The Peter Principle holds that members of a hierarchy are promoted until they reach the level at which they are no longer competent.
Often, unchecked authority no matter how positive its intentions in the beginning, without any accountability or oversight, eventually tends toward the negative. The power that comes with authority is enticing and addictive, and, without checks, every idea is always the best one.
Empathy loses to power that must be protected from any perceived attacks, and, at some point, that one step too far is taken.
Each step taken and tacitly allowed by dint of benign neglect makes the next step that much easier, and, without oversight, progressively more questionable until, in spite of all efforts to prevent it, like the crust in the cone of a volcano or the layer of skin on a pimple, the veil bursts and the contents are exposed.
If those, who should have been more active in what supervisory positions they had, had been active in their responsibilities rather than finding it convenient to just let things slide, what came together against Thomas Hodgson of Bristol County Massachusetts over the last year might have been avoided with oversight, not have happened at all, or would not have resulted in a number of inspections and studies related to the jails and the sheriff’s claims.
Dismissing people with tropes and nicknames and deflecting attention away from having to deal with facts may be useful in the moment, but facts remain and can be presented as many times as needed.
While he reacted in the moment, others, whom he once publicly described by saying,
“The motto of the left-wing activist groups, abolish-ICE advocates, Prisoners’ Legal Services and plain anti-Trumpers has always been, and continues to be, ‘Don’t let the facts interfere with your political agenda”
were gathering the facts, and those facts helped lead to the things that made 2020 especially bad for the sheriff.
- It was exposed that Sheriff Hodgson had been secretly sending e-mails to Stephen Miller at the White House reporting on his parish church’s following the Catholic teachings toward the treatment of immigrants, and his pledge to report on any local organizations or businesses that appeared too immigrant friendly. In response religious leaders in Bristol County wrote and published a letter criticizing Hodgson for his actions, and the Diocese of Fall River reminded him of the church’s teaching.
- Federal District Court Judge Young criticized Hodgson’s treatment of immigrant detainees in a memorandum that strongly criticized him and ICE for probable violations of constitutional rights.
- On May 1, there was a “riot” at the Faunce Corner Immigrant detention Center that garnered wide media attention, but which, had the sheriff not been so defensive as to reject logical suggestions from the professionals he dismissed in the earlier quoted description, might have been prevented or at least less than it was.
- Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced her intention to do an investigation of the event, a State Senate Committee began one concerning his refusing to allow a state senator entry into the county facility to assess the scene, and State and Federal legislators called for the DHS to launch an investigation as well.
- He may have announced at his press conference after the May 1 event that he had videos that proved he had acted properly, but the ACLU has had to file a request for a court order for the Sheriff to provide them with those videos after he refused a Freedom of Information request. This is another example of the many times that the Sheriff has not abided by the law regarding FOIA requests.
- When it went public that the Sheriff’s framed picture in the Faunce Corner facility had him sporting a tie with what is labeled an “Anglo-Confederate Design”, instead of just acknowledging the sartorial error and putting up another picture, he justified it as patriotic even as his connections to white supremacist and anti-immigrant groups were being exposed to the public.
- The Department of health did an in-person investigation of the Faunce Corner facilities in response to complaints that had been filed and uncovered various safety and health violations, issuing a letter to Hodgson enumerating the violations.
- In spite of, or in conscious disregard for state mandated quarantining requirements, after attending crowded maskless events during the Republican National Convention, the Sheriff returned to Bristol County and was photographed within days, maskless and without safe distancing, with some of his correctional staff in Dartmouth, all maskless and close, and at a Pro-Trump rally in the county also maskless and in a close crowd.
- When Bristol County for Correctional Justice held an informational rally at the Ash Street Jail about the cost to inmates for phone calls, while they wore masks and assemble with six feet between participants even though it was outside, the sheriff showed up without a mask and continued without one for his long and up-close interview with a representative of the local media. As someone who enters and exits his closed facilities on a constant basis, he behaves like his own Typhoid Mary.
- In the lead up to the national elections, having eagerly accepted Trump’s warnings of a rigged election and his desire to have armed poll watchers, the sheriff expressed his eagerness to do that and justified the need by demeaning local law enforcement with his implication they were not up to the task which they had been performing successfully for years. He was prevented from doing what he had been boasting he would do by state legislators and AG Healey indicating that this would be a law violation.
- Trump has not only been his idol in whose presence he took every opportunity to be, but opposition to Trump has been the sheriff’s go to reason to explain any criticism of himself. Holding him accountable means a person hates Trump. Then Trump lost.
- A.G. Healey’s scathing investigative report of the May 1st event was released to the public and it found that in the time before, during, and after the actual event the detainees’ civil rights were violated, and the force used against them was deliberately extreme.
- The Senate Committee’s investigation of the sheriff’s refusal to permit a state senator from entering his facility concluded he had violated the law.
- Although any documented or witnessed deficiency at his facilities is pushed aside by the sheriff’s referencing his glowing reports from the American Correctional Association whose validity has been questioned by the local activist groups the sheriff hates so strongly, a report conducted by Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office found,
“The American Correctional Association, the nation’s largest accreditor of federalprisons and detention facilities, is rife with corruption and that the federal government should end its reliance on ACA’s deeply-flawed accreditation process and ban private prisons.”
Just as Donald Trump would not have had his shady dealings so publicly exposed had he not taken that step too far and, not understanding the nature of the position, reached too far to become president, had sheriff Thomas Hodgson not taken his one step too far when he shone a spotlight on himself by pledging to have his inmates help build the wall on the Southern Border, people would have continued in their traditional stance of benign neglect.
His is now the bouton éclaté. The pimple popped.
(Thanks to Betty U.)
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