Electing county sheriffs is like electing school committee members. It is something that has to be done, but unless you are running, a good friend of that person, or someone who can benefit from the election, unless it is a major election cycle where more important things will be decided at the same time, people don’t really go out of their way to get to the polls, and those who do just go with the familiar name.
Unless a board member does something scandalous enough to get some big negative headline, they remain below most people’s radar and get reelected by and large by default. If you have children in school you might be more interested in the school committee members than most of the public, and unless you, or someone you know, have had some dealings with the sheriff, these office holders lurk on the fringes of our attention.
Neither is elected or re-elected necessarily because they are good; both get elected or re-elected as a result of a community yawn of indifference.
Neither receives a mandate from the people as they are by and large only elected by the people who have shown up to vote because it was convenient or the polling station was on their way to somewhere else.
The vote that puts a sheriff in that position is not an overwhelmingly supportive choice, but one of an overwhelming indifference. Face it, electing the dog catcher in most cases is as important to people as voting for school committee members and sheriffs
Randomly ask people to name more than two school committee members or the county sheriff and, if you have nothing planned for the rest of the day, you can use that time to wait for an answer.
Seeing an opportunity to become a known presence, as a conservative, a person who belongs to groups that tend toward white supremacy, and a person willing to use immigrants as a scare tactic to advance his plan, hoping he could hitch his wagon to the Trump star, Bristol County Sheriff stepped out of the fringe loudly in his verbal support of the new president.
Although the Bristol County House of Corrections is at least 2,000 miles from our Southern Border and the state of Massachusetts is largely anti-Trump and anti-The Wall, at his fourth swearing in as the sheriff in January 2017, as Trump was about to enter his presidency, Thomas Hodgson announced in his swearing in speech,
“I can think of no other project that would have such a positive impact on our inmates and our country than building this wall. Aside from learning and perfecting construction skills, the symbolism of these inmates building a wall to prevent crime in communities around the country, and to preserve jobs and work opportunities for them and other Americans upon release, can be very powerful. Think of how much good could come of 500 or 1,000 extra hands in rebuilding a community after a disaster, and the inmates would learn valuable construction skills and on-the-job training as part of their rehabilitation”.
With his high rates of suicide and recidivism, poor food, lack of rehabilitation programs, and weak approach to those in his jails with mental health problems, having programs that address those issues might be projects “that would have such a positive impact on our inmates and our country”.
But Sheriff Hodgson would rather take taxpayer money out of state to the benefit of states and vendors elsewhere to help in his self-promotion
Since Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, all states at the border, have county jails with inmates who could help build the wall, what sense does it make to send inmates from 2,000 miles away at a cost to the taxpayers for transportation, room and board?
Considering the sheriff’s claim that the safety of the people of Bristol County is his number one priority, and he is concerned that undocumented people entering the country at the Southern is an immediate threat to that, you would think, if his concern was genuine, he would express concern about those who may come in by sea and air.
New Bedford has a harbor into which come a number of freight and passenger ships, and privately owned boats; Boston has Logan Airport; the state is close enough to Canada to be convenient for people to come that way; and employers on Cape Cod use temporary worker visas to have employees ready to serve the needs of vacationers during tourist season. You would think he would be concerned with more local points of entry.
But the local concerns would not shine the national spotlight on him that is needed if he is going to become more important than he is or deserves to be. Doing his job here, as it should be done, would also not attract President Trump’s attention.
And his plan is getting him the attention he craves.
Sheriff Hodgson, having been invited recently to a round table discussion at the White House, told Trump that border security is key to preventing more people in Bristol County from being victimized by criminal illegal aliens. He claimed that the impacts of criminal illegal immigrants are big, citing local people killed in 2016 and 2018, and the problem with emergencies at his jails caused by drugs.
Those emergencies are happening in his jails not on the street, so the appropriate programs to deal with drugs must not be in place.
The sheriff, while promoting fear and hatred of the other, refused to be part of a trial program for county jails in Massachusetts that has been found effective in other states when dealing with inmates with drug addiction problems, and he claims the problem in his jail are the result of all those in his jails addicted to drugs and opioids, while refusing to supply the numbers that could verify this in favor of a broad claim with no back up.
Although he told the president that Massachusetts is the second most-common place to find Fentanyl in the nation, he failed to mention where it came from, again ignoring the state’s having an international airport, harbors both in Boston and New Bedford, a lot of coastline, and proximity to Canada.
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He offered further proof that his spoken concern about the threat at the Southern Border hides his true motivation, that of catching the president’s eye, when he wrote a pro-wall, anti-Pelosi letter on official paper as it not only bears the letterhead of his office, but the official seal of the State of Massachusetts.
He presented his personal opinions as if they were official and representative of his agency, the people of the county, and the state.
He relied heavily on ignoring known facts in favor of parroting White House talking points that become more transparently false with each passing day with even the most cursory of checking.
In his letter, the sheriff wrote that the New Congress and Nancy Pelosi have no intention to fund the wall or border security, a statement that obviously follows the dance of making those two things interchangeable as needed, yet, as Speaker Pelosi stated in her rebuttal remarks after Trump’s Oval Office speech,
“On the very first day of this Congress, House Democrats passed Senate Republican legislation to re-open government and fund smart, effective border security solutions.
We all agree we need to secure our borders, while honoring our values: we can build the infrastructure and roads at our ports of entry; we can install new technology to scan cars and trucks for drugs coming into our nation; we can hire the personnel we need to facilitate trade and immigration at the border; we can fund more innovation to detect unauthorized crossings.”
It may not be the wall, but, obviously, there is a concern for border security.
He went on to say that she and congress have decided to make things difficult for law enforcement to keep communities safe while he wants local law enforcement to become employees of ICE and create adversarial relationships between local police departments and immigrant communities who will come to distrust them and out of fear might become uncooperative when it comes to reporting crime or stepping forward as witnesses.
He advocates for people to call Speaker Pelosi and members of Congress to demand they fund border security which, according to his word and sentiments means the wall. He asserts that, in spite of congress’s actions and words, and those of Pelosi regarding the need for more realistic border security, much of it in line with the 21st Century, not wanting the Trump monument to his ego, is holding the safety, both personal and public, hostage to their political agenda.
“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'”
The sheriff really needs that wall so his support of it will pay off.
But as more things come out about Trump’s political machinations, and as the justifications for the wall are clearly becoming very exaggerated and unsupportable lies, the desperation in the sheriff’s letter may just reveal his panic in wanting to believe in Santa Claus for one more year.