., “w[h]ere are you taking her,” Weiner allegedly responded: “[S]hes in my house she said she was cold so IMMa warm her up.”

Steiniger testified that Weiner, while driving past the mother’s house, managed to knock her out at about 12:22 a.m. with a chemical-soaked cloth that worked in 15 seconds, at which point he began sending the taunting texts to Mills. Including a text using the word IMMa — not the most common expression for white, 52-year-old Food Lion managers.

Mark Weiner (Courtesy of the Mark Weiner Family)

That’s right: Over the course of four minutes, Weiner allegedly incapacitated Steiniger, took control of her phone, and texted her boyfriend, all while driving to a rural property late at night.

Steiniger claimed she awoke on the floor of an abandoned building she had never seen before, and when Weiner left her unattended, she grabbed her phone and jumped off a second-floor balcony, hid in the woods, then made her way on foot to her mother’s house two miles away. She never called 911.

But her boyfriend, Mills, had already called 911 to report the abduction. When the Emergency Communications Center called Steiniger at 1:07 a.m. and left a message, then called again at 1:08, she checked her voicemail and quickly shut off the phone. She would later testify that her battery was dead at this time, but records would show she retrieved the voicemail and then switched the phone off.

When the police were unable to reach Steiniger by phone, they went to her mother’s home. Steiniger answered the door, clothes intact and unsoiled after she supposedly jumped from a second-floor balcony and walked two miles in the cold.

On Dec. 14, 2012, Mark Weiner was arrested. He had been incarcerated in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail ever since.

Records later showed that Steiniger’s phone accessed two cellphone towers near her mother’s house dozens of times that night, but never once pinged a tower near the abandoned house.

This was the basis of a massive trial in the spring of 2013. The most vigilant reporting on the entire Mark Weiner prosecution has been done by Lisa Provence, who has covered the case for more than two years, showing growing doubts about the strength of the case against Weiner and deepening concern about the state’s persistence in going after him, even in the face of a growing mountain of exculpatory evidence. Her accounts of Weiner’s trial and subsequent hearings are worth reading in full. The fact that there was a trial at all is remarkable.

If anyone suggests this means “the system works,” I fear that I will have to punch him in the neck.
The Albemarle County prosecutor, who is elected to the post, is currently Commonwealth’s Attorney Denise Lunsford. As part of her prosecution strategy, Weiner’s trial lawyer later said, Lunsford “sought the advice of two respected detectives in the city and the county” to pinpoint where the alleged victim’s text messages had originated. Each cop concluded independently that the texts had been sent from near where Steiniger’s mother lived. Lunsford interviewed the first officer for the first time at the courthouse, just before he was scheduled to testify. He told the prosecutor he’d guess the calls came from Steiniger’s mother’s house, not the abandoned property.

Some prosecutors would call that sort of thing exculpatory information that must legally be turned over to the defense. Lunsford thanked the officer for stopping by and said she would no longer be needing his testimony after all. (This officer would later call the defense attorney and tell him what had transpired.) The second law enforcement officer offered up the same conclusion. He didn’t get to testify, either.

Continue reading on Slate

A law enforcement officer believed to be Officer John L Hughson of Henrico County, Virginia

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. — A video posted to YouTube on Monday appears to show a man being unlawfully arrested for no reason other than remaining silent and not providing identification documents.

The video, uploaded by an account belonging to a man named Kyle Hammond, appears to show Hammond being approached, harassed by, and eventually arrested by a law enforcement agent with a name tag labeled “HUGHSON.” During the encounter, Hammond asks why he is being arrested and what he is being charged with, and the law enforcement agent responds, “Because you won’t talk to me, you won’t answer me, you won’t provide me with any ID.”

TruthVoice found salary records for Henrico County, Virginia — where the incident allegedly took place — that shows the county employs a John L. Hughson, ranked Police Officer 1st Class.

Video available below:

A report from police accountability blog Cops Caught On Tape provides an account of what transpired on the video:

Kyle Hammond, who was recording legally in public, was approached by Officer Hughson, Badge #0979, and requested his Identification. Kyle exercised his 5^th Amendment right to remain silent, despite Officer Hughson’s repeated attempts. When Kyle refused to answer any questions, Officer Hughson radioed in for a supervisor. Within seconds, Officer Elliott (Badge #1283) arrived on scene, asking Officer Hughson if Kyle was ‘being detained’. You can clearly hear Officer Hughson state that Kyle was NOT being detained.

