Our View: We don't need saving, thanks

Last Monday, a pair of self-proclaimed saviors arrived in town to rescue us all from the tyranny of our overbearing law enforcement. We have so many questions about their behavior, but the one we really want answered is this: did they bother to ask anyone whether we needed saving?

Did the “First Amendment auditors” who intimidated citizens and harangued our hard-working deputies consider for a moment that, actually, we might have the kind of exemplary law enforcement in this county that other communities would be jealous of? Did they speak to a single person before they began pushing as many buttons as they could come up with?

“Gotcha” tactics are reprehensible. These men were not in Sundance to rescue anything but their own bank accounts, as far as we can tell. They have made a (hopefully short-lived) career of seeing how far they can take things before reasonable people finally lose their temper.

On their social media pages, options to donate to their “cause” are front and center wherever you look. These people create entertainment for a specific audience: the kind of frothing lunatic who is triggered by the very sight of a police uniform and would call it the best day of their lives if they witnessed harm befall an officer.

To make sure the video was as sensational as possible, they opted for deliberate intimidation. They made it clear that they were armed, walked around the post office in a way that made it look like they were “casing the joint” and got up close and personal with innocent passers-by who just wanted to pick up their mail.

They may have described themselves on their video as being courteous and professional in their approach, but that’s not how they appear to the sound of mind. They admit themselves at one point in the video that they “screwed up,” so even they were aware they’d stepped across the line.

As for their accusations towards the community that we’re bad people because we jumped to conclusions about their behavior, who on earth wouldn’t find their actions a little suspicious? Wasn’t that why they chose to act that way in the first place, if the goal was to get law enforcement involved?

They twisted words and slanted their arguments to make sure there was never a way for our peace officers to win. Once they posted the video, their loyal followers fanned the flames through every social media avenue they could think of, and all because this is how they make a living.

This wasn’t ever about saving us, or about “proving” America has a problem with its law enforcement. It was an amateur attempt at reality television, creating drama where none existed, and their actions are no different to the despicable ransomware attacks that are used to shut down government agencies, hospitals and more.

These people placed their own financial gain over the safety of the citizens who were antagonized, then filmed and splashed all over the internet. Sure, filming people is technically legal, but that doesn’t make it morally acceptable.

This is an excellent example of the old adage: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from the consequences.

Citizens who had the misfortune to visit the post office weren’t the only ones exploited for this duo’s financial benefit. It was all of us, because the backlash from their frothy followers was so overwhelming that the Sheriff’s Office phones had to be switched off, and our deputies were distracted for days by phone calls, sightings of “copycat” pests and more.

In fact, one commenter on the videos hopes those two men sue our Sheriff’s Office for "all the money left in the budget." Apparently, saving us from overbearing law enforcement means making sure we don’t have any law enforcement protection whatsoever. Thank you so much for your service.

We’re quite sure these people were not here to help anyone. They were here to help themselves to our taxpayer dollars.

We have never seen any evidence that our sheriff, or his underlings, is a bully, but we have seen evidence to the contrary. For example, would someone with an “ego problem” go to great lengths to introduce ALICE training to the community, empowering his citizens to protect themselves instead of always needing to rely on him?

Jeff Hodge has many times proven that he is willing to go the extra mile if he can benefit his community, even if he increases his own workload in the process. If these people had done their homework before they targeted our county, they might have known that.

We’ve watched both versions of the video and we were pretty impressed with how well our officers handled this obvious attempt to bait them. Are we really expected to have a problem with a video that shows deputies showing up right away when a worried citizen calls and sticking around to make sure there was no threat?

The headline of our article on the front page could as easily have read, “Local officers do their job.”

This incident caused havoc for our local businesses, our schools, our government agencies, our elected officials and more. Two men who made the conscious decision to act like jackasses made an honorable man the target of appalling behavior, up to and including attacks on his family and personal information.

And what did they prove through their antics? It wasn’t that Crook County has an issue with its law enforcement, because no sane human being could watch their video and think those officers failed to handle themselves. What they actually proved was simple: if you irritate someone enough, eventually they’ll get annoyed with you.