You guys make it harder and harder to vote Democrat every single cycle. Complete ban on Semi Automatics more or less making the state even stricter towards guns then states like Maryland? I oppose all these even the "herp common sense derp" ones because the states party has made it clear they don't give a crap about anything but putting hollow wins for politicians because hhheeeyyy punishing law abiding gun owners is a whole lot easier then creating jobs or reducing crime. If these bills die before getting to the governors desk, especially the bans, then I will gladly continue to vote DNC. But if Youngkin has to veto these and you make me say something I never thought I would "Thank god Youngkin won" then I look forward to blindly going down the ticket in 2024 and checking "R" on everyone. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

I oppose all these unconstitutional, dangerous, and pointless laws.

I strongly oppose this bill in its current form and the archaic steps it would take to exclude the public from the decertification process by making more records exempt and a meeting closed. Not only does this bill not introduce any provision to expand public access to records of law enforcement misconduct, it actively seals off the little public access we have right now to witness the decertification process by closing an open meeting and making more records exempt. I believe this bill may have been misrepresented as a step towards progress which would lead to more officers being and staying decertified, but the DCJS has the power to do this now under current law and is not doing it. OpenOversight VA follows every single one of these decertification appeal meetings and tracks the whereabouts of these officers who return to the force. Importantly, the information this bill would close access to is not available elsewhere. The DCJS has refused to disclose the names of officers who were decertified then reinstated from release under FOIA as "personnel records". This means the only place this information about officers who were ever decertified exists in a record accessible to the public is these meetings and records regarding them. This bill in its current form proposes to close public access to these meetings and make currently-open records of decertification requests exempt from disclosure to the public under FOIA, which makes it an active step in the wrong direction. States across the country are taking steps to make decertification records more centralized and records of misconduct by police more accessible to the people who are policed-- not just to administrative agencies or police themselves. Florida and North Carolina both maintain public, searchable databases of officers' misconduct and actions taken upon their certification by the state. Colorado has a searchable database of all certified officers that allows for an individual to check that officers' certification status, and Chicago makes records related to the incidents which led to discipline accessible to the public online (in redacted form). The passage of this bill would move us in the opposite direction and make Virginia, and the South, an outlier in this conversation. It is already inappropriate for law enforcement authorities and their advocates to suggest that they and only they are in the position to decide what does and doesn't constitute sufficient harm to justify decertification,-- most of the officers with serious records of misconduct are never decertified anyway, we've found-- and to then propose that the public should not even be allowed to witness this process as it unfolds. The people who are policed have a legitimate, tangible stake in knowing who is doing the policing and-what their backgrounds are. Excluding the public even further from access to observe those making the decisions on these matters for us and be informed of the decisions that they make is an expansion of police power and far more insidious than some proponents of this bill have led us to believe. This bill in its current form is not what it appears to be and the prospect of making Virginia a haven for problem officers to seek employment as a state that keeps these records secret will isolate us, harm the people who live here, and serve the interests of absolutely no one. Please reconsider.