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County has Barney Fife; city has Gomer
To the editor:
After reviewing the articles in the Blytheville Courier News concerning the sheriff involved car chase, I feel the citizens of this town and county are again getting a whole lot less than we are paying for. The sheriff admits that he was going "10 or 15 miles an hour" over the posted limit.
I am sure that in his career he has given numerous tickets for drivers exceeding the speed limit by this amount. To the best of my recollection, the Arkansas law does not make exception for exceeding the speed limit for chasing votes, chasing tail or chasing donuts. If the sheriff isn't willing to follow the laws he is sworn to uphold, then he is in the wrong job. Further, I think it was wrong for him to malign the local police officers for lack of experience, and I really think he owes them a public apology.
I am really disappointed in the local chief of police for not following the law and having a ticket issued. I think this lack of support and trust is one of the problems we have with the new police officers. Justice may be blind, but evidently Chief Thompson takes a peek before issuing a ticket to his friends.
While the voters of this city and county would like to have an Andy Griffith type for our sheriff, it looks like the county has Barney Fife instead. The city of Blytheville got stuck with Gomer for chief of police.
I am going to forward a copy of this letter and the Courier News article to the Arkansas attorney general for review. While I am not an attorney, it appears to me that laws have been broken. Just because these people are "public servants" (ha!), they aren't exempt from the laws they supposedly enforce (whenever they feel like it) and they should be held to a higher standard than "ordinary citizens" who pay their salaries.
Running for office I have heard so many candidates to profess they want to "serve" and many claim years of "service" to the community and country. This is a damn poor reflection on the true public servants. If the sheriff was an honest man, he would accept the ticket, pay his own fine and get past this incident. I just don't see that happening,