There is a rather disturbing photo making the rounds showing the Bristol County Sheriff, Thomas Hodgson at the annual Feast of the Blessed Sacrament, the annual Festa of those of Madeiran Heritage in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
In the picture the sheriff is wearing a golf shirt emblazoned with a sheriff’s badge and other indications of who the wearer is, his actual badge clipped to his belt on his left side, and on his right side his holstered service gun.
In his left hand is a 7 ounce, filled to the brim, plastic cup of Madeira wine.
In response to the negative reactions to a picture of an armed sheriff drinking wine at a public event, the sheriff took to the airwaves to explain that these negative reactions were those of his “enemies”.
He explained right away that he had been at the parade that morning to support one of his deputes who was being honored. That means he was not only off duty, but in a place where he has absolutely no jurisdiction as he is the person who runs the county jail.
The Festa is not the county jail
I have lived in two states that had three tiers of law enforcement whose jurisdictions were limited to certain areas. Local police jurisdiction went to the town line, county sheriffs to the county line, and state police to the state line.
They have the power to pursue and arrest people, issue tickets, and stop people who seem to be committing a crime within, but not beyond their respected jurisdictions.
In Massachusetts the duty of the county sheriff is to run the county jail.
That’s it.
So his explanation that he was there to keep the public safe is bogus as the Festa is not the county jail, and the local police department was present.
But it sounds good if you are not aware how Sheriff Thomas Hodgson is constantly attempting to increase his image with falsehoods.
He claimed, in spite of saying that any of his subordinates who was wearing his or her firearm and drinking wine in public would be disciplined, that as sheriff he is never off duty.
In one of the two states with the three tiers of law enforcement , I knew one county sheriff on a social level, and he often attended community events without his gun, especially when the local police were present. It is apparently important for this sheriff to advertise his non-existent power to the public.
He came from Maryland after having been a Lieutenant for Special Operations, so his ego must hurt that he is not that big of a deal here.
He is like the guy insecure with his masculine endowment who has to buy the biggest pick up truck to compensate.
This guy needs to compensate by playing a role that is not his, a role bigger than his actual one.
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In his self-written “Meet the Sheriff” write up on the Bristol County Sheriff page, he bestows upon himself the title “High Sheriff of Bristol County”, a position that exists nowhere but Bristol County, England, where the position was instituted before the Norman Conquest.
There is no “High” in his actual title.
He is the Bristol County Sheriff, and those who work in his department are his deputies.
Obviously he was not at the Festa to protect the people. He was there to impress them.
The Festa, like most such events from State Fairs down to church events, had rides for kids, midway type games, lots of food, mostly ethnic in nature, entertainment, and a fenced off area where once you purchased a proof of age bracelet you could buy alcohol without limit unless you were caught stumbling or acting so stupid you were obviously over the line. In that area, therefore, people were at various levels of inebriation from mild to over the limit, and among those who were behaving correctly, were those with alcoholically induced bad judgement.
It would not be unthinkable that some impaired person could bump into the sheriff in the jostling crowd and, while appearing to be an accident, could remove the gun.
So much for public safety.
His repeated explanations during his excuse making interview were that his being there for the parade, his having his gun because he is never off duty, and that he only had that one cup of wine so there was no harm no foul were the facts, and people who dislike him can ignore the facts, but that does not make them falsehoods.
Now, this is from the man who spends little time doing his actual job of running the jail, which he does very poorly when he does it, but rather runs wherever there is a camera so he can promote himself while repeatedly ignoring facts so that he can scare people into believing that his doing everything else but his real job is the best thing for them.
He claims that residents in Sanctuary Cities by any name are victims of increased crimes, while ICE’s own studies have shown that there are, on average, 35.5 fewer crimes committed per 10,000 people in sanctuary counties compared to non-sanctuary counties.
He claims that Sanctuary Counties, and by extension the undocumented immigrants in them, bring wages down and begin a cycle of poverty that leads to crime when ICE’s own study shows that median household annual income is, on average, $4,353 higher in Sanctuary Counties compared to non-Sanctuary Counties; the poverty rate is 2.3 percent lower, on average, in Sanctuary Counties compared to non-Sanctuary Counties; unemployment is, on average, 1.1 percent lower in Sanctuary Counties compared to non-Sanctuary Counties; and that these results hold true across sanctuary jurisdictions and especially in Sanctuary Counties with the smallest populations where the most pronounced effects are seen.
So the sheriff, who condemns those who judge his gun-toting, wine drinking excursion into a highly populated area where others are drinking and in which he has no jurisdiction in order to “keep people safe”, enjoys ignoring the facts while presenting his unsubstantiated claims, and basing his personal PR campaign, not on doing his job, but on ignoring facts so he can create an enemy from which the uninformed fearful will have to look to him for protection.
Suicide rates in his jail are the highest in the state.
He has spent millions of county dollars on losing law suits stemming from his attempt to justify his program of charging rent to inmates, denying them their prescribed medications, attempting to silence the Corrections Officers’ union, triple housing inmates, and buying useless equipment, while hiring cronies for his jail, most notably a lawyer from his favorite law firm who got a job at $70,000 a year with benefits and retirement for a 20 hour work week .
While inmates are denied medical care, air conditioning in the women’s section of the jail while the male section kept theirs, necessary mental health care, and person to person visitations in favor of a skype type visitation center housed in a double-wide trailer next to the jail, he is on television, giving speeches at pro-Trump rallies, going to Washington to promote programs beyond what he should be doing, appearing on radio talk shows, and drinking wine in a crowded place with his gun on his hip.
I would feel safer if he just bought a huge masculinity bolstering pickup truck, and then did his job.