Spike Lee’s new film, BlacKkKlansman, opens with an unhinged racist, Dr. Kennebrew Beauregard, standing in front of a screen as D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation is projected onto his face. Beauregard laments the glory days when Anglo-Saxons were unchallenged masters of the nation, repeating several times, “We had a great way of life.” Today that lost “great way of life” has become a dog whistle for white supremacists and anti-immigrant groups alike.
Beauregard may be a fictional character, but John Tanton is not. Tanton is a retired Michigan opthalmologist who single-handedly created about a dozen white supremacist and anti-immigrant groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes most of them as hate groups because they demonize non-whites and immigrants as inferior races and cultures.
One of Tanton’s white supremacist creations is the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and one of its most vocal advocates is Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson, who sits with Tanton on FAIR’s national advisory board.
On August 20th Tom Hodgson was at the White House to celebrate Donald Trump’s “Salute to the Heroes of ICE and CPB.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protecton (CBP) have been in the news a lot — for anything but heroic acts.
But they are Donald Trump’s private deportation army, and heroes to anti-immigrant groups like FAIR and CIS, whose policies both Trump and Hodgson support.
Abolish ICE
When Elizabeth Warren, a U.S. Senator, has to walk back remarks critical of institutional racism in the nation’s police and criminal justice system, it’s another sign that we live in something uncomfortably close to a police state.
If criticizing the police is off-limits, imagine the response to calling for the shutdown of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Though Republicans have long called for shutdowns of agencies they don’t like — the IRS, DEA, EPA, OSHA, for starters — shutting down an abusive law-enforcement agency that functions like the president’s personal paramilitary force is a step too far for most Republicans.
And, predictably, centrist Democrats agree with them.
With progressive Democrats like Randy Bryce, Alejandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and progressiv-ish Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Kirstin Gillibrand calling for an ICE shutdown and possibly a reboot, party strategist Tad Devine sees opportunity for Centrists. For Devine, candidates like Mikie Sherrill and Andy Kim, and kinda-sorta-Democrats like Heidi Heitkamp, ought to distance themselves from, and bash whenever possible, what the New York Times calls “far left” critics of ICE. Heidi Heitkamp rolled her eyes and said “It’s crazy town,” echoing a 33-word Boston Herald article, “Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley crosses border into crazy territory.”
A recent article by Jennette Barnes in the Standard Times reports that Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson is refusing to participate in a pilot Department of Corrections medically-assisted [opioid] treatment (MAT) program that five other Massachusetts sheriffs have already signed on to. The program would offer methadone, buprenorphine or naltrexone to people leaving prison within 30 days. As usual, the sheriff ignores best practices by denying these treatments. Hodgson’s denial of opioid treatment to prisoners is going to get people killed — if it hasn’t already.
Currently, prisoners at the Bristol County House of Correction are pulled off drug therapy medications and must endure painful withdrawal. Upon release, prisoners may be given a single shot of Vivitrol to block opioid receptors for a month. Because of sweetheart deals with departments of correction and the National Sheriff’s Association, Vivitrol (naltrexone) has become the only treatment currently offered at $1000 a pop in Alaska, Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Hamphire, and Massachusetts. There are only a few states and a handful of corrections facilities where a full range of MAT options are being used.
STAT News reports that those without treatment in jail are at extreme risk of overdosing on the “outside” because their tolerance to drugs has dropped and they reenter the world with the same triggers for their drug use. A 2013 study in the Annals of Internal Medicine showed that, in the two weeks after release, former inmates overdose at rates nearly 130 times as high as the general population.
According to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “opioid agonist therapy with methadone hydrochloride, a full opioid agonist, or buprenorphine hydrochloride, a partial agonist, effectively treats opioid use disorder and reduces mortality.” The JAMA study found “no evidence” that Vivitrol reduced mortality. Despite the advantages of MAT treatment, the JAMA authors lamented, “opioid agonist treatment is used infrequently in correctional facilities. What steps must be taken to change the situation?”
Dionna King, policy coordinator with the Drug Policy Alliance, makes a distinction between MAT and a shot of Vivitrol upon release from prison. Vivitrol blocks the effects of opioids while methadone and buprenorphine eliminate pain, reduce cravings, often improve the health of the patient, and are strongly correlated with continuing drug treatment on the “outside.”
According to Holly Alexandre, medical director of addiction services at SouthCoast Health, medication-assisted treatment (MAT) is a recommended method of opioid treatment used by hospitals, and those with this medical disorder should receive the same care in jail. With MAT, incarcerated people receive drugs like methadone, buprenorphine or naltrexone, which ideally are combined with counseling and other therapies.
MAT is considered a corrections “best practice” around the world. The World Health Organization recommends MAT treatment, and a National Institutes of Health review of fourteen MAT studies found only one that did not conclusively demonstrate better post-release participation in community drug treatment programs.
And if Sheriff Hodgson could tear himself away from the microphones and cameras and make the short trip to Providence, Rhode Island, he’d see the advantages of a well-conceived MAT program.
Through an innovative partnership with actual health professionals, Rhode Island’s prisons offer MAT with buprenorphine, methadone, and naltrexone. The treatment program, which launched in 2016, has resulted in a 61% reduction in post-release overdose deaths. What makes the Rhode Island program so effective, according to Science Daily, is that “the treatment is administered to inmates by […] a nonprofit provider of medications for addiction treatment contracted by RIDOC to provide MAT inside correctional facilities. Upon release, former inmates can continue their treatment without interruption […] in MAT locations around the state. Patients are also assisted with enrolling or re-enrolling in health insurance to make sure they are covered when they return to the community.” Rhode Island’s program is the only one to make the full suite of MAT available to everyone entering or leaving prison. “Medications are continued if they are on them when they arrive and started if they need them upon arrival or prior to release.”
The American Medical Association says it’s unethical to deny opioid agonist treatment to patients. Ross MacDonald, medical director of New York City’s correctional health program, says that every person who enters New York City’s main jail with an opioid addiction problem represents an opportunity for treatment and the possibility of saving a life. The ACLU of Washington State is suing Whatcom County for denying MAT treatment to prisoners with opioid addictions on medical grounds.
Even Donald Trump’sPresident’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis recommends medically-assisted treatment: “Multiple studies have shown that individuals receiving MAT during and after incarceration have lower mortality risk, remain in treatment longer, have fewer positive drug screens, and have lower rates of recidivism than other individuals with [opioid use disorders] that do not receive MAT.”
While the Rhode Island program represents a more level-headed and compassionate approach toward opioid treatment, rehabilitation is still being delivered in the state’s prisons (there are no county jails in the Ocean State). Most of these patients belong in a clinical or rehabilitation setting, not behind bars. Despite this structural defect, Rhode Island is light years ahead of our Bristol County, Massachusetts jail where Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson starves, abuses, and neglects the medical care and treatment of those who face death by overdose upon release.
We received the following letter from a prisoner at the Bristol County House of Correction in Dartmouth.
July 26, 2018
Dear [omitted],
At this time I am incarcerated at the Dartmouth House of Corrections of the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office. The whole jail has been on a hunger strike due to the injustices we are faced with on a daily basis here. Today is day two of the hunger strike and there is still no change. I am here to give you an account of what is actually going on in this jail.
I’ve witnessed inmates with severe medical issues such as epilepsy get violently assaulted by Corrections Officers. What was said by AG Maura Healey is true. They are giving inhumane amounts of time in segregation (the hole). I personally have been to the segregation unit. They took my food, all of it, and said I was running a “store.” They coerced me into taking 20 days in segregation with threats, saying I will remain there for the remainder of my time in the jail. I had receipts for all my food and they still took it. As inmates, we have few liberties, such as: food; health care; and earned good time. We don’t get any of those things.
The food we get is not enough to feed a five year old child. We get nothing but soy products with either rice or mashed/scalloped potatoes every day. Never mind breakfast: it’s either one of three things — grits, oatmeal, or tasty-ohs. Some meats that they give have hundreds of tiny little bones that break your teeth. We all put in grievances bu they said it’s just fat and it’s healthy.
To see the doctor or dentist you must put in a medical slip. By the time you are seen it is approximately 4-6 months after you put in said medical slip. This is exactly why this county jail has the highest amount of suicides. There is no health care. We inmates are supposed to be allowed to get good time, yet there are very few programs that you can actually earn good time. All of the programs that are stated online that are here haven’t been in this jail for over ten years.
For god’s sake, we sat in our rooms without electricity for two days. I don’t make commissary so when they took my few belongings it really hurt. We are humans and we are not being treated as such. Something has to change. Sheriff Hodgson is not doing his job. He is focused on building a wall at the border. Where are our programs? Where is our healthcare, and where is our food?
The injustice we face every day is inhumane and it has to be against the law. This is my testimony on the inside of DHOC. I don’t mind if you quote any of this but make it anonymous because time is hard here with constant threats by Corrections Officers.
I am due to be released on [omitted] and I am willing to do what I can to make sure no one has to endure what I’ve had to endure for over a year. Make copies of this and send it to whoever can help our cause. I hope [omitted] because reform needs to be made because DHOC is not a House of Correction. That’s why the recidivism rate is beyond compared to every other county jail in MA.
Sincerely,
[prisoner’s name withheld]
P.S.: So far the jail said they will lower the cost of commissary and make the food better because of the article in the Standard Times this morning, but only time will tell.
On June 2nd Tom Hodgson, along with 69 others chosen from 365 nominations, received the National Sheriff’s Association’s (NSA’s) “National Command & Staff College” Magnus award for “building and maintaining trusting community relationships.” Hodgson’s award leaves many of us scratching our heads wondering how high suicide rates, recidivism, and abuse of inmates merit an award with a description like this.
But a quick look at a few of the numerous recipients hints at the National Sheriff’s Association’s increasingly Trump-oriented and racist political agenda — which has nothing to do with public safety, respect for campaign law, treating inmates and the public fairly, or earning the public trust. While citizens keep asking — Why are there so many bad sheriffs? — the National Sheriff’s Association doles out sham awards to scofflaws and bigots — claiming that such men are the “best of law enforcement.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions selling Anglo-Saxon white supremacy at the 2018 National Sheriff’s Association winter meeting
We don’t think misconduct like the following should have earned any of these “award-winners” anything but scorn or jail time.
Ron Abernathy, from Alabama’s Tuscaloosa County, had a wrongful death problem at his jail and wants to deal with it by suing his critics.
The County Commission was not happy with overcrowding at the jail run by Jefferson County Alabama Sheriff (and NSA Board and Executive Committee member) Mike Hale and suggested that 300-500 low-level offenders might have to be released. Hale said he didn’t care: overcrowding be damned, inmates weren’t going anywhere.
Grady Judd, Sheriff in Polk County, Florida, is an open-carry, arm-every-teacher advocate known for his fondness for grandstanding. Judd was sued last year for conducting unconstitutional identity checks at emergency evacuation shelters during Hurricane Irma.
John Layton, Marion County, Indiana sheriff, is no stranger to controversy. The Indianapolis City Council authorized a quarter million dollar audit of the Sheriff’s Office by KPMG. His son, also a veteran Indianapolis police officer, was arrested for dealing cocaine in 2016. Citizens Against Marion County Sheriff John Layton has compiled a long list of questions and grievances. Apparently Sheriff Layton is not doing such a great job “building and maintaining trusting community relationships.”
In Hendricks County, Indiana, Sheriff Brett Clark replaced in-person jail visits with HomeWav, a video visitation service like Securus. Even when family members visit inmates at Clark’s jail, they can see one another only through a video screen, not directly.
We were relieved that Louis Ackal, head of Louisiana’s Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Department and subject of a Fault Lines documentary (along with Hodgson) on jail abuses, didn’t go home with a Magnus Award. Ackal, who piled up civil rights and wrongful death lawsuits, charges of killing a handcuffed man, using excessive force on pregnant women, planting evidence, racism, corruption, calling a federal prosecutor a “son-of-a-bitch Jew bastard,” famously opined that black people “needed to be treated like animals.” What a relief the National Sheriff’s Association has some standards, albeit low ones.
Charles Parish, Louisiana Sheriff Greg Champagne, president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, pictured above at the 2018 NSA convention with FOX News Jeanine Pirro
But elsewhere in Louisiana the Magnum award winners were at it — abusing their communities’ trust and pocketbooks.
