Sheriff Hodgson Won’t Back Down [OPINION]

The residents of Bristol County, Massachusetts have a champion of their own selection in Sheriff Thomas Hodgson.

Tom Hodgson has been standing up to crime since he was a police officer. He continued to fight crime--and left wing social policies--as a New Bedford City Councillor and as an employee of the Sheriff's Office. When the then elected sheriff retired, Gov. William Weld appointed Hodgson the Sheriff of Bristol County. Since his appointment, Sheriff Hodgson has been elected and reelected multiple times by the voters of his county. The sheriff and his policies have been overwhelmingly supported by the people he has sworn an oath to serve and protect.

Radicals from outside of Bristol County launched a criminal attack on the correctional facility in Dartmouth recently. They blocked the entrances of the facility with a well-coordinated and sophisticated plan. They used long poles to erect tripods capable of supporting a human protester in the air. The enormous tripods were erected in front of the gate preventing any vehicles from entering and exiting the prison campus. At the other gate, protesters used cement and a bike lock to chain themselves to a metal fence and block all traffic to and from the facility.

For a period of time, the facility was cut off and lives were in jeopardy. Life for the inmates was also interrupted. The resources of the Sheriff's Office, the Dartmouth Fire Department and the Dartmouth Police Department were all used to remove the barricades and the human protesters. The attackers are all now being prosecuted for their crimes.

The men and women of the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office exercised tremendous discipline during the attack. In other places, those attacks could have been interpreted as a portion of an escape plan and resulted in serious injury or worse to the protesters.

The protesters don’t live in Bristol County and they weren’t elected by anyone to change policy. They don’t like our immigration system. The day they protested ICE and deportations, the Trump administration was deporting a convicted Nazi war criminal and an illegal alien was being arrested for murdering a young American woman.

Chris McCarthy is the host of The Chris McCarthy Show on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon. Contact him at chris.mccarthy@townsquaremedia.com and follow him on Twitter @Chris_topher_Mc. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.