Fountain Hills Town Council member Ginny Dickey made some remarkable statements in this space entitled “A matter of respect.” She called me dishonest and im-plied that I was disrespectful to her by supposedly turning a School Board sanctioned posse training exercise into a “media event.”
She complains I didn’t inform the law what I was doing; the Sheriff’s Office is the law in Fountain Hills. And Mayor Linda Kavanagh was present and grateful for our efforts.
I seldom respond to critics, but this is ridiculous. Isn’t Ms. Dickey using the media to scour my posse? Wasn’t she standing with the media as our training exercise com-menced? You know the answer. She is a political-type who constantly campaigns for my opponents.
In her written tirade, she questioned the intelligence of the voters who just gave me my sixth term, describing them as less than “informed.” Not surprisingly, she sup-ports a recall election for my office that will cost taxpayers about $5 million.
Funny how she uses the media to stand next to pro-illegal immigration activist Randy Parraz and my other critics to go after me on issues that have been settled and on continuous issues that are part of the job -- every law enforcement office and every prison system has to deal with various lawsuits and allocations of limited re-sources.
Someone has to have the guts to tackle tough problems and there are none tougher than securing the peace and protecting the innocent.
Meanwhile, crime has been reduced in Fountain Hills because of the formation of the Sheriff’s posse, which is now 3500 strong and includes doctors and lawyers among its ranks.
Does Ms. Dickey remember how we solved the 20-year-old “rock burglar” crimes that plagued Paradise Valley, Scottsdale and points north? The posse discourages criminal activities at our malls and in our shopping centers and parks.
On Feb. 9 of this year, the men and women dedicated to keeping the most precious among us safe – our children – apparently disturbed Ms. Dickey’s morning coffee. My posse, along with highly-trained and highly skilled professionals, conducted a safety exercise at a school closed years ago in Fountain Hills.
I’ve lived here for 12 years. I’ve donated to charitable causes and community projects here. And Ms. Dickey at-tacks me in my hometown paper for having the nerve to think that as the duly elected Sheriff I have a responsibility to keep schoolchildren sitting in classrooms safe?
What kind of country do we live in where someone put-ting body and limb in front of a potential assassin of pre-schoolers is to be held in disdain? Recently, my office has arrested three individuals who have threatened three different schools, two of them caught with weapons, before any harm was done to their classmates. Did she miss that?
My posse members endure 100s of hours of training in “use of force,” “defensive tactics,” “weapons retention,” “firearms,” “judgmental shooting,” “Taser certification” and other important skills. Steven Seagal, a world-renowned expert in martial arts defense tactics, stands with them. Why is Ms. Dickey questioning the goodwill of these dedicated citizens?
Is Ms. Dickey’s motivation to “recall” me, having just been sworn in again in January, simply because she is an open border advocate? What exactly does she fear from seeing law enforcement in her neighborhood training to keep kids, once the age of her own children, safe from a mad killer?
“A matter of respect?”
How about respecting the work that we in the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office do day in, day out, seven days a week? And yes, that includes a cold Saturday morning in Fountain Hills.
