WHAT A PUTZ.

Once I arrived here, I saw New Bedford as the gem it is.

Being a child of Boston, throughout my life my interest went in that direction. New Bedford is on the South Coast and in my experience, people rarely, if ever, went there. It was somewhere off to the right as you drove to Cape Cod, and over to the left if you headed toward New York on Route 95.

The people who lived there were in a world of their own, It just was not a destination city.

When I came back to Massachusetts and my time on the Cape came to an end it meant I needed to find a place to rent. The Cape is just too expensive. so I could live somewhere in suburbia or the country and experience a degree of isolated boredom, or find an urban area that offered some chance of things to do, if I could afford to do them

Whereas if had remained in Oklahoma I could have lived comfortably on my pension, the cost of living here made my pension less than a supplier of comfort.

I wanted proximity to the ocean after 18 years of having the largest body of water being a man-made lake, and I wanted some form of culture and walk-to activities.

By accident I found New Bedford.

Really.

It was a random surf on the net where I entered search parameters what some might see as a little unrealistic that found an Historical city coming back to life, near the ocean, affordable, with an apartment in the historic downtown area with the world within walking distance.

A walk in one direction brings me to the resurgent downtown area, in the other old stately homes, and in any enough affordable ethnic cuisine to eat out many times a month without going to the same place twice.

I volunteered at the Whaling Museum and joined a political group and this opened up a surprising number of network contacts, and within a very short time I was involved in all phases of the community knowing a huge variety of people, and finding myself surprisingly involved in a city I moved to for convenience.

I fell in love with the place, and get a little defensive when I hear nonresidents speak about it the way I had thought about it in the past before I moved here after having lived in a number of places with which I could compare it.

That is why, when the Sheriff of Bristol County, Thomas Hodgson, in promoting himself while claiming he has the safety of it people as his number one priority, misrepresents the place speaking of a fictitious New Bedford and not the actual one, I find it disgusting..

Ignoring reality for his own purposes, he speaks of New Bedford as if it were the mother-in-law in a Henny Youngmen one liner (Google him).

When trump signed his first veto last week, there was the sheriff standing near him, another personal appearance to show affection to the president’s nethers to promote his image, no doubt at the expense of the taxpayers whose money pays for his kiss up trips while he insults them.

He took the opportunity to speak to the president on camera in favor of his wall, and then outright lied about drug overdoses to misrepresent the immigrant community in an immigrant-historic city.

As he stood to the left of the president he made his pro-wall, look-at-me-look-at-me remarks, he spoke of the need for the wall to reduce the availability of drugs, and declared,
Help changing the attitude- An individual is a resulting effect of sufficient blood supply. viagra online prescription The effect remains up to five to six hours after taking it, while no prescription tadalafil will last up to 48 hours after taking the capsule. However, there are certain things you should know before using the medication. viagra properien Q- What are the symptoms of BPH ?Ans- Most symptoms levitra 10 mg of BPH start gradually.
“In signing this today, I can’t tell you how much this means to all of us in law enforcement. But, importantly, Mr. Prudent, when I hear you say, ‘This is all manufactured, it’s all this and all that’, no. it’s not. In my county alone, one city, we have on average on second shift at our hospital in New Bedford Massachusetts, 15 to 20 overdoses on second shift, every day.”

And so he told the world, as the video was on the news and Youtube, that New Bedford is a drug infested mess, a desperate city, one that is to be avoided, a lawless drug infested place.

No wonder we need him and the president’s wall to protect us.

Except, the actual number is closer to 2 or 3 per day.

Not as threatening, but realistic.

Since October there have been a total of 57 to 68 overdoses per month, far lower than the sheriff’s claim of 540 per month. His exaggeration,  passed on to the president who probably admires the sheriff for working so hard under the circumstances while the world sees New Bedford as a bad place, is 7 times what the reality is.

Even in the summer, when beaches are open and beach goers come to the city to enjoy the water, the tourist attractions, and the upscale night life, the number is about 3 a day.

New Bedford is the nearest hospital to some of the small surrounding towns, and one, Acushnet, had 1 overdose during the last year.

The sheriff either lied, or he is just uninformed. Which it is depends on why he used the numbers he did.

The sheriff’s spokesperson defended the sheriff by stating that he thinks that is what the sheriff believes the numbers are.

So perhaps he should look them up.

He may have impressed the president, but the man who claims he loves the community, certainly had no problem lying about it to impress him.

There are two offenses here.

One is the deliberate lie to support his questionable actions and the opinions upon which he bases them. While claiming the problems in his jails are caused by the number of those in them with drug related problems, he seems to erase this claim be refusing to have effective programs to deal with that, even opting out of a program shown to be effective where it is used.

To hear him tell it, the criminals, mostly Brown people, are running amok in our streets and immigrants are the biggest problem, but ask for statistics and he becomes the middle school kid who tells you with a little bit of a scoffing tone that everyone knows that.

But to me, his worst offense is his just deciding to misrepresent the city of New Bedford to the world and using it in that context to impress the president and promote himself.

You do not claim to have the best interest of a city as the basis of all your unexplainable actions, and then lie about it with falsehoods.

He lied about the city and its people for his own gain.