In Charles Parish, Louisiana, Sheriff Greg Champagne, and National Sheriffs’ Association president (pictured above at the 2018 NSA convention with FOX News’ Jeanine Pirro), took some of his deputies to Standing Rock in North Dakota to “observe” the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, allegedly on the public dime and ostensibly to curry favor with the petrochemical industry. The Center for Constitutional Rights sued for travel documents after filing public information requests and not getting them.
In Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, Sheriff Joseph P. Lopinto III‘s deputies were accused of excessive force in the death of Keveen Robinson in May. Lopinto, handpicked by Newell Normand to succeed him in July 2017, made it clear there would be few changes from Normand, including ongoing friction with the Latino community.
Continuing around the country, the Magnus awards reflected more of the same:
Hennepin County, Minnesota Sheriff Richard Stanek served on the National Sheriff’s Association board of directors and in 2012 was the chair of Minnesota’s Homeland Security Committee. In 2012 Stanek testified before Congress about Somali gangshe claimed had an astounding 125,000 members in Minnesota, the majority in Hennepin county. Stanek was one of 10 anti-immigrant sheriffs to meet with Trump last month at the White House.
Anoka County, Minnesota Sheriff (and NSA Board member) James Stuart is being sued by the ACLU for violating the rights of an undocumented woman who was illegally detained for ICE. Just like Tom Hodgson.
Dechutes County, Oregon Sheriff Shane Nelson‘s employees are the focus of several external investigations of misconduct by a public servant and firearms violations. One of his captains was indicted for embezzling public funds, and Nelson himself is the subject of two additional complaints. Nelson also allegedly harassed deputy Eric Kozowski, an employee who announced he was challenging Nelson in the sheriff’s race.
In Texas, Rockwall County Sheriff Harold Eavenson recently signed a 287(g) agreement with ICE, and met with Trump to complain about state legislation he claimed would help Mexican cartels. Eavenson was angry when the U.S. Sentencing Commission reduced the sentences for 6,000 lower-level drug offenses, and both he and the National Sheriff’s Association blamed it on “the Obama administration’s attitude toward law enforcement.”
Michael D. Chapman, Magnus winner from Loudoun County, Virginia, was investigated in 2015 because he had allegedly “illegally obtained and published private e-mails of his Republican primary opponent and that he has illegally concealed the true source of campaign donations in his run for reelection.” In what Bristol County residents will recognize as a familiar defense, Chapman called the allegations politically-motivated “nonsense.” A fired detective sued Chapman for intimidation, Chapman also made a video for FAIR, an anti-immigrant hate group.
Like Tom Hodgson, Spokane County, Washington’s Ozzie Knezovich is a man drawn to simple answers for complex problems. In 2017 he blamed school shootings on the media, bad child-rearing — everything but the ease with which guns can be acquired. Knezovich was charged with violations of campaign laws for using his employees as props in campaign ads. Knezovich, like Hodgson, blamed Barak Obama for a supposed “war on cops.”
Sheriff Eric Severson, Waukesha County, Wisconsin, signed onto a 287(g) program with ICE, despite calls from over 10,000 members of his community to refrain from doing so. So much for “building and maintaining trusting community relationships.”
“He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.” — Proverbs 13:20
Sheriff Tom Hodgson often claims that everything he does is to keep us safe, but Hodgson’s job description is to run the county jail. Instead, the sheriff frequently steps outside his areas of responsibility and competence, neglecting official duties and leaving chaos, conflict, and mismanagement in his wake.
Hodgson is less interested in being a county sheriff than a xenophobic mouthpiece for far-right views. With his continual attacks on immigrants, that a Boston Globe editorial characterized as crossing the “line of decency,” Bristol County’s own Joe Arpaio wannabe frequently makes the Trump-like claim that more immigrants equals more crime.
At a state committee hearing last month State Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz challenged Hodgson to prove it. For a moment the sheriff looked like a deer in the headlights, mumbling that he’d have to get back to her. And when he finally did, his numbers were not scientific studies but talking points from an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group.
But this is an old story. In 2011, Duval Patrick opposed the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to turn local lawmen into federal immigration officers. Hodgson thumbed his nose at the governor’s “moronic” stance and signed onto the DHS program anyway. Patrick then vetoed budget earmarks for Hodgson, and Hodgson responded by echoing right-wing conspiracy sites that Patrick (and Obama) were flying in plane-loads of illegal immigrants (and Muslim terrorists) into Massachusetts. And he threatened to shut down the Ash Street jail.
This is classic Hodgson – a martinet who once tried to shame prisoners on work release by literally placing them in chains. Who illegally charged them housing and medical fees. Who puts “his” inmates on food restrictions and limits contact to family members. Who presides over the county lockup with the worst suicide rate in the state. Who oversees a prison population three times the size the facility was designed to hold. Who advocates putting political adversaries like Somerville mayor Joe Curtatone in jail. Who, in his inauguration speech, promised to send inmates to build Donald J. Trump’s Great Wall.
Tom Hodgson was appointed Bristol County Sheriff by William Weld in 1997 to fill a retirement vacancy, and he’s been the incumbent ever since. Hodgson is the Massachusetts county sheriff with the greatest share of suicides at his jail, the Trump Wall sheriff, the chain gang sheriff, the Joe Arpaio wannabe who wants to arrest mayors of sanctuary cities. Hodgson has been accused of flouting a Massachusetts SJC ruling on ICE detentions, of political patronage schemes, and of abusing prisoners. Hodgson spends so much of his time on talk radio flogging dubious anti-immigration “facts” and conspiracy theories that it’s a miracle he ever clocks in at his day job. But most galling, the sheriff claims to speak for the people of Bristol County — when in fact much of the time Hodgson is out of the office representing a hate group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
And it seems everybody’s got a Tom Hodgson story.
A retired Fall River cop recalls in a recent editorial that the sheriff wanted to patrol the streets of Fall River. That was a no-go. Fall River mayor Jasiel Correia tried an end-run around his own police department, inviting Hodgson to run the city jail and involving Rep. Paul Schmid in funding it. That too was a no-go.
In 2015 the sheriff deputized thirteen military recruiters. But as soon as they had been sworn-in, the Department of Defense launched an inquiry, sending a Naval petty officer to investigate. There were obvious questions about members of the armed forces performing law enforcement functions – since the Constitution specifically prohibits it. Hodgson’s reasoning: “We’re doing these things for the right reasons, certainly for the public’s protection and for our national security.” Great. But what about running the jail?
Recently the publicity hound sheriff played Dr. Phil when he offered up his deep psychological insights into Aaron Hernandez on TMZ, WLNE, WBZ and others. Viewers learned that Hodgson regarded himself as a “fatherly influence,” recommending the Bible and “Tuesdays with Morrie” to Hernandez.
Hodgon spends so much time out of the office, providing psychological counseling to celebrity prisoners, or trying to become one himself, that he is apparently unable to keep up with the paperwork. The Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice had to file a lawsuit to obtain records related to the BCSO’s participation in federal ICE programs, but Hodgson violated the state’s public records law by failing to produce the documents. “Sheriff Hodgson appears to think he is above the law,” said Sophia Hall, Staff Attorney at the Lawyers’ Committee. “But as President Trump has learned, that is why we have courts.”
Since 2012 inmates in county lockups in Massachusetts are twice as likely to commit suicide as prisoners in state facilities. Of the 14 county lockups the worst offender is the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) facility. Since 2008 there have been 14 suicides at the BCSO jail, 50% more than Suffolk County and twice the number at Essex and Worcester facilities. The BCSO jail represents almost a quarter of all 65 county prison suicides from 2006 to 2016 but only 13% percent of the total county prison population. The BCSO lockup also spends the least amount of money per inmate of any facility in the state.
For all the bibles and the tough talk, the sheriff’s management style isn’t working – and it’s cruel. In 2013, when Aaron Brito committed suicide in Hodgson’s lockup, his mother received a call from an anonymous BCSO employee: “Your son died today. If you want more information today, call St. Luke’s Hospital.”
Tom Hodgson has had a contentious relationship with his corrections officers. Five officers were punished for speaking about labor negotiations with the sheriff and by 2008 Hodgson had spent $1 million on a losing case he took all the way to the Supreme Court. Hodgson also spent $3.7 million on other legal cases, making him far and away the most profligate legal spender of all county sheriffs. Before a new round of lawsuits in 2018, Hodgson had already flushed $4.7 million of taxpayer money down the drain. $1.3 million of that was handed over to “Special Deputy” attorney Bruce Assad and $1.3 million to attorney Ronald Lowenstein, another donor whose family was flagged in 2004 for giving more than the legally permitted campaign maximum.
Many of the sheriff’s employees or contractors are also donors. Filings with the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance show a current quarter million dollar war chest and a history of $1.3 million in donations. Occupations from hundreds of entries in donor records include: corrections officer, canine officer, captain, warrant apprehension officer, internal affairs officer, deputy, chief, contractor, investigator, or simply BCSO. An audit of these records might lay to rest persistent accusations of patronage.
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FAIR is probably the most influential anti-immigrant hate group in the United States. It was founded in 1979 by a Michigan ophthalmologist, John Tanton, functions as a lobbying group, and is deeply embedded in the Trump administration. MediaMatters notes that the mainstream media often uses FAIR’s “statistics” without realizing that it’s a hate group. The CATO Institute has slammed FAIR’s studies and statistics as “fatally flawed” and “sloppy.” The Southern Poverty Law Center lists FAIR and a number of other groups in the Tanton Network as hate groups. Yet many journalists just keep quoting FAIR’s “facts.”
* * *
In 2015 Tom Hodgson appeared with Dennis Michael Lynch at an Islamophobic venue in Stoughton which had previously hosted Dutch neo-fascist Geert Wilders. Lynch is an Islamophobe, a white supremacist, a supporter of the Constitutional Sheriff Movement and of sovereign citizen Cliven Bundy, about whom he made a film.
That same year Hodgson appeared with a representative of the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) at the Fisherman’s Club in New Bedford. Despite the name, FAIR has little to do with reform. Instead, its goal is assuring White Anglo-Saxon dominance. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, FAIR has links to white supremacists and eugenicists. Its founder, John Tanton, wrote to one eugenicist: “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”
In 2016 the Sheriff was one of three speakers at a “Patriots Unity Day” rally in Randolph. The second speaker was Jessica Vaughan, of the nativist organization Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Like FAIR, CIS was founded by John Tanton and publishes dubious statistics on immigration. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, CIS also maintains links to white supremacist and anti-semitic groups. CIS executive director Mark Krikorian quipped after the deadly 2010 Haitian earthquake: “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.” The third speaker was Raymond Hanna with the anti-Muslim hate group ACT for America, which also has white supremacist ties. In Arkansas ACT’s “March Against Shariah” events were organized by a Nazi and publicized on Stormfront.
In June this year the Sheriff appeared with Dan Stein and Michelle Malkin at an annual “Hold their feet to the fire” broadcast with anti-gay bigot Sandy Rios. Stein is executive director of FAIR, and characterizes America’s immigration laws as an effort “to retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance.” Stein describes Central American immigrants as engaged in “competitive breeding” and asks: “Should we be subsidizing people with low IQs to have as many children as possible, and not subsidizing those with high ones?” Malkin too has links to white supremacist groups, including VDARE, and to Islamophobic groups. Malkin opposes the 14th Amendment, which gave citizenship to slaves.
On October 19, 2017 the SouthCoast Chamber of Commerce hosted Bristol County sheriff Tom Hodgson and Helena DaSilva Hughes at the Wamsutta Club to discuss immigration. During his presentation the sheriff cited questionable statistics from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), claiming that illegal immigration costs taxpayers $116 billion a year. The CATO Institute calls FAIR’s new study “fatally flawed” and “even more sloppy” than their previous one.
According to FAIR’s 2011 annual report, that was the year the organization began cultivating sheriffs like Hodgson. “In 2011, we identified sheriffs who expressed concerns about illegal immigration.” FAIR staff “met with these sheriffs and their deputies, supplied them with a steady stream of information, established regular conference calls so they could share information and experiences, and invited them to come to Washington to meet with FAIR’s senior staff.” Since roughly that time Hodgson’s main job has been as a FAIR spokesman.
