In the lead up to the 2020 elections, the prediction by President 45 was that the election would be rigged to explain a possible loss, while a win would obviously mean the election was legit. and prepare his supporters for whatever post-election actions he chose to take to make America great again and claim they were justified. He had local allies promoting this idea while attempting to prepare for the possible loss and aftermath.
Of course, there was the need to make a show of guarding against the predicted invented voter fraud and minions were needed for that. Among them the Sheriff of Bristol County Ma was at the front of the volunteer line.
As a cheerleader for Trump who claimed anything people found wrong with the performance of his sheriff duties was really just anti-Trump, and who volunteered county inmates to help build the wall on the Southern Border, reported to the While House that his parish church was following the teachings of Christ when it came to foreigners in your land, and begged to be and finally became the honorary chair of the Trump re-election committee in Massachusetts, he was motivated to either cause enough confusion to make the county elections as questionable as he needed them to be, or just make up unsupported claims that his deputies had observed irregularities. He could not do this if he had no control to any degree at the polls.
He claimed to be the champion of local law enforcement, a claim he bolstered by his unsupported claim that the people of the county don’t properly support them, while claiming his sheriff department’s presence at the polls was necessary because local law enforcement had not been doing their jobs in the past.
To prevent the obvious, the state legislature passed a bill making it painfully clear what a previous bill had established, that only local law enforcement are to be a presence at the polls and sheriffs and any other entity can only be present at the request of the locals in the event of a problem, like people invading the polls saying they were there to safeguard the unthreatened election and creating useful confusion from behind a badge.
The original 300-word Oath of Office for a sheriff in the state that was written around 1780 and included relevant points at the time of the Revolution had been reduced to a simple sentence over time.
“I, [name], do solemnly swear, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and will support the constitution thereof. So help me, God.”
The allegiance is to the Commonwealth, not a politician or an organization from outside the state whose constitution and sheriffs are not the same as Massachusetts.
When people were advocating for a more realistic approach to Covid in County jails, in spite of the other county sheriffs’ agreeing to follow the established and reasoned approaches, he stood alone in siding with Trump and condemning those in the state concerned about other citizens in an unsafe environment for trying to make him and Trump look bad.
He turned his back on the Commonwealth in favor of political gain and was actually willing to violate an existing law to have his way, causing the unnecessary rewrite of an already clear law.
In the 1970s Christian identity minister William Potter Gale began promoting the formation of citizens militias claiming, “that all healthy men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five who were not in the military could be mobilized into a posse comitatus to redress their grievances,”
People could either volunteer or would be drafted by their county sheriff, the “only legal law enforcement officer” in the country. This led to the formation of the Constitutional Sheriff and Peace Officer Association which is an extremist group founded and headquartered in Arizona, home to Sheriff Hodgson’s idol, Joe Arpaio. It wants to radicalize county sheriffs across America into believing they are the ultimate law enforcement authority, able to enforce, ignore, or break state and federal laws as they choose.
If they do not like a law, rather than suck it up and enforce it with even some of the vigor with which they enforce those laws they like, they choose to ignore certain laws especially as they have to be enforced on someone with whom the sheriff shares political and religious beliefs.
CSPOA claims that because county sheriffs are the only elected law enforcement officers, they are only accountable to their constituents and no higher government power. This ignores the fact that because of the requirements of living, most people, not having the time to run a state, choose representatives who stand in for the constituents and speak for them. We do not vote for one person so he can ignore all the others we voted for. If you ignore the chosen representatives, you ignore the constituents.
The group claims Constitutional Sheriffs are “upholding and defending the constitution,” as they see it, allowing them to make decisions usually made by the Supreme Court.
There are 6 main requirements to be a Constitutional Sheriff that deal with age, citizenship, being of sound mind and body, but no requirement to show an understanding of the U.S. Constitution or even to have read it.
It is the law enforcement version of the middle school law book that claims anything with which they do not agree is against the law according to a friend.
When the public, the constituents, began demanding stricter gun laws, Constitutional sheriffs and the CSPOA announced they would not enforce any laws passed in that regard.
Governor DeSantis of Florida fired an elected District Attorney for saying that about Abortion laws but allows Constitutional Sheriffs to continue to pick and choose the laws they will enforce in actuality without fear of dismissal.
This organization has spawned its own child, Protect America Now, with Sheriff Tom Hodgson of Bristol County, Massachusetts, as an adviser to the group having joined it in 2014. This group in turn is connected to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), an anti-immigrant group to which the Bristol County spewer of anti-immigrant stereotypes, tropes, and images of dark alley predators belongs.
The other members and advisors of these groups are from Western states where the job of sheriff is not that of a Massachusetts sheriff whose job is custodial not law enforcement and posses on horseback.
Don Knotts wants so desperately to be John Wayne.
Protect America Now subscribes to the desperate claims about electoral fraud in the 2020 election, a claim that locally could have been supported by the confusion at the Bristol County polls that, thankfully, the head of Trump’s re-election committee was unable to cause and then somewhat mitigate even as he was causing it, for appearances sake. PAN held a conference this past summer for “all Americans and law enforcement nationwide to come together in pursuit of the truth regarding the 2020 election.”
Protect America Now wants to build a base to intervene in future elections over “fraud” claims with the sheriff being a major part of that process.
Taking their cue from Trump, and his having been a member of PAN since 2014, it is not that hard to connect the dots and see why of all years with no prior urgency, it was imperative in 2020 for Tom Hodgson to have some control of the county polls.
On its website, that also has a picture of the sheriff with a padded resume, the group states,
“We support Sheriffs and law enforcement members that believe in God, Family and Freedom. They serve the people and they stand ready to protect our citizens.”
But their actions speak of all this rather selectively as the people they serve and protect may not believe in whatever God they do or agree with laws with which the sheriffs don’t, and its advisor, Thomas Hodgson, has denigrated local law enforcement in the attempt to control the polls in 2020, so support of local law enforcement isn’t cast in stone.
This may be to some a very broad brush, but as you listen to, watch, or read about the January Sixth investigation of the attempted insurrection, Hodgson’s many groups are affiliated in some way with the groups mentioned in that event. They share advisors, board members, inter-group membership, and attend and speak at the same gatherings.
The Constitution protects the right to feely assemble and join whatever groups we choose. The sheriff has that right.
But considering he is on the side of the insurrectionists, perhaps the taxpayers of the county should not be footing the bill for his many excursions to gatherings whose goal is to make this state, the cradle of liberty and home of some of democracy’s greats, into a red state where sheriffs don’t look so dorky when donning a cowboy hat.
I am sure his Constitutional Sheriff partners would love to have him in Arizona with them in more friendly territory, and as it would no longer cost the taxpayers of the county for his visits to meet with them, voting for his opponent in the coming election would make this mutually beneficial arrangement a reality.
As for his attempting to turn Massachusetts into a red state or at least Bristol County, I have lived in other places with other types of sheriffs and other types of political and religious beliefs that are not those of Massachusetts.
I have been there. We do not want that here.
Set Thomas Hodgson free to pursue his Western, red state dreams where they are relevant.
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