Joe Henderson
Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri ordered uniformed officers to patrol the county’s five early voting sites, and that’s good. I have one question, though.
What took him so long?
Gualtieri moved after two armed, ahem, private “security guards” roamed outside the Supervisor of Elections office in downtown St. Petersburg. The, ahem, “guards” were just hanging out. They were outside the no-canvasing area, but they made for an interesting visual. Voters waiting to enter the premises couldn’t help but notice them.
They were licensed to carry their visible guns.
Gualtieri said he didn’t believe the presence of those interlopers was an attempt at voter intimidation.
Yes, it was. I’m not the only one who says that.
“There’s zero reason for anyone to be armed, openly armed, out in front of a polling place,” St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman said during a news conference.
President Donald Trump has peddled baseless conspiracy tomes for months about polling shenanigans. He repeatedly called for supporters to, ahem, “monitor” those places.
“I am encouraging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully because that’s what has to happen — I am urging them to do it,” he said during the bizarre first presidential debate in Cleveland.
The guards indicated to deputies that they belonged to a licensed security company and implied the Trump campaign hired them, which the campaign quickly denied.
Gualtieri, a Republican, is running for reelection. I won’t say his politics had anything to do with the initial decision not to assign officers to polling places. But I will say he should have seen this coming.
As the election gets closer and polls tighten, the chance of one side or the other deciding action is needed increases.
Surely the Sheriff understands that.
Deputies should have stood watch at all polling places from the first minute that early voting began.
Civil rights groups don’t agree with that, by the way. Several of them joined in a letter asking Gualtieri to reconsider assigning deputies at the polls. They point to the well-documented issues between the police and people of color.
“Although we appreciate your stated commitment to combating voter intimidation, we are concerned that part of your response may amplify it. Many people, especially those belonging to historically marginalized communities, find the presence of police officers themselves at polling locations to be intimidating,” the group wrote in a letter to Gualtieri.
“Black and Brown Floridians may have an especially heightened sensitivity to police presence due to the unjust killings of people of color at the hands of law enforcement throughout 2020 and in recent years, and historically.”
Yeah, this is a tinderbox situation requiring sensitivity and common sense.
There is another side to this, though.
It’s also not a time to let supporters of either major candidate decide to hijack voting.
That brings us back to Gualtieri.
Post the guards.
Show Black and Brown Floridians that deputies are there to protect their rights. Let those planning mayhem to push their candidate over the top understand the consequences.
The situation last week was a warning that all law enforcement officers should heed.
7 comments
Marilyn Sculthorpe
October 26, 2020 at 11:35 am
Thinking back, decades ago, of the Black Panthers standing, long guns at the ready, right in front of a poling place, I don’t recall any negative rhetoric being thrown out about that ! And I was waiting to see what would be done about it. I saw nothing done or said.
What say you ?
S B ANTHONY
October 26, 2020 at 12:07 pm
I guess you weren’t paying attention, Marilyn, because they were sued by the DOJ and there were tons of articles in the news about the incident. Check out the Google machine before you spread misinformation that “nothing was done or said.” And, btw, it was the DOJ under Obama that continued the lawsuit to its resolution, (notice I didn’t call it Obama’s DOJ because the DOJ is not the president’s Department of Justice as the poser president seems to think).
If you’re talking about any other incidents, beside the 2008 incident, you’ll have to be more specific, rather than just spouting generalized biased rhetoric that’s unsupported by an actual facts. (Although you do seem to be following trump’s lying pattern of just making stuff up, so it’s pretty obvious who you’re supporting.)
So, what say you?
Richmond Estes
October 26, 2020 at 4:24 pm
More gas lighting. Reporting and journalism are ostensibly objective, there is no need to make ONE “oblique” narrative pushing “read between the lines” reference, much less several. This “reporter” may be described ad a “partisan hack” and his editor as “complicit” in the spreading of disinformation.
Steve Brookins
October 26, 2020 at 4:24 pm
Sorry Joe. It’s not intimidation. I think if they were telling people who to vote for that would be intimidation. People like you see what they want,not the truth. You don’t even know who they were. You just made up a story.
John Coyne
October 26, 2020 at 4:46 pm
And, had the Sheriff posted Deputies at the polls you can be sure his opponent (with no police experience) would have cried foul. Unless there is a real problem, not an imaginary problem the Sheriff (who is up for re-election) is doing the correct thing. There is little doubt had the Sheriff posted Deputies at the polls the media would have a field day.
Scott
October 26, 2020 at 5:00 pm
I’m not saying this article was written by a political douche nozzle, I’m also not, not saying that. If you were actually reporting the facts, you would have included the outcome of the investigation as to the lawful presence of a guard who was giving someone a ride from an area nearby the polling place. Also, had law enforcement preemptively assigned armed officers to polling locations, you hacks would call that action voter intimidation. After all, the Republican sheriff is up for reelection during in the midst of anti police rhetoric. Do you think the public is stupid?
iPatriot2
October 27, 2020 at 9:14 am
How easily you trample the 2nd Amendment! If they were legally there, you are in the wrong, period.
Have you researched the mischief going on in this election??
Comments are closed.