* * *
Not so focused on law and order as it claims to be, FAIR sees its true mission as the preservation of Anglo-Saxon civilization from rapacious hordes of brown non-English speakers. FAIR peddles white supremacy, eugenics, and dubious statistics on immigration. The following quotes from John Tanton — Hodgson’s colleague on the advisory board — betray FAIR’s chief preoccupations:
“As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?” (October 1986)
and
“I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.” (December 1993)
FAIR’s current president, Dan Stein — with whom Tom Hodgson appeared at an event last June — likes to add a dash of anti-Irish conspiracy theory to his white supremacy:
“I blame ninety-eight percent of responsibility for this country’s immigration crisis on Ted Kennedy and his political allies, who decided some time back in 1958, earlier perhaps, that immigration was a great way to retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance and hubris, and the immigration laws from the 1920s were just this symbol of that, and it’s a form of revengism…” (August 1994)
In an interview with “Alt-Right” darling Tucker Carlson, Stein maintains that Latinx immigrants coming to the U.S. are godless, low-IQ haters:
“Immigrants don’t come all church-loving, freedom-loving, God-fearing … Many of them hate America, hate everything that the United States stands for. Talk to some of these Central Americans. […] Should we be subsidizing people with low IQs to have as many children as possible, and not subsidizing those with high ones?” (October 1997)
For FAIR it’s not just about white culture, church, and the English language. As Stein’s quote above shows, like their goose-stepping cousins FAIR sees America threatened by inferior races. But here’s Tanton again:
“Do we leave it to individuals to decide that they are the intelligent ones who should have more kids? And more troublesome, what about the less intelligent, who logically should have less? Who is going to break the bad news [to less intelligent individuals], and how will it be implemented?” (September 1996)
How, indeed, does FAIR want to see it implemented?
FAIR’s “final solution” is the preservation of “Anglo-Saxon dominance” by privileging white people through overtly racist immigration policies and the use of mass deportation and eugenics for ethnic cleansing.
Schemes like this didn’t work out so great for the Third Reich. And they’re not going to work for Tom Hodgson and his brownshirted buddies at FAIR.
* * *
Tom Hodgson has spent the majority of his life in law enforcement and took only a few criminal justice classes in college before dropping out. But by the frequency with which he offers up his views, he is an expert on everything — 911, Criminal Justice reform, the second amendment, the Constitution, the psychology of Aaron Hernandez, the Iran deal, Islam, drug abuse, Obama, the military, religion as therapy — and Immigration.
Among members of the Hodgson’s right-wing echo chamber: Howie Carr, Chris Resendes (a former employee of the Sheriff), John Keller, NRATV, Fox and Friends, Jeanine Pirro, Laura Ingraham, and Lou Dobbs.
Some of Hodgson’s like-minded friends: Dan Rea, Rick Wiles, Robert Spencer, Sandy Rios, Tom Roten, Jessica Vaughan, Dennis Michael Lynch, ACT America, FAIR, CIS, NumbersUSA, VDARE.
* * *
Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson’s passion is badmouthing immigrants, though his day job is running a county jail. But Hodgson is less interested in being a county sheriff than a mouthpiece for far-right views. His continual attacks on immigrants prompted the Boston Globe to accuse him of crossing the “line of decency,”
Last year Hodgson joined the national advisory board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). This formalized a long relationship with the organization. FAIR, CIS, and several sisters organizations were founded by fellow advisory council member John Tanton, a white supremacist who believes in applying eugenics to controlling non-white population.
In July 2017 the Center for New Community published a report, “Crossing the Line: U.S. Sheriffs Colluding with Anti-Immigrant Movement,” which described Hodgson’s relationship with FAIR starting around 2011.
FAIR’s 2011 Annual Report describes a strategy of identifying “sheriffs who expressed concerns about illegal immigration.” FAIR “met with these sheriffs and their deputies, supplied them with a steady stream of information, established regular conference calls so they could share information and experiences, and invited them to come to Washington to meet with FAIR’s senior staff.”
New Community reported that FAIR seemed to capitalize upon blurry lines between sheriffs’ official duties and their work for FAIR:
“Despite Hodgson’s endorsement, FAIR’s recruitment event did draw some scrutiny. When inviting sheriffs, FAIR used materials suggesting the event was sanctioned by the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program (HIDTA), a U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) program. FAIR’s flyer for the event featured HIDTA’s official logo and stated that participants’ travel and lodging costs “may be covered by your agency’s HIDTA funding.’ ONDCP officials sternly rebuked that claim. ‘In no way is the ‘border school’ sanctioned, co-hosted, or endorsed by the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Program,’ Rafael Lemaitre, ONDCP’s associate director for public affairs, told the Southern Poverty Law Center. ‘Any use of the program’s logo to imply support for this conference is unacceptable, and the local HIDTA director has asked for this to be corrected as soon as possible,’ Lemaitre added. ‘Additionally, at no time have any HIDTA training funds been requested or been approved for use in association with this conference.”
In 2014 Hodgson, Brock Cordeiro, and Linda Ross used Bristol County Sheriff’s Office letterhead and email addresses to organize a meeting in Washington, DC, to support Senators Jeff Sessions and David Vitter in promoting anti-immigrant policies.
It is not known whether Hodgson himself spent Massachusetts taxpayer money on these activities or on travel to Washington. Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance (OCPF) data shows no travel expenses paid by his campaign, and public information requests for the Sheriff’s travel records have been ignored since May 23, 2018.
In recent weeks it has become clear that the Sheriff’s views on immigration deeply influence how the Bristol County House of Correction operates.
In May 2018, an ICE detainee described in detail the medical neglect he received at the Bristol County House of Correction. In June 2018 Tom Hodgson was sued by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice and Latham and Watkins LLP for violating the rights of an ICE detainee and thumbing his nose at the Supreme Judicial Court’s Lunn Ruling. That same month Freedom for Immigrants released its National Report on Abuse Motivated by Hate, which focuses on bias- and hate-motivated abuse in ICE detention facilities. Bristol County was mentioned in the report several times. Aída Chávez reported on the Bristol County abuses in the Intercept. According to the report, detainees were abused physically and verbally, prodded to battle in gladiator-style fights and were called “gorillas” and “baboons.”
In 2017 the New Bedford Standard Times reported that the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies FAIR as a hate group, and that the Anti-Defamation League considers it an “extreme anti-immigrant group.” The Standard-Times asked Sheriff Hodgson for comment and he waved the notion of racism away: “I’ve never run into anybody that’s even hinted at that kind of thing.” The newspaper asked FAIR executive director Bob Danes for comment and quoted a statement from the organization’s website: “immigration policy should not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, religion, gender, or nationality.”
Besides Tom Hodgson’s amateur psychoanalysis of Aaron Hernandez, no other topic interests him as much as immigration. Hodgson has left quite the trail of commentary. Anyone interested can view these videos featuring Hodgson’s “expert” views on immigrants or these videos demonstrating the sort of racist propaganda FAIR disseminates.
* * *
Hodgson’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance filings show he is a member of the Constitutional Sheriff’s Association:
Here, then, is the assortment of racists, xenophobes, Islamophobes, birthers, gay-bashers, conspiracy nuts, and white supremacists who serve on the national advisory board with Tom Hodgson.
* * *
Lou Barletta – as mayor of Hazelton, PA, signed anti-immigration legislation in 2006 that was declared illegal a year later
Sharon Barnes – apparently no DACA supporter, who wrote recently: “It is our country. They and their parents need to be kicked out […] strengthen our laws and get rid of the locusts.”
Gerda Bikales – who shudders at bilingual education and regards Spanish as a ghetto language: ”I don’t think Yiddish or Italian represented a threat to the union. But we are now setting ourselves up for an entrenched language ghetto.”
William Chip – who would like to repeal the 14th Amendment
Donald A. Collins – who has published a number of recent articles on the extremist white national VDARE website
Dino Drudi – another Massachusetts zealot Mr. Hodgson probably knows; they sound alike
Bob Eggle – whose son Kris, a park ranger, was killed by drug dealers on the US-Mexico border
Robert Gillespie – a proponent of population control in developing countries
Otis Graham – the first director of John Tanton’s Center for Immigration Studies, and a man the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says has extensive contacts with American white supremacists
But documents stored in George Washington University’s Gelman Library by Otis Graham, a close friend of Tanton who helped him launch and run FAIR in the 1980s and who currently serves as a board member at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), make the point about Tanton’s interest in race one more time. Most instructive is a Tanton plan in the files to create what he called a “League for European-American Defense, Education and Research” or, to use Tanton’s acronym, LEADERs. In a 1993 cover memo attached to his LEADERs plan, Tanton, who is white, wrote to Graham: “For a decade or more, I have been musing about the drift in our society back toward organization along group lines, all the while realizing that there was no group for me – no legitimate group that I could join to further or defend my own particular social, cultural or linguistic interests.”
A serial creator of organizations, Tanton, who by then had already funded and founded an array of anti-immigration groups that included FAIR and CIS, added that “with the establishment of several national organizations behind me, I need to pick my targets carefully and in a way that reinforces what has gone before.” The plan makes clear that Tanton saw LEADERs as bolstering his anti-immigration work.
The document offers an argument as to why LEADERs, which is clearly a “European-American” (read: white) version of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, is needed: “[T[here is currently no socially acceptable umbrella organization to which persons of European ancestry can belong to defend and promote their common interests. Absent such an organization in a highly organized society, European-Americans will continue to see their history rewritten, their character and accomplishments denigrated, and their faults magnified. They will steadily lose ground and position to other groups… . For those not resigned to this gradual or not so gradual decline, a new organization tailored to the needs and interests of European-Americans as a group is essential.”
Joseph Guzzardi – listed as a member of white nationalist group VDARE’s “editorial collective”
Carol Joyal – a frightened suburbanite with odd notions of how immigrants parent their children and whose review of The Camp of the Saints terms it a “prophecy” of the Third World destruction of the West; everyone else just called the book racist
Richard Lamm – former Colorado governor who said that “new cultures” in the U.S. are “diluting what we are and who we are.”
Once again, here’s what the Southern Poverty Law Center has to say about Lamb, FAIR, and their connections to the Pioneer Fund:
Probably the best-known evidence of FAIR’s extremism is its acceptance of funds from a notorious, New York City-based hate group, the Pioneer Fund. In the mid-1980s, when FAIR’s budgets were still in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the group reached out to Pioneer Fund, which was established in 1937 to promote the racial stock of the original colonists, finance studies of race and intelligence, and foster policies of “racial betterment.” […]
The Pioneer Fund liked what it saw and, between 1985 and 1994, disbursed about $1.2 million to FAIR. In 1997, when the Phoenix New Times confronted Tanton about the matter, he “claimed ignorance about the Pioneer Fund’s connection to numerous researchers seemingly intent on proving the inferiority of blacks, as well as its unsavory ties to Nazism.” […]
One of FAIR’s long-time leaders, and a personal hero to Tanton, is the late Garrett Hardin, a committed eugenicist and for years a professor of human ecology at the University of California. Hardin, who died in 2003, was himself a Pioneer Fund grantee, using the fund’s money to expand his 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” In it, Hardin wrote, “Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.” […]
Hardin wasn’t alone. A current FAIR board member, three-time Democratic governor of Colorado Richard Lamm, sounded a similar theme in 1984, while still governor, saying “terminally ill people have a duty to die and get out of the way.”
K.C. McAlpin – an Islamophobe who wants to ban Muslims for ideological reasons: “Congress has used that power in the past to ban the immigration of Communist Party and National Socialist (Nazi) party members who were deemed to be threats to our national security. This case is no different.”
Robert D. Park – formerly with the Border Patrol, founder of the “Article IV – Section 4 Foundation,” a group which maintains that a Constitutional provision provides justification for defending the U.S. from “invasion”
Randy Pullen – former chairman of the Arizona GOP and old white expert on Black Lives Matter: “Yes black lives matter. The best way to end the slaughter of young black men is to take guns away from blacks as they are the main killers.”
Alan Simpson – Reagan-era immigration bill sponsor
John Philip Sousa IV – great grandson of the famous Sousa, nutty birther, and friend of Joe Arpaio
John Tanton – read this and this and this profile of this prolific white nationalist, racist, and eugenicist
Alan N. Weeden – member of the family who owns the Weeden Foundation, a major donor to white supremacist initiatives, and proponent of Secure ID schemes
Last week Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson went before the cameras to demand an apology from the Attorney General. He should have instead taken the opportunity to apologize to the people of the Commonwealth.
