With the well lit White House looming in the background over the heads of the people who had gathered in the Rose Garden to be part of the Hatch Act violating television presentation of Trump’s speech on the last night of the RNC convention, Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson is on the right in a picture, wearing his badge and stars on his collar.
He obviously is there because his request to be the honorary chair of Trump’s Massachusetts reelection campaign was granted, but, because that political assignment is not related to his job as the sheriff, a jacket and tie would have been appropriate.
In the picture, however, his official attire implies he was their representing the county and its people.
Bristol County had rejected Trump in 2016, so this is his personal use of the county to promote his candidate.
It was clear from the broadcasts of the event at the White House that night that there was no social distancing and so few masks that the coverage on various stations zoomed in on them. I counted three. During the occasional presentations of guests, there was a lot of hand shaking, hugs, and other public displays of affection.
In the picture of the happy sheriff, the crowd in the background is close together.
Defenders of the exposed face may say that this photo was only a moment in time, and you have to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he wore a mask for the rest of the gatherings. Yet as a capture of one moment in time, it could also be that this was a maskless sheriff caught on film at that one moment within a larger time span.
The sheriff, in his position as Honorary Co-Chair, was in Washington on Monday to take part in the ritual roll call vote on the first day of the convention. Accessing the RNC website gets you to that collage of those taking part in that roll call, a rich tapestry of the various shades of white, like looking at the paint samples of white paint at a big-box hardware store.
This meant he spent the actual four days of the convention and time before and after mingling in large, unmasked gatherings, the high point of which was gathering in a large, close group with people who do not take the pandemic seriously and reject in large numbers the recommendations to wear a mask, avoid large gatherings, and limit touching.
If the sheriff’s name sounds familiar, it should.
Quick recap related solely to the virus:
When people expressed concern about jail conditions at the beginning of the pandemic based on investigation, documentation, and testimony of former inmates, Sheriff Hodgson dismissed those concerns with,
“I wouldn’t much entertain or care about what the social justice groups think about my staff.”
He reflexively rejected the early pandemic plan to have the state’s county jails release non-violent offenders and people who were incarcerated pre-trial having not been able to pay bail, and those whose post-sentence release was imminent saying,
“We have no current plans to release inmates in the manners you described. Releasing people to go back into the community, whether back to friends, family, or whoever may be exposed already? Why would we add people to that environment, when we have a controlled environment here.”
Later he added.
“We’re doing probably more than most people would be doing on the outside [to prevent covid],”
And claiming,
“We have protocols. We make adjustments. We pay attention to the CDC. We pay attention to briefings from the White House.”
His continued claim has been that his environment is totally under control, which is his own Schrodinger’s Cat as he is being both totally honest and not being totally truthful until someone goes inside and looks.
The Department of Public Health recently did just that and found, among other things in relation to COVID, that seven of eight units had inadequate floor space when social distancing is recommended, there were broken air vents during a pandemic where air circulation is important in preventing the spread of an air borne virus, and that the Bristol County Jail and House of Correction’s infection control manual was out-of-date, and does not include COVID-19 specific information, in spite of his previous claim.
There have been instances of COVID in his system including both inmates and staff, and here you have the sheriff returning to his duties from out of state with a huge probability of having come into contact with some who could pass it on, entering the jails and courts, interacting with inmates and staff, and attending public and private gatherings of various sizes with people from various places both work related and not.
This is the sheriff who likes to say that his number one priority is the safety of the people of the county, but who, while knowing the potential consequence that being in a tight, unmasked crowd could expose him to the virus, could now bring that threat back to the people of a county in a state that has a low occurrence of the virus.
As a resident of the state of Massachusetts he is required to:
- Complete the Massachusetts Travel Form prior to arrival, he is visiting from a lower-risk state designated by the Department of Public Health.
- Quarantine for 14 days or produce a negative COVID-19 test result that has been administered up to 72-hours prior to his arrival in Massachusetts.
If his COVID-19 test result has not been received prior to arrival, he must quarantine until he receives a negative test result.
Failure to comply may result in a $500 fine per day.
Will the Sheriff follow the rules?
Did the Sheriff follow the rules?
Or will he bring us all the virus instead of a souvenir T-shirt from DC?