Portsmouth, Virginia isn’t the most corrupt or dysfunctional city in the country. That (dubious) honor arguably goes to Chicago—although I’ll admit I’m biased as Midwesterner.
Regardless, there’s plenty of localities to choose from. Seattle had an autonomous zone set up by anarchists during the summer of 2020. The mayor initially dubbed the chaos as “the summer of love,” but painfully walked back those remarks after multiple homicides in the police-free zone.
And San Francisco has an app that allows resides to upload photos of the copious amounts of feces on the sidewalks so that the Public Works department might clean it up in a timely manner (fingers crossed).
While it doesn’t have the same reputation, Portsmouth is filled with plenty of vindictive politicians, accumulating lawsuits and piety rivalries between officer holders who remain either oblivious or indifferent to their citizens’ troubles.
Unemployed and Unedited explains:
Take, for example, Portsmouth City Council’s decision to reward 10 people who were arrested and charged with felonies in 2020 in connection with the vandalism of a 127-year-old Confederate monument. The charges against them were dismissed and now they’ll each get $15,000.
Attend a vandalism event and get a cash prize!
So that’s $150,000 the cash-strapped city doesn’t have to spend on things like teachers or police officers or on security to prevent hooligans from defacing public property.
These weren’t BLM or Antifa members who were accused for a time of being involved in the defacing and beheading of the monument. They were members of Portsmouth’s power structure.
The alleged perpetrators included Portsmouth Circuit Court Judge Brenda Spry and Portsmouth School Board Vice-Chair LaKeesha Atkinson.
Initially, 19 people were charged, including an unnamed state senator. However, the investigation ran into insurmountable obstacles, and ended with the dismissal of the city’s police chief.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of The Republican Standard.