Maura Healey heard the growing complaints about abuses at Hodgson’s facilities — the highest suicide rate in the state, high recidivism, abuses of the mentally ill, overuse of solitary confinement, chronically overcrowded and dirty facilities, inadequate food and denial of medication and medical care, kickbacks from a phone vendor, civil rights violations of inmates, and violation of the Supreme Judaical Court’s ruling on ICE detentions. Hodgson is knee deep in lawsuits. The Attorney General was duty-bound to address the worst of the abuses so she sent a letter to Executive Office of Public Safety and Security’s Daniel Bennett asking him to investigate.
But to hear Tom Hodgson tell it, it’s all a big Democratic witch hunt. “It smacks of partisan politics, given my work on immigration.” His “work,” as he puts it, consists of relentless shilling for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as a hate group. On any given day Tom Hodgson can be heard on talk radio conflating immigrant children with MS-13 gang members, suggesting that Massachusetts mosques are Al Qaeda recruiting stations, or that immigrants are disease vectors. You probably heard him grandstanding from the Rio Grande or testifying for anti-immigrant legislation in Washington. Hodgson fancies himself an immigration expert but he can’t even handle the job he was actually hired to do — competently running a county jail.
Hodgson has only himself to blame for his jail’s suicide rate. “If something happens to me, I want people to know that I’ve been getting no help, no matter how many mental health slips I’ve put in,” Michael Ray wrote shortly before his suicide. Only weeks before, an article in the Globe asked, “Why Is The Suicide Rate In Bristol County Jails So High?” If Hodgson’s’ talk radio schedule hadn’t been so full he might have rolled up his sleeves and done something about it.
But on June 1, 2017 Tom Hodgson was having brunch with the Mass Fiscal Alliance, a group that promotes anti-immigrant rhetoric just like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, where Hodgson sits on the advisory board with its white supremacist founder, John Tanton. Nine days later Michael Ray was dead. Two weeks after Ray’s death, on June 28th, Hodgson was back flogging anti-immigrant talking points at a far-right event called “Hold Their Feet to the Fire.” Hodgson appeared with gay-basher Sandy Rios, FAIR president Dan Stein, VDARE contributor Michelle Malkin, white nationalist Congressman Steve King, Muslim-basher Robert Spencer, and Sebastian Gorka, another self-styled “Muslim expert” whose ties to a Hungarian Nazi group were too much for even the White House. Rather than dealing with the suicides Hodgson had better things to do.
So hats off to Maura Healey. She has nothing to apologize for. Unlike Hodgson, she’s actually doing her job — which includes seeking justice for those abused, neglected, and left to die by callous disregard for their human rights. The Sheriff must be held accountable. There is such a level of willful neglect and poor leadership at the Bristol County House of Correction that it is an insult to hear the Sheriff demanding an apology for the many lawsuits he has brought upon himself and his staff.
Would you let your county sheriff fix your teeth or provide home health visits for a parent? Would you permit him to perform surgery on you or provide psychiatric services? Of course not. Your county sheriff is a man with a badge and a gun. So why on earth would you expect him to provide expert treatment and rehabilitation to those with substance abuse problems? Unfortunately, this is exactly what’s happening right now in Massachusetts.
The Legislature just passed long-awaited criminal justice reforms. An important objective was to keep people with substance abuse disorder out of jail and provide needed treatment. Yet several recent jail projects are already undermining the intent of these reforms. And they show just how inclined we are, as a punitive society, to always look to incarceration as the solution to a social problem.
In Hampden County, MassLive reports, Sheriff Nick Cocchi is rolling out an 86-bed “treatment facility” for opioid abusers in his jail. Cocchi says it’s conceivable another 100 beds will be needed. Within the next 60 days people with substance abuse disorder will be civilly committed under Section 35 and incarcerated in either the Hampden County jail or in the Hampden County Sheriff’s WMRWC Mill Street facility.
Sheriff Cocchi, like many sheriffs in Massachusetts, is now left with “empty beds” in his jail because of drug courts and other diversion programs. In some jails these “beds” are now being filled by ICE detainees and civil commitment is seen as a mechanism for filling others. Cocchi says “he anticipates seeking additional funding from the legislature during next year’s budget” and that “the new programs are for now carved out through savings and reallocations from within the annual Sheriff’s Department budget.”
A new report in MassInc by Ben Forman and Michael Widmer (“Revisiting Correctional Expenditure Trends in Massachusetts”) documents the cost of incarcerating someone at the Hampden County jail at almost $80,000 per year. A 90-day Section 35 commitment would cost almost $20,000. Certainly, more comprehensive and cost effective treatment can be provided outside of jail.
Civil commitment can either be a part of a criminal sentence or (more and more likely) a process initiated by a “spouse, blood relative, guardian, a police officer, physician, or court official.” But if sheriffs and legislators believe addiction is a disease, why then is prison the cure? In Massachusetts there have been a number of lawsuits challenging the incarceration of substance abusers precisely because prisons are not even close to being treatment centers.
In Suffolk County Sheriff Steven Tompkins wants to “partner” with AdCare to run a Vivitrol program at his South Bay jail. The Suffolk County program will target “pre-trial detainees” — those not convicted of any crime. The ultimate responsibility for the safety and effectiveness of a client’s rehabilitation program will rest with a law enforcement official, not a psychological or medical professional. And by outsourcing services to a private corporation — what could possibly go wrong?
Vivitrol is both controversial and currently the the go-to treatment for sheriffs. Vivitrol blocks the “high” from opioids for up to a month. Other Medically Assisted Treatments (MAT) with buprenorphine or methadone are not favored by sheriffs, although Vivitrol is problematic in many ways and may result in fatal overdoses. The drug made news recently because the Trump administration’s opioid treatment plan is typical of his style of crony capitalism — “a single drug, manufactured by a single company, with mixed views on the evidence regarding its use.” Vivitrol will be the only drug treatment given federal prisoners. Through an “Inspiration Grant” Alkermes gave to the National Sheriff’s Association, prison staff and contractors all over the country get a “taste” of the drug, then are allowed to buy more with taxpayer money. No wonder that Vivitrol CEO Richard Pops says “the best days of Vivitrol are still ahead of it.”
Over in Worcester County Sheriff Lewis Evangelidis is building a $20 million “intake” section for his jail, he says, for people with substance abuse disorder. The intake process will also screen for gang affiliation, prior offenses, and determine if those about to be incarcerated are detoxing or need psychological services. But, given the suicide epidemic among county jail prisoners in Massachusetts, legislators ought to be asking why medical issues are not being treated in medical facilities run by real medical professionals.
Some feel the brand-new criminal reform bill is a good start. But Massachusetts could learn something from Portugal, where medical, not carceral, treatment is used for drug addiction. Under Portugal’s 2001 decriminalization law, “anyone caught with less than a 10-day supply of any drug — including heroin — gets mandatory medical treatment. No judge, no courtroom, no jail.”
Prison is an inhumane and ineffective solution for dealing with drug addiction. So why, in a state with some of the best medical care in the nation, can’t we can do better than turning over drug treatment to sheriffs? Why should a sheriff — having no clinical expertise and possibly even unethical relationships to vendors— be permitted to determine treatments for drug rehabilitation? Why not invest in community-based treatment on demand instead of arresting and incarcerating people for low-level crimes committed and driven by their addiction? And why aren’t we taking the tens of millions of dollars used to civilly commit people and instead investing it in health and mental care in our communities?
If we believe substance abuse disorder is a medical problem, let’s put our money where our mouth is — in treatment rather than more investment in jails.
The wording of Montigny’s bill was similar to Massachusetts House bill H.825, filed only two days earlier by state Representative Carlos Gonzalez, and co-sponsored by Carole Fiola, Russell Holmes, and Bud Williams. The House version had more teeth — it required that “the cost of local and long distance telephone service provided to prisoners in department of correction facilities and county houses of correction shall be the same as the rates charged for comparable residential telephone service.” Like the Senate version, Gonzalez’s bill also sought to put an end to kickbacks.
A second House bill, H.966, with identical wording, was filed not long after by Representative Chyna Tyler, and co-sponsored by Mike Connolly, Tricia Farley-Bouvier, Paul Heroux, Mary Keefe, Kay Khan, Elizabeth Malia, Juana Matias, Timothy Whelan, Bud Williams, and Senator James Eldridge.
These two House bills were identical to H.1614, which had been filed two years earlier by Benjamin Swan, and co-sponsored by Gloria Fox, Elizabeth Malia, Ellen Story, Carolos Gonzalez, and Mary Keefe. This 2015 version was placed on the back-burner until October 2016, when House Speaker Bob DeLeo scuttled it by sending it off for “study.”
Despite impressive work by the Legislature, the price-gouging and anti-corruption provisions in all these inmate phone service bills never made it into the Criminal Justice Omnibus bill, S.2371, passed recently and signed into law. Instead, legislators decided to punt these matters to a Department of Corrections “study”:
“The department of correction, in consultation with the department of telecommunications and cable, shall study and report on: (i) the cost of local and long-distance telephone service provided to prisoners in department of correction facilities and houses of correction; (ii) a comparison of the rates with comparable residential telephone service; and (iii) information relative to commissions and revenue collected as part of telephone services provided to prisoners in department of correction facilities and houses of correction. The report shall be filed with the house and senate chairs of the joint committee on the judiciary, the house and senate chairs of the joint committee on public safety and security and the house and senate chairs of the joint committee on telecommunications, utilities and energy not later than December 31. 2018.”
Unfortunately, the Department of Corrections has a glaring conflict of interest. The DOC itself profits from prison phone contract kickbacks, so it will be interesting to see what sorts of justifications they cook up for maintaining their own cushy deal with Securus.
It’s shameful and jaw-dropping but, despite commendable individual efforts, the Legislature has shown that it is unwilling to end the sleazy practices of price-gouging a mainly indigent prison population and permitting public officials to acccept kickbacks.
This is a story that could have been predicted in 2010.
On April 4th, Diante Yarber was gunned down in a hail of bullets in a Wal*Mart parking lot by four Barstow policemen. Yarber was killed and two others who were sitting in the car were seriously injured. The Washington Post added Diante to its growing list of police victims for 2018, noting that we are already ahead of last year’s figures by 26 fatalities.
Police claimed Yarber had stolen the car he was driving; it turned out to be his cousin’s. Police claimed he rammed two of their cruisers; but Yarber’s car was not found to have been in a collision, though it was destroyed by a fusillade of bullets. Police offered no reason for trying to kill four black passengers for a supposed property crime. But then nothing about the police account of the story makes much sense.
As an elected official with the sworn duty to pursue justice, DA Ramos must indict Jose Barrientos, Vincent Carrillo, Matthew Allen Helms – and Jimmie Alfred Walker, who screamed racial slurs and threatened Diante’s life just before murdering him.
Walker has a history of racially motivated violence. In 2010 sheriffs were called to the scene for a disturbance in Hesperia, San Bernardino County, and after their arrival Walker used racial slurs in their presence. After an initial plea deal, Walker was charged with assault and a hate crime, and then fired.
And that should have been the end of Walker’s license to kill. But following arbitration the racist officer was rehired and paid nearly $200,000 in back pay — only to escalate his hate into murder eight years later.
Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson spends a lot of time out of the office, organizing anti-immigration rallies on the Rio Grande, making appearances on right-wing talk shows — so frequently that he’s dropping the ball on keeping his inmates safe. Hodgson has the highest suicide rate in the Commonwealth and is now swimming in wrongful death and abuse suits. But that’s not the sheriff’s only problem. He also has some of the highest rates of recidivism — former inmates returning to prison. In fact, twice in the last five years Bristol County’s recidivism rates have topped all other counties.
The sheriff likes to tell voters his “get tough” prison policies discourage repeat offenders and keep the public safe: “Our firm, demanding approach to corrections works well,” he promised in one 2010 campaign ad. “Jail is not a country club. That’s why once you’ve done time in the Bristol County House of Corrections you won’t want to come back.”
Except for one problem — it’s completely untrue.
