In his attempt to remain president at any cost, not only is Trump making claims without any supporting evidence that mail in ballots are rife with fraud, and advising his acolytes to try to vote twice, but warning that rabid anti-Trumpers will physically interfere with voting making it necessary to
“have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement, and we’re going to have, hopefully, US attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody and attorney generals.”
The thing is, and I know this from not only seeing them at the polling places at which I have voted, but, as a poll watcher, local police officers make sure there is nothing bad happening while people vote.
They are local law enforcement.
As a poll watcher, my job was to sit quietly behind the table where people signed in and got their ballots, making sure neither those signing in nor those signing them in did anything that violated the rules governing the polls. Any questionable activity was brought to the attention of the officers who would then handle it, or if the offense was an egregious one, call the Secretary of State’s office on a dedicated line to report it further up the line.
In response to Trump’s over the top utterance, State Representatives Antonio Cabral of New Bedford and William Straus of Mattapoisett, both towns in the state’s South Coast region, filed legislation that would bar state and county law enforcement officials at polling places. They know Trump is just bloviating for cheers from his minions, but these two representatives, and others, know this unnecessary and exaggerated law enforcement presence might otherwise be intimidating to some voters and could dissuade them from entering the polling place to vote.
As Cabral explained,
“Rep. Straus and I have filed this as a result of the Trump administration’s assertion that the president planned on sending sheriffs and other agencies to monitor polling locations throughout the country on Election Day this November.”
The bill will make it clear that local police departments would be the only law enforcement agencies charged with maintaining order at the polls, but will allow for other levels of law enforcement to be called in only if both the state’s Secretary of Public Safety and Security and the local municipality ask for them.
The state’s Attorney General, Maura Healey, recognizes Trump’s threat for what it is, and assured the people of the Bay State that election interference by law enforcement officials is illegal and voters should feel free from it, and pointed out that a president can’t order state law enforcement officials to monitor polls.
“We won’t sit idle in the face of President Trump’s dangerous threats to undermine our electoral process and suppress votes. We are issuing this advisory to ensure citizens of Massachusetts know they are entitled to free and fair elections and to put President Trump on notice that any attempt to interfere with our democracy will not be tolerated.”
As you might have guessed, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson objects, but in his pseudo-righteous indignation he reveals his disdain for local law enforcement.
He tweeted that the proposed bill is
“one of the most outrageous bills I can remember. …Why would anyone want to prohibit law enforcement from protecting the rights of the citizens of Massachusetts?”,
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By state law his job is to supervise inmates and employees at the county’s jails and Houses of Correction, create and employ a budget, and make sure inmates get to and from court. Unlike local law enforcement, the sheriff and his department do not patrol the streets or pursue and apprehend suspects. He does not even have to have any law enforcement expertise as he is an administrator.
In Western states because of the division of land between what is or isn’t incorporated land, while local city and town police jurisdiction ends at the city line, and with the state police engaged in more state-wide things, sheriffs are the law enforcement for the unincorporated land.
Few people know that in Las vegas the actual city of Las Vegas has a police force, but the fancier, more modern Vegas Strip with Bellagio, Caesars Palace, and the other huge casinos, being county land, has no police force of its own and so relies on the county sheriff’s department.
A Massachusetts sheriff is not what most people consider law enforcement to be. He is not a cop. He is as much a cop as the guy standing guard at your local bank or the rent-a-cop at your mother’s church Christmas bazaar. He does not even have an official uniform, but is free to design his own, a practice that has some sheriffs wearing a business suit while others go all out with copper buttons, questionable medals, golden braids wherever they enhance the look, and in this sheriff’s case having double vents on his Junior Space Cadet uniform jacket that has the back of it waving behind him like a waist cape so the flapping gives the impression of swiftness while drawing the eye as he passes by.
Along with his desire to be like the big boys and trying to get people to accept his imaginary job instead of the one to which he was elected and for which he is paid by the people of the county, he equates himself with local law enforcement, and, like the tactic favored by his idol, attempts to represent any objection to his deplorable conditions at his jails, his abuse of ICE detainees in his ego boosting ICE detention center, the number of suicides in his jails, and his poor response to the COVID pandemic as an attack on a nebulous “law enforcement” much as he did when he tried to claim that these same criticisms of his performance was an unfair criticism of the officers who work under him.
No, the criticism in both circumstances was about him not them in those cases, and not wanting him and chosen deputies intimidating voters at the polls, has nothing to do with the local law enforcement officers who have been there throughout the years. protecting voters at the polls.
But that’s how bullies attempt to wriggle out of responsibility for their actions.
The bill prevents him from strutting around, trying to project the image that we are beholden to him as some sort of guardian.
Although he, unlike Pinocchio, will never become a real boy, or at least a John Wayne-like sheriff, he does have one trait he shares with him, he can lie just as well.
Not having him, the honorary co-chair of Trump’s reelection campaign in the state, playing cop on election day is in no way related to local law enforcement, while letting the real local law enforcement do its job without the guy next door coming over and as the expert when he sees you raise the hood of your car is not prohibiting law enforcement from protecting the rights of the citizens of Massachusetts.
It is letting local law enforcement do their job and exhibiting faith in them to do it properly.
Outside goons coming in pretending they are some form of the Justice League and demanding they be allowed to is clearly their expressing the idea that local law enforcement is incapable of doing its job on its own.
It is telling him just like you would the neighbor attempting to impress the neighborhood, regardless how deflated it makes him feel, to just go home an attend to what he should be doing, in this case, his real job, not his public image bolstering posturing.
Hodgson, stop using law enforcement like pawns.
And stop deflecting your disdain for our local police on us.