According to Cops Caught On Tape, Kyle Hammond says he has been charged with obstruction of justice, and has a trial scheduled for August 27. Contact information for some of the parties responsible for Hammond’s arrest are listed on their website, and shared below:

Henrico County Police Department:
http://henrico.us/police/

Chief’s Office: (804) 501-4839

Internal Affairs: (804) 501-4834
https://www.facebook.com/HenricoCountyPolice

Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney:
http://henrico.us/com-atty/
(804) 501-4218
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Re-Elect-Shannon-Taylor-for-Henrico-Commonwealths-Attorney/156184377795987

John Geer, a 46-year-old dad of two, told police officers, “I don’t want to die today” before one cop shot him once in the chest. Geer, according to other officers on the scene as well as Geer’s own father, who witnessed the police killing of his son, had his hands up when Fairfax County, Virginia, Officer Adam Torres fired at him from about 15 feet away — as Geer stood in the doorway of his own home, newly released documents show.

Greer was calmly speaking with the officers, was charged with no crime, his girlfriend had reported a domestic disturbance and then left his townhouse unharmed. Shortly after John Geer informed the officers he was going to lower his hands to scratch his nose, officer Torres shot him in the doorway of his home.

After the bullet struck him in the chest, Geer took a step back into his townhouse, closed the front door and collapsed to the floor. There, he bled to death as police waited nearly an hour before calling in medical assistance.

Instead, police called in a SWAT team, which smashed in the door of Geer’s home with a military-style armored truck. When SWAT officers stormed into the home, Geer was dead. Torres can be heard telling an investigator the following in the audio recording, above.

“I meant to pull that trigger… It’s not accidental… I don’t feel sorry for shooting the guy at all.”

Geer was not accused of any crime and had no reported criminal record. He was said to be upset that Maura Harrington, his domestic partner of 24 years, who is also the mother of his two children, had informed him that she was ending their relationship. But he was speaking calmly to police before he was shot.

Harrington had placed the original call to police, reporting that Geer was throwing her belongings onto the street.

The police shooting of John Geer, whose teenage daughter was also at his home when he was killed, took place on August 29, 2013. But Fairfax police had remained close-lipped about the shooting, releasing no information whatsoever about why Geer was shot, or who shot him, until last Friday, January 30, when — after being ordered to do so by a judge — the department dumped 11,000 pages of documents and 54 audio recordings of witness interviews into the public record.

The documents include a handwritten account by one officer, reporting Geer’s words to officers, “I don’t want to die today,” and stating that Geer “never dropped hands to waist.”

The documents and interviews confirm what Geer’s father, Don Geer — as well as a close friend and neighbor, Jeff Stewart — have maintained since Geer was killed by Torres nearly a year-and-a-half ago — that Geer had his hands raised when he was killed, and was unarmed.

Harrington possessed a gun in a holster, but it was not on his person at the time of the shooting.

The below photo, taken by Harrington, shows the officers outside Geer’s home. Torres can be seen with his weapon leveled in Geer’s direction, at center.

The complete set of documents and recordings can be accessed via the Fairfax County police website, accessible at this link.

The recordings above on this page, compiled by the Washington Post, reveal Torres claiming that Geer was reaching his hands to his waistband when Torres shot him. But the another officer who had been negotiating with Geer for about 50 minutes directly contradict Torres’s claim — as did four other eyewitnesses.

“When the shot happened, his hands were up,” says one officer, Rodney Barnes in the recorded interview. “I’m not here to throw [Torres] under the bus or anything like that, but I didn’t see what he saw.”

But Torres gives an entirely different account in the recording, stating that the shooting was “justified.”

Fairfax police had previously maintained that they could not comment on or release documents pertaining to the shooting of John Geer due to their ongoing investigation. But, in fact, the U.S. Justice Department is conducting the investigation, and the feds never raised an objection to release of the documents in response to a lawsuit by Geer’s family, leading a judge last month to give Fairfax police 30 days to make the information public.