The Massachusetts Department of Corrections began compiling comparative statistics on 3-year recidivism rates for each county prison in 2012 — right about the time the sheriff made his dubious claims. Twice in the last five years Tom Hodgson has actually had the highest recidivism rates in the Commonwealth and when he’s not leading the pack he’s never far behind.
In 2009 the DOC began adding county data to prison releases. In 2012 it was ready to issue its first 3-year recidivism report. Of those released from county jails in 2009, after 3 years Bristol County had the highest recidivism rate of all counties (49%). Of those released in 2010 the county was 4th highest (of 13) with a rate of 44%. Hodgson maintained his 4th-highest ranking again with 2011 releases, scoring a 3-year recidivism rate of 38%. For 2012 releases Bristol County again had the highest recidivism rate in the state — 43%. The last figures we have from the Massachusetts Department of Corrections are for releases from Bristol County jails in 2013, showing a 3-year rate of 34% — Hodgson’s lowest in the last five years but still higher than the state average of 32%. You can view the reports yourself at https://www.mass.gov/lists/research-yearly-reports#three-year-recidivism-rates.
While recidivism surely involves individual choices, high and persistent recidivism is also typical of inadequate rehabilitation programs, bad prison policies, neglect, and abuse of inmates. Tom Hodgson’s punitive approach consists of overcrowding, deprivation, starvation, overuse of solitary confinement, denial of effective drug treatment programs and family visitation, and gouging inmates for canteen and phone calls. Unfortunately this abuse actually ensures that offenders leave prison without ever acquiring the necessary skills and treatment to stay out for good. And the number of hours the sheriff spends weekly promoting his racist immigration views — while shirking his real duties — seem to distract him from running his facilities humanely and efficiently.
Somebody needs to chain the sheriff to his desk so he can get prison suicides and recidivism under control. Hodgson’s abuse of prisoners isn’t doing anybody any good — neither the inmates nor their families, nor taxpayers footing the bill for legal expenses and award settlements resulting from his incompetent and cruel practices.
Today Susan Tordella at End Mass Incarceration Together (EMIT) wrote about putting prison employees to work implementing rehabilitation programs for inmates. Tordella reminded us that more rehabilitation correlates strongly with less recidivism and wrote that European prisons have markedly lower rates than the United States because they focus on change, not punishment. Only about 2% of the governor’s $640 million Department of Corrections budget is earmarked for programs for incarcerated people — and much of this is outsourced.
So as long as the state has money for guards, Tordella asks, why not utilize all the skills of corrections officers? She suggests CO’s could “serve as [rehabilitation] program officers who share a skill and/or knowledge with the people in their care. The program can be practically anything — culinary, GED preparation/tutoring, plumbing, carpentry, writing, running a small business, yoga/mindfulness, college or high school classes, computer repair/programming, job skills, trauma awareness/healing, or sales and communication skills…”
What a great idea. And why couldn’t the same thing be done at the county level? We looked at pay stubs for all county prisons from the Comptroller of the Commonwealth for the first quarter of 2018, determined the number of employees, and extrapolated annual costs for each county. The state only publishes prison capacity figures for DOC facilities but someone pointed us toward county overcrowding reports from 2015 — the last year reported — so we at least had a reasonable snapshot of inmate counts for each county as well.
The table below does not represent all the costs of running a prison — technology, infrastructure, vehicles, power, maintenance, food, medical, education, or rehabilitation — much of it outsourced. But the table paints a good picture of how expensive just the corrections officers are. Looking only at salaries, the price tag is $42,474 per year (in jailer costs) to throw someone in a Massachusetts county jail. Far more if you include the rest. With this obscene amount of money being spent, shouldn’t taxpayers be trying to have fewer repeat offenders, more education, and effective rehabilitation?
Here in Massachusetts we spend half a BILLION dollars on just the jailers for our county jails. There are 6,629 men and women who put handcuffs on another 11,480 men and women in 14 county facilities and leave education and rehabilitation to others. There are very close to 2 prisoners for each staff person — or 6 per shift — which makes one wonder why more of these employees couldn’t be put to work implementing rehabilitation program services.
Math and language are both quite clear what “all” means. If some parts of a whole are missing, overlooked, undervalued, forgotten — or routinely shot by police — then it’s nonsense to say that “all lives matter.” The hundreds of black people — many unarmed — whose lives are ended by police each year is a testament to how little black lives really do seem to matter — and the severity of a national crisis that demands comprehensive police reform and accountability.
Tanisha Anderson, Sandra Bland, Rumain Brisbon, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, John Crawford, Ezell Ford, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Akai Gurley, Eric Harris, Laquan McDonald, Dante Parker, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Alton Sterling. And now, most recently: Saheed Vassell.
The names just keep adding up. In 2015 a Guardian headline reported the scope of this carnage: “Young black men killed by US police at highest rate in year of 1,134 deaths.” The Guardian found that young black men are nine times more likely than any other American to be killed by police. Brittany Packnett, a member of Obama’s White House task force on policing, called the killings an “epidemic.”
Fast forward to 2017 and we now have a very different White House. When fielding a question about the 2016 killing of Alton Sterling by two Baton Rouge policemen, Trump’s spokeswoman called the killing a “local matter.” When pressed on the president’s responsibility to deal with an epidemic of police murders, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president’s role was to keep Americans safe from immigrants, to “grow the economy” and to avoid divisive issues. Meanwhile, Trump’s Justice Department, led by an unrepentant segregationist, wants to return to failed “broken windows” policing.
But we can’t blame everything on Trump and the Republican Party. For decades Americans have had better things to do than deal with police abuse.
In 1956 J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI set up the COINTELPRO program which, among other victims, targeted black dissident groups. It was inconceivable to White America that African-American unrest could be a response to second-class citizenship. Instead, dissidence was seen as a product of “outside agitation” by Communists and COINTELPRO was intended to “disrupt” and “neutralize” the agitators. In 1969 the FBI and Chicago police took “neutralization” to extremes when they murdered two Black Panthers, Fred Hampton and Mark Clay, in their sleep during a pre-dawn raid. Besides African-American groups, the Justice Department and FBI also launched attacks on indigenous rights groups, the peace movement, and numerous organizations on the left.
In 1967 Lyndon Johnson commissioned the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, otherwise known as the Kerner Commission. The 1968 Kerner Report chastised White America for its racism, though the word “racism” only appeared in a summary of the full report. Its dismal prediction was: “Our Nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” The Kerner Report was attacked from both right and left and its recommendations were generally ignored.
Chapter 11 of the Kerner Report (“Police and the Community”) looked at the toxic relationship between police and African-American communities and offered a number of recommendations including: reviewing police operations and eliminating “abrasive” practices; improving security in black communities; countering “dual standards” in law enforcement; establishing avenues for grievances and police accountability; adopting policy guidelines for community policing; developing community outreach programs; recruiting more African-American police officers and ensuring equal promotion; and funding “junior police officer” programs for young people in the community. It never happened.
In 1998 the Heritage Foundation re-examined the Kerner Commission’s recommendations and concluded it was hogwash concocted by a “Who’s Who of liberal elites.” The real problem, the foundation’s white Conservatives decided, was that poverty, drugs, and crime were symptoms of liberal coddling: “The greatest barrier that the poor face is not racism; it is elitism.” And, specifically, the second-class citizenship of Blacks was the result of their own moral failure: “The crisis we face as a country is fundamentally spiritual, and its answer lies in supporting the moral centers of influence that exist in our communities.”
Fifty years later White America still won’t face reality. If Rodney King didn’t show us that something was seriously wrong with the LAPD in 1991 — or if Amadou Diallo didn’t demonstrate how savage the NYPD’s racism was in 1999 — or if revelations of the existence of racist torture centers run by the Chicago police didn’t shock us — then Michael Brown’s murder in 2014 couldn’t possibly faze us either. None of the shockingly routine murders of black and brown men and children we see on YouTube ever seem to prick our consciences or lead to meaningful police reform.
The United States is swimming in badges and guns. To whites the nation increasingly feels like a police state, though it has long been such to African-Americans. New York City, with a population of 8.5 million, has 35,000 officers — down from 40,000 in 2000. The U.S. has between 200 and 241 police officers for every 100,000 people. That’s about three quarters of a million officers. Many these policemen are armed with unprecedented military and surveillance gear. SWAT teams regularly deliver simple warrants or conduct raids for small amounts of marijuana. We’ve seen armed personnel carriers and tanks in city streets. And when police show up at a demonstration nowadays, they’re dressed and armed to kill.
Since 9-11 more than 2 million Americans have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department of Justice runs a program called COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) which provides grants to communities to turn “vets to cops.” In 2016 the DOJ handed out $119 million to help pay for approximately 900 policemen. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) has created a recruitment guide for veterans, and veterans can use their GI Bill benefits while attending police academy. America increasingly says “thank you for your service” to its warriors by re-deploying them domestically.
But programs like these, and hiring practices that favor ex-military, have a serious downside. By prioritizing military experience over diversity, police departments put communities at risk. For example, the San Jose Police Department, a force with serious racism problems, sees veterans as naturals for the police “because we have a paramilitary structure, [and] military veterans often times can easily integrate.”
Then there is the residue of war. Ellen Kirshman, a psychologist who works with police officers, says that between 19% and 34% of all officers show some sign of PTSD: “This is pretty alarming. An officer with PTSD cannot think clearly. Is probably hyper vigilant, has a short fuse, may not be sleeping well because of nightmares, might be policing in a reckless manner…” And this is precisely what one frequently sees in videos of police encounters with black citizens.
One of the recommendations of the Kerner Report was what we might today call “community policing.” But this is a vague phrase that often translates to “public relations.” Citizen ride-alongs, walk-alongs, Police Athletic Leagues, toy drives, and pretty blue coffee mugs (like mine) are substitutes for real citizen oversight of hiring, management, and holding sworn peace officers to account.
But community policing has always been a vague buzzword — from the 1968 Kerner Commission to the 1970 Knapp Commission. Vague or not, last year Senator Jeanne Shaheen sponsored unanimously-adopted resolution S.288 recognizing “National Community Policing Week.” America may be a little hazy on what community policing actually entails — but we’re crystal clear that it shouldn’t involve oversight or accountability.
In 1991 Rep. William Edwards introduced H.R.2972, the Police Accountability Act of 1991. The bill made it “unlawful for any governmental authority to engage in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers that deprives persons of their constitutional or statutory rights, privileges, or immunities.” The bill had only 10 co-sponsors and never made it out of committee.
In 2000 John Conyers Jr. sponsored H.R. 3927, the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act of 2000, which sought to impose national standards on law enforcement as we currently do in education. It had only thirteen Democratic co-sponsors and never made it to a vote. In 2015 Conyers again filed H.R.2875, this time with 48 co-sponsors. But again it died.
In 2015 Rep. Henry Johnson Jr. sponsored H.R.1102, the Police Accountability Act of 2015, which had 15 co-sponsors and died. The bill amended “title 18, United States Code, to provide a penalty for assault or homicide committed by certain State or local law enforcement officers, and for other purposes.” Again in 2017 Johnson filed H.R.4331, with 8 lonely co-sponsors. Again, it died.
In 2017 Rep. Gwen Moore sponsored H.R. 3060, Preventing Tragedies between Police and Communities Act of 2017, which required that police departments receiving federal funding train officers in de-escalation techniques. The bill had only 24 co-sponsors and died in committee — having also failed in 2016.
In 2017 Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee sponsored H.R.47: Kalief’s Law, which sought to amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to provide for the humane treatment of youths in police custody. The bill had only one co-sponsor and there was never a roll call vote.
Whether a majority or minority in Congress, police accountability has never been a priority for Democrats or Republicans. E. Tammy Kim, in an excellent piece in the Nation (“What to Do About the Police”), writes that, “as it stands, the three branches of government are unwilling to regulate the police. Mayors and governors defer to police chiefs and union presidents; judges make cheesecloth of the Fourth and 14th Amendments; and legislators vote again and again to increase law-enforcement budgets.”
