It’s an old trick.

It is childish, but there are some adults who insist on using it because it is an easy defense. However, it is also a back handed insult as it assumes and implies that the person hearing the excuse is stupid enough to accept it.

Rather than re-evaluate the actions for which a person is criticized, they equate criticism directed at them with it being also directed at others.

When I taught school, I really had no control when it came to those for whom I worked. The public voted for school board members and school board members appointed those administrators who best supported their agenda no matter how good or misguided.

If people voted for reasonable people who made the correct educational decisions, too often a rarity, I worked for reasonable people.

On the other hand, as too often happens as elections for school boards do not attract a large turn out, the public can also elect people who are lousy bosses who should not be in a position to influence any child’s education.

I had no choice who my bosses were, but if I did not follow their directives no matter how wrong they were, I could lose my job.

All that I could do was hope with each election the public would elect decent people.

When the actions of the Bristol County sheriff, Tom Hodgson, are criticized he deflects blame by saying the critic is disrespectful toward the hard working corrections officers.

No, they are criticizing him, not those who are required under penalty of dismissal to do what he says no matter how wrong it is or how wrong the corrections officers know it is.

They did not choose their boss. We, the public, did. Their only hope at each election when a sheriff is to be elected is that the public will pick someone decent and reasonable.

Otherwise they can be used as pawns promoting the sheriff’s agenda.

Case in point.

Because of COVID-19 a topic of discussion when it comes to jails is the need to thin out the inmate population because proper social distancing can’t be maintained unless that is done.

While other district attorneys and sheriffs across the state of Massachusetts  are looking at people on a case by case basis to determine which inmates in county jails don’t pose a threat to individuals in their communities and could and should be released, perhaps because they just don’t have the money for bail, end up there on technical violations of their probation or parole, or are just days away from release, the Bristol County sheriff simply has refused to consider that.

Granted the sheriff can not unilaterally release any inmates without working with the DA and the courts, but he wouldn’t even pretend he would do that, but responded immediately that he would not even consider the idea.

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Besides the inmates being exposed to the virus by staff coming and going to and from his jails as shifts change, they are exposed on a daily basis to any inmates who might have picked up the virus as a result of those shift changes and may be carriers who either develop symptoms or don’t, but are in the position of passing it on to other inmates and staff members.

A closed system petri-dish is not good for anyone connected to it.

Thinning the number of inmates benefits people on both sides of the cell bars.

The corrections officers have no say in the sheriff’s decision, but they do have to deal with it.

Although he has insisted that his jails have the virus under control, even as three staff members have tested positive for COVID-19 after his decision to reject the inmate thinning proposal, the sheriff has given the staff a pay raise because, even as he says conditions at the jail are clear, he says his staff is exposed to a “hazardous environment” while at work.

 Because of this they have had to take on additional responsibilities during the fight against the spread of coronavirus to the inmate population, as well as the rest of the staff. 

This while he has been claiming its all being good as his rationale for objecting to thinning his inmate population, a move that would decrease his staff’s exposure to a “hazardous environment” while at work.

“My staff has to come into a very challenging environment, and we’ve actually asked them to do quite a bit more to minimize the risks of people contracting the disease in here. They have to go through decontamination and when they go home the first thing they have to do is wash their clothes. So, these are really are sort of over-and-above precautionary things that they otherwise wouldn’t have had to do. And certainly, dealing with the inmates and the new protocols and things that we have, I felt that they were definitely worthy of [the raise]”.

And they are.

And sounding somewhat like his hero and the man whose attention he works hard to attract, Trump, he has also said,

“So far we don’t have any COVID-19 cases, knock on wood, in regards to our inmates and detainees. We hopefully won’t have any, but we’ll see. We’ve asked them to take extra precautions and disciplines, and we’re grateful for that”.

Bristol County for Correctional Justice and the ACLU have criticized him for his decision to reflexively reject the proposal to thin the inmate population.

The sheriff’s response to it was to say,

“I wouldn’t much entertain or care about what the social justice groups think about my staff, who come from their homes everyday and work in an environment that is dangerous and have extra responsibilities at this time.”

And he doesn’t have to because no one is criticizing his corrections officers and staff.

They have to work in an environment of his creation.

They are criticizing his management of and operations at the jails, and his decision and his defense of his not even considering taking steps that other jails have.

So now, instead of defending what is being criticized, he is attempting to give the public the idea that mean people are disrespecting his staff.

As a child and now as an adult, anything that goes wrong is because of the man who snuck in through the window, wreaked havoc, and then slunk out.

It was never him then, and is not now.