THIS GUEST OPINION BY:
Marlene Pollock is a New Bedford resident who is the co-founder of The Coalition for Social Justice and is a member of Bristol County for Correctional Justice. She is a retired Professor of History at Bristol Community College and continues to teach part-time. She was also elected twice to the New Bedford School Committee, and is a volunteer organizer in New Bedford and on the Cape.
WBSM’s Barry Richard recently wrote a piece in support of Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson’s extremist positions on immigration. Richard repeats Hodgson’s biases towards immigrants without regard to facts. This only serves to confuse people, stir their anger toward innocent people, and let those who are truly responsible for people’s discontent off the hook – which is precisely their goal.
(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)
Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what s goin down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of government gets done, and where the priest wore black on the seventh day and sat stone-faced while the building burned.
We begin in Louisiana, where years of overdevelopment and industrial pollution have placed in jeopardy the Atchafalaya River Basin, the largest river basin in the country. Governor John Bel Edwards has begun what he hopes is a major effort to save the unique ecology of the region. From NOLA.com:
The executive order directs the task force to submit an initial report by Sept. 1, 2021 that will focus on how to best manage navigation, flood control, economics and restoration within the basin and using the basin’s resources along the coast. The report will be submitted to the state Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. The report also is expected to address sources of funding for basin projects an
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey on Wednesday took aim at statements made by Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson where he blasted the AG s explosive 60-page report that wrapped up her office s six-month investigation into what happened during a violent May 1 altercation at the sheriff s ICE lockup facility in North Dartmouth.
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, the Republican sheriff attacked the Democratic attorney general s report on the conflict at the C. Carlos Carreiro Immigration Detention Center as “baseless” and “politically motivated,” called Healey a political hack, and accused her of creating a false narrative of the incident.
Healey s report accused Hodgson and his officers of violating detainees’ civil rights during a chaotic melee involving dogs and pepper spray that sent two men to the hospital with respiratory distress and left another with an apparent heart attack. That man was revived from unconsciousness via emergency chest compression
DARTMOUTH Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson attacked as “baseless” and “politically motivated” this week’s report from Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey that accused his officers of using excessive force and violating detainees’ civil rights during a May 1 melee at an immigration detention center in Dartmouth.
“The attorney general’s report goes to incredible lengths to dismiss and discount the truth about what really happened,” Hodgson said during a press conference Wednesday at the Bristol County House of Correction.
Hodgson said Healey’s investigators never interviewed him and left out evidence that he was struck by a chair that a detainee is alleged to have thrown at him during the fracas, which was sparked by detainees refusing to be taken to the jail’s medical wing to be tested for COVID-19.