In a 2015 ruling the Supreme Court gave police broad latitude to shoot at citizens recklessly and with impunity, when it rejected a suit against a Texas police officer who fired into a car with a high power rifle from an overpass, paralyzing a driver. The officer joked: “How’s that for proactive?” Just this week the Supreme Court again ruled 7-2 in Kisela v. Hughes that police officers can not be sued for arbitrary and unnecessary shootings — effectively granting law enforcement a different set of Constitutional rights than the average citizen enjoys. In dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the ruling another sign of “unflinching willingness” to protect rogue cops and wrote that the decision “transforms the doctrine [of qualified immunity] into an absolute shield for law enforcement officers.”
White America may have no appetite for dealing with the racism at the heart of so much police abuse, but we could still hire cops who better represent communities and hold the bad apples accountable. The National Urban League has proposed ten Police Reform and Accountability Recommendations and the ACLU and NAACP have proposed reforms as well.
If the Supreme Court sees police as above the law, then it is incumbent upon Congress to clarify the responsibilities of, and punishments for, sworn officers of the law. But this may be a long way off — or even impossible to achieve in many states. For this reason it is up to municipal voters to select district attorneys and mayors willing to investigate and prosecute police misconduct. It is up to municipalities to create oversight boards with real powers to conduct independent investigations. It is up to state attorneys general to conduct automatic investigations into any police killing. Citizens must know that they can observe and film officers doing their work and not be arrested for exercising their Constitutional right to do so. And yet some states have actually passed laws that limit police accountability.
America needs to begin taking its epidemic of police murders seriously and pass tough reform legislation. Voters need to start choosing politicians willing to take on the root causes of this epidemic. With one exception, every piece of reform legislation mentioned above was sponsored by an African-American. And that ought to tell you something — that if citizens really want police reform with teeth, then maybe we ought to vote for more candidates who have a personal stake in actually making it happen.
Felice Freyer at the Globe reports that the US Department of Justice is investigating violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act in Massachusetts jails. But Freyer adds that the investigation does not extend to county jails. Prisoners in county lockup basically undergo forced withdrawal (“cold turkey” treatment) because prisons “do not provide the two main medications to treat addiction — buprenorphine and methadone.”
Instead, “Massachusetts prisoners nearing discharge are offered a shot of Vivitrol, a drug that blocks the high from opioids for up to a month.” And that’s it. Vivitrol made news recently because the Trump administration’s opioid treatment plan is typical of his style of crony capitalism — “a single drug, manufactured by a single company, with mixed views on the evidence regarding its use.” Vivitrol will be the only drug treatment given federal prisoners.
Alkermes, the manufacturer of Vivitrol, works just like a real drug dealer. Through an “Inspiration Grant” Alkermes gave to the National Sheriff’s Association, prison staff and contractors get a “taste” of the drug, then are allowed to buy more with taxpayer money. No wonder that Vivitrol CEO Richard Pops says “the best days of Vivitrol are still ahead of it.”
It is unconscionable that our criminal justice system incarcerates people with drug addictions and then — instead of offering real treatment — administers a questionable drug upon leaving prison for the benefit of a single-source vendor. The Globe’s piece only confirms what ex-inmates have told BCCJ. Despite a quarter of a million dollar grant from the Feds for drug treatment, Bristol County is either squandering or simply pocketing the money. The main occupants of our county prisons are substance abusers — and their time spent in these harsh facilities always ends without meaningful drug rehabilitation.
Again, we implore state investigators — the Attorney General, the State Auditor, the governor, anyone who will listen — investigate the mis-treatment and non-treatment of people in our county prisons. Prison should be a place for rehabilitation, not abuse.
Bristol County Massachusetts is in the midst of a prison suicide epidemic. At this point nobody is doing anything about it although there is mounting alarm at the growing body count.
Yesterday WGBH News ran the first of two reports on prison suicides in the Commonwealth. The report, written by New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR) reporters Jenifer McKim and Chris Burrell, took Bristol County sheriff Tom Hodgson to account for fudging details of his self-investigation into the death of Michael Ray on June 10, 2017. According to the sheriff, who deflected blame for failing to monitor Ray, “we have very high standards here and we’re constantly looking for ways to improve.”
Hodgson blames his suicides on the opioid epidemic — though Ray had been in custody for almost two years and drugs should not have figured into the death. The fact is, Michael Ray was not getting the help he needed for depression. “If something happens to me, I want people to know that I’ve been getting no help, no matter how many mental health slips I’ve put in,” Ray wrote shortly before his death.
A month before Ray’s suicide, the same NECIR reporters ran an article in the Globe asking, Why Is The Suicide Rate In Bristol County Jails So High? Scarcely a month later Ray was dead. Even if Hodgson was preoccupied by his busy talk show schedule, the Globe article should have sent a signal that things needed to change at his facilities.
But on June 1, 2017 Tom Hodgson was having brunch with the Mass Fiscal Alliance, a group that promotes anti-immigrant rhetoric like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, where Hodgson sits on the advisory board with its white supremacist founder, John Tanton. Nine days later Michael Ray was dead.
Two weeks after Ray’s death, on June 28th, Tom Hodgson was back selling anti-immigrant xenophobia at a far-right hate group event called “Hold Their Feet to the Fire.” Hodgson appeared with gay-basher Sandy Rios, xenophobe Dan Stein, conspiracy theorist Michelle Malkin, white supremacist Tom Roten, white supremacist congressman Steve King, Muslim-basher Robert Spencer, and real-life fascist and anti-semite Sebastian Gorka. Rather than running jails humanely and competently, Hodgson had better things to do.
Despite Tom Hodgson’s denials of responsibility for a suicide rate twice the state average, we tend to agree with Governor Charlie Baker: “Look, any time anybody kills themselves in a prison, something clearly went wrong.”
Something clearly is going wrong, and it’s time public officials hold Hodgson’s feet to the fire.
In 2015 Brandon St. Pierre committed suicide while in custody at Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s Bristol County prison. St. Pierre’s suicide was one of a growing number of suicides at the facility — one of fourteen county jails in the state that accounts for a quarter of all suicides. St. Pierre’s name was mentioned in a number of articles published by the New Bedford Standard Times, the Boston Globe, WGBH, the Huffington Post, and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, which won an award last fall for its reporting.
On February 28th Tom Hodgson bent the ear of a reporter at Dartmouth Week, patting himself on the back for all the positive changes that have supposedly been made at his facilities. But the Dartmouth Week piece was mainly a report on Hodgson’s own investigation of himself — in which the sheriff cast blame on the inmates’ mental health and drug issues for their own deaths.
It was another piece of a pre-emptive public relations campaign from the wily politician — pre-emptive because, once again, Tom Hodgson is being sued for violating prisoners’ Constitutional rights. A new lawsuit against the Bristol County sheriff joins two others within the last year.
On February 21st Barbara Kice, Brendan St. Pierre’s mother, filed suit in Massachusetts Superior Court [docket number 18CV00189]. Kice’s lawsuit alleges that Sheriff Hodgson, Corrections Officer Dylan Bedard, and an unspecified “Jane Doe” violated St. Pierre’s Fourteenth Amendment rights by improperly caring for a person known to be suicidal.
We especially appreciate the ongonig reporting from the Globe and NECIR. And there is a lot more for journalists to cover than a whiskered personality who thinks xenophobia is his day job. It is more critical than ever that the public is informed about the ongoing suicides in our community and the systemic abuses behind them.
We are distracted by so many simultaneous assaults on human and civil rights today that it’s easy to forget those caught up in America’s massive prison population — the largest in the world. This includes people who need to stay away from the rest of us for a long, long time. But most of those languishing in American prisons today are guilty of lesser offenses — usually drugs and theft to support their addictions. Once they enter the “system” America’s Puritanical instincts kick in and we brand them with a scarlet letter for the rest of their lives. And if we don’t forget them completely, we banish all thought of how prison abuse will scar them — and society — for decades to come. Lock ’em up and throw away the key.
Unfortunately, the criminal “justice” system runs without oversight by elected officials who have the thinnest of mandates.
In September Massachusetts voters will select primary candidates. Forget gerrymandering, forget voter suppression, forget Russian hackers. Massachusetts itself inflicts the most damage on its own democracy through apathy and patronage. In the last state election only 34 of 160 state House races had challengers from more than one party — an uncontested rate of 79%. With this level of apathy, voters truly get the democracy they deserve — patronage, careerists or grandstanding politicians. And a substandard, inhuman, expensive prison system.
Southeastern Massachusetts has three Trump Republican sheriffs who participate in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 287(g) programs. Bristol County’s sheriff sits on the advisory board of a group the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a hate group. County Democrats elected a Republican, Thomas Hodgson, over a Democrat in the 2010 sheriff’s race. Hodgson’s facilities are known for horrific conditions, health and safety violations, abuse of solitary confinement, and abnormally high suicide rates. Yet Bristol Country voters haven’t tried to hold the sheriff accountable, nor have state and local agencies. It will be up to voters to replace him in 2022.
But Hodgson ran unopposed in 2016 — like a majority of sheriffs that year.
If the school-to-prison pipeline ends in overcrowded, unsanitary cells or solitary confinement, a critical junction on that line is the DA’s office. Nationwide, elected district attorneys have enormous latitude to prosecute (or not), lay on trumped-up charges (or not), send the accused to lockup (or not), set bail (reasonable or not), negotiate plea deals, and seek jail time or diversion programs.
Often outright enemies of civil liberties, Massachusetts district attorneys have destroyed lives, in many cases defending tainted convictions with tainted evidence, and nine out of eleven state DAs staunchly opposed criminal justice reform legislation. Nationwide, district attorneys have discovered that running on a “law and order” platform — going after the weakest and most vulnerable in society by labeling them “superpredators” — is a winning election strategy.
In Bristol County, for example, DA Thomas Quinn used the full force of his office to come down with vengeance on a troubled teenager who encouraged an equally troubled friend to end his life. Mercifully, a judge gave the defendant a fraction of the 12-20 year sentence the DA wanted. Though Quinn says he likes the idea of drug courts, he wants to extend incarceration without bail for super “dangerous” individuals from 120 days to one year. Quinn already bears considerable responsibility for the miserable overcrowding in the Bristol County jails he has filled, whose inmates are subjected to abusive conditions by the sheriff.
Very few voters know who their county DA is — much less anything about his handiwork. The ACLU recently announced an initiative called What a difference a DA makes. Since a district attorney is an elected official who can potentially do a lot of damage, the ACLU’s message is — “buyer beware!” By late summer voters should have a scorecard on their district attorneys. But this still won’t solve the problem of uncontested races. And it’s a little late for this election cycle.
In Massachusetts judges are selected, not elected. Selection is the responsibility of the governor and the Governor’s Council, a body composed of representatives from the state’s eight Senatorial districts and chaired by the Lieutenant Governor. Besides selecting judges, notaries, and justices of the peace, the Council considers pardons and commutations. In Bristol County the previous Councillor for the First District seemed to alternate between two brothers — Democrat Oliver Cipollini and Republican Charles Cipollini. Voters didn’t seem to notice which brother stood for election or care that the race was uncontested.
Today, representing the First District (Bristol, Plymouth, Barnstable, and Duke counties), we have Joseph C. Ferreira, former police chief in Somerset, a former Assistant DA, and now a lawyer at Lynch & Lynch. At the Democratic caucuses on February 11th Ferreira and his signature collectors signaled he was running on a “law and order” platform — tougher judges, tougher sentences. In a 2015 interview with the Fall River Herald, Ferreira spelled out one of his rules for selecting judges: “You never want to see someone lean to the left too much.” Whether you like Ferreira or not, this is what the Democratic Party is currently offering.
If 2018 is anything like 2016, Joe Ferreira will run another uncontested race in both the primary and general election.
Few people who listened to Donald Trump’s first State of the Union speech could fail to miss his remarks on minorities and immigrants. This is a demagogue playing to a far-right base by expanding a deportation machine. This is an unrepentant racist who now makes it clear he doesn’t want even legal immigration if it involves brown people.
In New Hampshire since last summer American citizens on I-93 have been stopped at roadblocks in Thornton, forced to show their ids, and had their cars searched in violation of what’s left of the Fourth Amendment. In Fort Lauderdale last week, agents stopped and boarded a Greyhound bus and again demanded to see everyone’s id. A video of the spectacle provoked widespread condemnation.
This is not a sign of a healthy democracy, nor is it an America most of us want to live in. It’s a little too reminiscent of the pogroms of Germany of 1935. And this is why we need the Safe Communities Act, now before the Massachusetts legislature.
State legislators want to protect the public, and they also want to provide law enforcement officials with the tools to do it. Anti-immigrant organizations like FAIR, and spokesmen for FAIR like Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson, would have us believe Trump’s claim that an overwhelming number of immigrants from Latin America are rapists and cartel members. Those who know the immigrant community know that this is complete hogwash. But some legislators fear making the wrong call.
Hodgson and his former segregationist friend Jeff Sessions claim the Safe Communities Act is a “sanctuary” bill that prevents immigration agents from doing their job. Sessions, like Hodgson, even wants to arrest mayors of cities who won’t deputize their police as ICE agents.
But nobody’s stopping ICE from doing its work. The Safe Communities Act now moving through committee simply says that Massachusetts taxpayers aren’t picking up the tab for federal policing, and we’re not going to go out of our way to deputize our police and prison officials as ICE agents. The bill also says “no” to registries of Muslims, Latinos — or anyone else on the wrong side of the president.
Fear merchants like Tom Hodgson are hoping you won’t read the legislation and will believe whatever they tell you about it. But the Safe Communities Act is 154 lines double spaced, and it’s not difficult to read or understand.
An important calculation the legislature must make when voting on “Safe Communities” is whether the risks to democracy of expanding the president’s deportation machine outweigh any benefits of getting rid of what the president calls “bad hombres.” Most of the deportees we’ve been hearing about recently are guilty of 20 year-old DUI’s and other low level offenses. Expanding a police state to go after them will have only negative consequences.
Let’s leave the determination of dangerousness to local cops and DA’s — and not willingly join the president’s pogrom against brown people. Encourage your legislator to pass the Safe Communities Act. The quality of our democracy literally depends on more states passing courageous legislation like this.
There is a great piece in the Massachusetts political blog HesterPrynne about the Trumpian evil lurking beneath Charlie Baker’s popularity with the legislature. For starters Baker funnels money to the national GOP, hardly a troop of Boy Scouts. And now there’s Baker’s ICE bill, entitled “An Act empowering law enforcement to cooperate with the United States to transfer custody of convicted criminals.”
As anyone familiar with 287(g) agreements knows, prisons participating in ICE agreements do not exclusively transfer custody of “convicted criminals” but instead any undocumented person who ends up in jail for even minor offenses. Baker’s bill capitalizes on his bizarre popularity with Democratic legislators to sell Jeff Sessions’ and Donald Trump’s racist immigration policies.
HesterPrynne points out that ICE handovers should already have been settled with the Supreme Judicial Court’s Lunn decision. Baker’s bill is an attempt to neuter its provisions:
On Tuesday, the Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the immigration bill the Governor filed in August in response to a decision by the Supreme Judicial Court. That decision, which held that no authority exists to allow Massachusetts law enforcement officials to detain persons who are wanted only because of civil immigration violations, has barred police in the state from assisting with the President’s deportation agenda by holding such persons until ICE can come pick them up.
She also notes that if Baker’s “bill were to become law, he’d be the one to enlist our State Police in Trump’s reprehensible cause.”
The Joint Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled hearings in Boston on Tuesday, January 30, from 1:00-5:00 PM in Room A-2, to consider the governor’s bill. Written testimony can be submitted at the hearing, to the Committee on the Judiciary in Room 136, by mail, or by email sent to Philip McLaughlin. If you would like to travel to the State House for the hearings, let us know. Maybe we can organize something.
Reminder:
On January 29thBristol County for Correctional Justice is holding a meeting at 105 William Street, Suite 26, at 6:30pm. Please try to make it. We have several important issues to discuss.
Speaking at a hearing earlier this month to discuss the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office’s (BCSO) collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the arrest and detention of undocumented immigrants, Sheriff Tom Hodgson described his targets as criminals responsible for the most heinous crimes — murder, rape, narcotics trafficking. But, as usual, the sheriff could offer no evidence to support the charge. Instead, he ridiculed and humiliated citizens who challenged him.
About 25 people, local activists, public defenders and lawyers, and some from the Cape and Providence, attended. Sheriff Hodgson who had invited citizens to discuss his department’s participation with ICE under a program known as 287(g), was flanked by Todd Lyons, Deputy Field Office Director, ICE Boston; William Sullivan, 287(g) Program Director, ICE Boston; Steven Souza, Superintendent of Security, BCSO; and Liunetty Couto, Director of Deportation Services, BCSO.
Five minutes into the hearings Sheriff Hodgson launched into his customary scary talking points about dangerous immigrants, asserting, “I took an oath to protect you,” claiming that inmates in his jails are there “because they committed a crime,” though fewer than half the prisoners have been convicted. Most inmates are there simply because they cannot post bail.
The sheriff asserted that 95 percent of violent crimes, the drug trade, and sex trafficking were committed by illegal aliens. When challenged for evidence, he attacked the questioner personally, declaring the man couldn’t possibly know the “real story” because he was not in law enforcement. Another questioner, a lawyer, received a similar condescending response.
Even the ICE officers acknowledged that Hodgson’s “detainees” were often guilty of lesser offenses such as operating a vehicle without a license.
Attendees objected to the panel’s claims that, before 287(g), dangerous criminals were frequently released from jail. Exactly what type of criminals had been released? Neither the sheriff nor the ICE officers could provide a substantive answer. One questioner complained about the panel’s use of anecdotes and misleading statistics, and that no data actually substantiated claims that a majority of detainees had been picked up for violent crimes. An ICE officer promised to get back to her with some data.
While the sheriff gave the impression he had sweeping powers to deploy local resources to help ICE, one ICE officer cautioned that, with the abandonment of the 287(g) Task Force model, local law enforcement can no longer conduct raids but is limited to investigating and holding prison inmates.
Of particular concern was that Massachusetts taxpayers pay for the sheriff’s decision to work for the Trump administration. Hodgson dug in, telling attendees he was not going to apologize for protecting the public. He said being elected justified his personal decision to partner with ICE. He rejected the notion that voters elected him to do a specific job — running the county jails. And the sheriff tried to downplay 287(g) costs. Both Hodgson and ICE insisted that ICE paid for all training, lodging and travel for personnel from BCSO during training. But this is simply not true.
The BCSO’s Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with ICE states that Massachusetts taxpayers pay for “personnel expenses, […] local transportation, […] salaries and benefits, including overtime, of all of its personnel being trained […] and of those personnel performing the regular functions of the participating BCSO personnel while they are receiving training. The BCSO will cover the costs of all BCSO personnel’s travel, housing, and per diem affiliated with the training required for participation in this MOA.”
Several questioned whether ICE knew about various abuses at the prisons. Attendees challenged Hodgson’s claim that his facilities were rated in the top ten percent of American prisons when so many complaints have been filed against them. The sheriff refused to acknowledge the highest prison suicide rates in the Commonwealth, class-action lawsuits for human rights abuses, and repeated citations for violations of health and safety regulations.
Hodgson denounced a recent lawsuit by Prisoner’s Legal Services over abuse of solitary confinement and made derogatory comments about the plaintiffs. He insisted that those accusing him of mismanaging his jail, treating inmates cruelly, failing to properly oversee psychological treatment of prisoners, or dealing with the suicide rate, were either “politically motivated” or acting out of venality or pecuniary interest.
When asked about violations of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s Lunn ruling, which constrains ICE detentions, Hodgson feigned ignorance. One attendee refreshed the sheriff’s memory, mentioning an illegally-detained inmate’s name. But Hodgson waved that one away as well. It was surprising to hear a Republican, from the party of state rights, claim, “federal law supersedes state law.”
Hodgson says he took an oath to “protect” us all. But he seems more dedicated to protecting himself and the extrajudicial activities he has undertaken in service to a personal agenda. The question citizens of Bristol County might reasonably ask is — who will protect us from Sheriff Hodgson and the cost of his misfeasance?
On September 24, 2009, Suffolk Superior Court Judge John C. Cratsley ruled in a class-action lawsuit that Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson was housing prisoners under cruel and unusual conditions. According to Prison Legal News, “originally filed in 1998, the suit alleged that Hodgson was improperly triple-bunking prisoners at the Ash Street Jail, a pre-Civil War-era facility. The lawsuit also claimed that prisoners were being forced to sleep on the floor in ‘boats’ — portable bunks — and in common areas. The lawsuit was amended in 2004 to add a claim concerning Hodgson’s practice of ‘dry-celling’ prisoners at the Dartmouth House of Correction. ‘Dry-celled’ prisoners did not have access to a toilet.” Nevertheless, the prison capacity in Bristol County has fluctuated between 300% and 384% of the capacity the prisons were designed for.
Over the years, Tom Hodgson has been involved in numerous lawsuits, but conditions rarely seem to improve at facilities under his control. Among the frequent allegations — abuse of prisoners, violations of a State Judicial Court ruling barring unconstitutional ICE detentions, starving and denial of medical treatment, and filthy conditions in both the Dartmouth and New Bedford lockups.
In the last two years, inspections of the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office ICE Facility conducted by Nicholas Gale, a Massachusetts Environmental Health Inspector, have turned up repeat violations of health and safety standards: see reports on April 19, 2016 and November 21, 2016 and April 25, 2017. Likewise, the Women’s Center in North Dartmouth is not in compliance either: see this report on November 16, 2015. Conditions are the worst at the Ash Street Jail: see reports on June 5, 2013 and June 12, 2015 and January 12, 2016. You can download all these reports as a single PDF.
Each includes the following warning:
“This facility does not comply with the Department’s Regulations cited above. In accordance with 105 CMR 451.404, please submit a plan of correction within 10 working days of receipt of this notice, indicating the specific corrective steps to be taken, a timetable for such steps, and the date by which correction will be achieved. The plan should be signed by the Superintendent or Administrator and submitted to my attention, at the address listed above.”
Still, not one federal, state, or municipal agency has ever made the sheriff account for these violations. And it’s not for lack of reporting. Each is dutifully reported to a slew of bureaucrats — Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and New Bedford Departments of Health, both the Commissioner and Director of the Department of Corrections, various policy units within the state government, the governor, the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office itself, and clerks of both the Massachusetts House and Senate.
But nothing.
Countless newspaper articles have been written about the dungeon-like environment at the Ash Street Jail, the epidemic of suicides in Bristol County jails, and the cruelty of the sheriff.
Still nothing.
Human beings are being warehoused in inhuman, unsanitary conditions.
“No mans person shall be restrained or imprisoned by any Authority whatsoever, before the law hath sentenced him thereto, If he can put in sufficient securitie, bayle or mainprise, for his appearance, and good behaviour in the meane time, unlesse it be in Crimes Capital, and Contempts in open Court, and in such cases where some expresse act of Court doth allow it.” — Body of Liberties (1641), the oldest codification of Massachusetts Colonial law.
Yesterday two members of BCCJ attended an informational meeting on the Massachusetts Bail Fund at the UMASS Law School in Dartmouth. The meeting was organized by Jesse Purvis, National Lawyers Guild, UMASS Law Chapter.
Jessica Thrall, a federal public defender and member of the Massachusetts Bail Fund’s Steering Committee, spoke first. She outlined one stark injustice of the criminal justice system — that a poor person unable to post bail is locked away in miserable conditions and lacks the ability to consult and communicate freely with lawyers and family.
Prisoners under these circumstances are often needlessly warehoused for months in jail at considerable cost. When finally offered a plea for “time served,” they will often accept the plea deal simply to escape the abusive conditions — even though they are innocent. Thus, for the poor, and particularly for people of color, the criminal justice system creates a grinding conveyor belt from poverty to “criminality” — even when the accused is actually innocent. And once the indigent accused has been systemically transformed into a “criminal” more injustice awaits him/her in the workplace and in a probation system that can hound him/her for decades.
Thrall mentioned the recent case of Jahmal Brangan, who sat in the Hampden County jail for three and a half years because he could not post bail. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled last August in the case of Brangan v. Commonwealth, 082517 MASC, SJC-12232, in which Brangan’s “bail order violated his right to due process because the judge failed to give adequate consideration to his financial resources, and set bail in an amount so far beyond his financial means that it resulted in his long-term detention pending resolution of his case.”
The justices ruled that “In setting the amount of bail for a defendant, a judge must consider the defendant’s financial resources but is not required to set bail in an amount the defendant can afford if other relevant considerations weigh more heavily than the defendant’s ability to prove the necessary security for his appearance at trial.” It was a small victory, but now the door is open to more reasonable bail amounts.
Massachusetts has a system in which defendants post cash bail in court (and pay a clerk a nonrefundable $40 fee for the privilege). Bail bondsmen cannot legally operate in the Commonwealth.
The Massachusetts Bail Fund began in Suffolk and Middlesex counties, but has been expanded to Essex, Norfolk, Worcester, Plymouth and Bristol. The Fund provides up to $500 in bail to defendants who are already represented by a public defender and can prove indigence. To date the Fund has bailed out about 700 defendants, and of those about 60% of the cases were immediately dismissed. When asked about defaults — defendants running and causing the Fund to forfeit its $500 — Thrall noted that this has only happened six times — 6 out of 700 — a statistic Thrall says should make the Commonwealth think twice about requiring any amount of bail for minor offenses.
Attendees wanted to know how the process works — and it works only because of the thirty or so volunteers who do the thankless work of actually bailing out indigent people. Attendees had a chance to hear from a remarkable couple about the process.
Jan and Chuck Bichsel are two of four volunteers in Bristol County. They have been volunteering for about seven months with the Mass Bail Fund and have handled about a dozen “releases,” which play out something like this: (1) volunteer(s) receive an email from the Bail Fund coordinator informing them of the release and the jail (Ash Street or BCSO), contact information, telephone numbers, and public defender; (2) the volunteers post the $500 (or lesser amount) personally at the prison, which may entail appearing in the evening, spending up to six hours waiting for prison staff to respond; (3) coordinating with family to pick up the released individual, or even driving him home if the family has no transportation; (4) appearing at a court hearing many months (or years) later in order to recover the bail money for the Fund.
Volunteers are not personally responsible for bail funds. Money “up-fronted” by volunteers is quickly reimbursed by the Fund. Releases, at least in Bristol County, are handled only during the first two weeks of every month (which means that the earliest release for many follows two weeks of incarceration).
It takes a thoughtful, patient person to do this work. Jan Bichsel joked that she might look like the “crocheting type” but that it took every bit of patience and focus to work with a prison system designed to crush people (maybe she is the crocheting type after all). The couple invited prospective volunteers to “ride along” with them before deciding if this work was for them.
To contribute to the bail fund, go to https://www.massbailfund.org/donate.html
In a front-page piece by Curt Brown (“Mentally ill inmates sue Sheriff Hodgson”) in today’s print version of the Standard Times, Bristol County Sheriff Hodgson disputes charges in a lawsuit brought against him — allegations similar to those BCCJ heard from former inmates whom we interviewed:
“It’s a frivolous lawsuit,” Hodgson told the Standard-Times. The sheriff also questioned the timing of the suit since the state legislature is now considering a sweeping criminal justice reform package.
Hodgson claims his facility has “never received a deficiency on any inspection of its mental or physical health care” and that “the Bristol County House of Corrections ranks in the top 10 percent of all correctional facilities in the nation.”
That’s not for quality — but it’s certainly in the top 10 percent of county prison suicides.
But Tom Hodgson didn’t acknowledge that he’s lost a number of suits for abusive treatment of prisoners. In 2009, for instance, the sheriff was accused of housing prisoners in cruel and unusual conditions — and he lost the case.
If Hodgson’s weasel words are true — that inspections do not reveal deficiencies related to abuse — then the state had better start conducting thorough inspections.
For the sheriff a good defense requires dispensing with facts of public record. “The lawsuit is full of misinformation and flat-out lies,” spokesman Jonathan Darling told the Standard Times. “Shame on Prisoner Legal Services for filing such a ridiculous lawsuit and wasting taxpayer resources.”
Yet it’s hardly “ridiculous” when Hodgson has a history of abusing prisoners. And the sheriff wasn’t worrying about waste when he squandered millions of dollars in taxpayer resources pursuing a losing case all the way to the Supreme Court. In fact, wasting taxpayer money — like the suicides in his jails — stand out among Massachusetts county jails. Which is why we are asking for thorough investigations.
Three neighboring counties in the bottom right quadrant of the Commonwealth have Republican sheriffs in otherwise Democratic districts. It could have something to do with demographics — or maybe just neglect and Boston-centric politics. But it is surely a sign that not all is well with a party that habitually runs weak sheriff candidates — or none at all.
Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings recently joined fellow Republicans, Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson and Plymouth County Sheriff Joe McDonald, in signing a 287(g) agreement with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Under such agreements ICE permits prison officials to volunteer as federal immigration agents. The Trump administration, which strongly promotes the program, sees 287(g) as a tool in its larger mass-deportation strategy. And the Republican sheriffs know it. “The president said our role is probably the most critical because we know the players in our communities and we know how to find them,” Bristol County Sheriff Tom Hodgson said.
You wouldn’t know it from Hodgson’s many statements on right-wing talk radio, but 287(g) is not very popular — by any stretch of the imagination. At present ICE has agreements in only 18 states, and with only 60 law enforcement agencies. Massachusetts joins Arizona, California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Ohio — and the entire South — as participants. Now generally limited to a “jails” model because of previous abuses in the older “task force” and “hybrid” models, 287(g) agreements have a long history of civil rights abuses. For instance, in 2011 Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s agreement with ICE was terminated for civil rights abuses.
These ICE agreements impose costs of running a federal law enforcement program on state government and redeploy state corrections employees as federal agents. Sheriffs who enter into the agreements do so out of personal politics — not as part of their job description. And many local police forces find 287(g) programs undermine community trust.
According to the American Immigration Council, ICE agreements with local sheriffs are not properly supervised by ICE. Both the Boston Globe and the New York Times have featured articles on the lack of local accountability for county sheriffs — sheriffs who often operate as spokesmen for the Trump administration and anti-immigrant groups like FAIR and CIS. Understandably, there is growing resistance to 287(g) programs and a desire to slap some limits on them. And a lot is happening recently.
On January 3rd the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates ratified a resolution opposing the 287(g) program in Barnstable County — although voters had no choice in entering into the agreement in the first place.
On January 8th at 7PM at the Falmouth Public Library county residents will have a chance to discuss 287(g) agreements and learn about the Safe Communities Act — state legislation which puts some limits on a sheriff’s discretionary powers regarding ICE.
And at the Bristol County prison on January 11th at 6PM county residents will have a similar opportunity to express concerns about the 287(g) program — see http://www.bcso-ma.us/ for details of the public hearing. And do your homework if you plan on attending.
Barnstable County’s Sheriff has the dubious distinction of recently joining Bristol and Plymouth county sheriffs in signing 287(g) agreements with ICE. Dartmouth’s Sheriff Tom Hodgson will be hosting an annual 287(g) Steering Committee meeting on January 11th at 6PM. The meeting is open to the public and feedback is requested.
Along these same lines — on January 3, 2018 the Barnstable County Assembly of Delegates held a public hearing to vote on a proposal by Provincetown Delegate Brian O’Malley (County Resolution 17-10) to not support the County Sheriff’s pursuit of an ICE 287(g) agreement, though the agreement is already in place. Barnstable County Sheriff James Cummings answered questions on the 287(g) program he just signed with ICE, then left before listening to the community he supposedly serves. County Delegate Christopher Kanaga (Orleans) asked that two members of the press be permitted to report on the testimony but the request was denied for “fire code” reasons. Fortunately there was a recording of the meeting:
While you might find our testimony interesting, even more interesting to me are the questions asked by the delegates after the sheriff’s initial presentation and the comments the delegates made after the hearing was adjourned and the business meeting convened to consider Brian [O’Malley’s] proposal. Although the weighted vote was against the proposal, the majority of the delegates voted in favor of it. Their reactions were serious and thoughtful — we have many allies who share our reservations about the sheriff’s intentions. My impression was that he left immediately after his portion of the hearing was done. If that’s true, I think that not staying to listen to the comments of the public or the delegates was arrogant and disrespectful, not the behavior I expect from a public servant.
The first two hours of the Assembly hearings featured the sheriff first presenting his case, followed by questions from the delegates. (There’s one delegate from each of the fifteen towns, but their votes are weighted depending on population.) This all started because, before the sheriff’s 287(g) application was approved, Brian O’Malley, the delegate from P’town, presented a proposal on December 6 asking the Assembly to vote not to support the application. Somewhere between 20-30 of us showed up, some just to show support by our presence for Brian’s resolution but some of us to talk. The Speaker freaked out, adjourned the meeting, and then put together this public hearing. Over 100 people showed up last night. Out of the 23 speakers, only three spoke in favor of the sheriff’s new powers.
The question now is: What can we do to help move the Safe Communities Act out of committee and make this issue disappear? There will be a meeting on January 8th in Falmouth to discuss precisely that:
On Thursday morning the SouthCoast Chamber of Commerce had Bristol County sheriff Tom Hodgson and Helena DaSilva Hughes to breakfast at the Wamsutta Club to discuss immigration. During his presentation the sheriff cited questionable statistics from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), claiming that illegal immigration costs taxpayers $116 billion a year. The CATO Institute calls FAIR’s new study “fatally flawed” and “even more sloppy” than their previous one.
It would have more appropriate for Hodgson to speak about opioids, recidivism, or suicides. He actually knows something about the latter since his own jail accounts for a quarter of all county prison suicides. But there he was – again – acting as a spokesman for FAIR’s white supremacist immigration policies and conveniently avoiding trouble in his own backyard.
In 2015 Tom Hodgson appeared with Dennis Michael Lynch at an Islamophobic venue in Stoughton which had previously hosted Dutch neo-fascist Geert Wilders. Lynch is an Islamophobe, a white supremacist, a supporter of the Constitutional Sheriff Movement and of sovereign citizen Cliven Bundy, about whom he made a film.
That same year Hodgson appeared with a representative of the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) at the Fisherman’s Club in New Bedford. Despite the name, FAIR has little to do with reform. Instead, its goal is assuring White Anglo-Saxon dominance. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, FAIR has links to white supremacists and eugenicists. Its founder, John Tanton, wrote to one eugenicist: “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”
In 2016 the Sheriff was one of three speakers at a “Patriots Unity Day” rally in Randolph. The second speaker was Jessica Vaughan, of the nativist organization Center for Immigration Studies (CIS). Like FAIR, CIS was founded by John Tanton and publishes dubious statistics on immigration. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, CIS also maintains links to white supremacist and anti-semitic groups. CIS executive director Mark Krikorian quipped after the deadly 2010 Haitian earthquake: “My guess is that Haiti’s so screwed up because it wasn’t colonized long enough.” The third speaker was Raymond Hanna with the anti-Muslim hate group ACT for America, which also has white supremacist ties. In Arkansas ACT’s “March Against Shariah” events were organized by a Nazi and publicized on Stormfront.
In June this year the Sheriff appeared with Dan Stein and Michelle Malkin at an annual “Hold their feet to the fire” broadcast with anti-gay bigot Sandy Rios. Stein is executive director of FAIR, and characterizes America’s immigration laws as an effort “to retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance.” Stein describes Central American immigrants as engaged in “competitive breeding” and asks: “Should we be subsidizing people with low IQs to have as many children as possible, and not subsidizing those with high ones?” Malkin too has links to white supremacist groups, including VDARE, and to Islamophobic groups. Malkin opposes the 14th Amendment, which gave citizenship to slaves.
According to FAIR’s 2011 annual report, that was the year the organization began cultivating sheriffs like Hodgson. “In 2011, we identified sheriffs who expressed concerns about illegal immigration.” FAIR staff “met with these sheriffs and their deputies, supplied them with a steady stream of information, established regular conference calls so they could share information and experiences, and invited them to come to Washington to meet with FAIR’s senior staff.” Since roughly that time Hodgson’s main job has been as a FAIR spokesman.
It’s hard to believe that the avuncular fellow who sends Thanksgiving turkeys to deportees in the Azores could really have such horrific views. But when the sheriff keeps consorting with white supremacists, singing and quoting their lyrics in the original German – well – it’s hard to reach any other conclusion. Tom Hodgson is a white supremacist.
It was disappointing that the Chamber of Commerce gave this hater a mainstream platform, and worse, an opportunity to skip another day of work – taking care of the business Bristol County voters actually elected him to do.
