Despite what the media may have you believe, many of these Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA protests are anything but peaceful.
We’ve had buildings looted and burned to the ground.
Law abiding citizens have been harassed and even assaulted by violent protesters.
Well one Florida Sheriff isn’t going to stand for it.
Darryl Daniels, Sheriff of Clay County, has warned protesters that he will deputize local gun owners if his department becomes overwhelmed.
Here’s the full story from USA Today:
Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels, no stranger to making viral videos appealing to tough-on-crime politics, released a video Tuesday that said he will make “special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county” if he feels the county is overwhelmed by protesters.
The three-minute video shows Daniels standing in front of 18 deputies as he derides civil rights protesters as godless disruptors and tells them to stay out of Clay County, a suburb of Jacksonville.
“If we can’t handle you, I’ll exercise the power and authority as the sheriff, and I’ll make special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county and I’ll deputize them for this one purpose to stand in the gap between lawlessness and civility,” he said.
“That’s what we’re sworn to do. That’s what we’re going to do. You’ve been warned.”
Daniels, the county’s first Black sheriff, is himself under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement related to an affair he had with a fellow officer when he was at the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and a subsequent false arrest of that officer.
Daniels is a first-term sheriff up for reelection who has said he wants to one day be a congressman. He is being challenged by six opponents, including former Atlantic Beach Police Chief Michelle Cook, former Clay County Sheriff’s Office Emergency Management Director Ben Carroll and Mike Taylor, a former FDLE agent and state attorney’s investigator who has earned the endorsement of former Gov. Jeb Bush.
Thankfully there’s still some willing to uphold law and order in this country!
Check out Twitter reactions to Daniels message:
According to Fox News, Daniels also had a message for the media:
A Florida sheriff released a video supporting police officers facing protests and calls to have their departments defunded around the country Tuesday – while blasting the media and warning off non-peaceful protesters.
“Don’t fall victim to subjecting yourself to this conversation that law enforcement is bad, that law enforcement is the enemy of the citizens that we’re sworn to protect and serve,” Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels says in the video. “We swore an oath, and in that oath we swore to support, protect and defend the Constitution.”
He said that his department would uphold the constitutional rights of all peaceful protesters, but he condemned “lawlessness” and what he described as groups that make themselves “a spectacle.”
He also noted that the oath his deputies take ends with “so help me God,” which he said is “absent from the media’s message or Black Lives Matter.”
He said his officers had a “great relationship” with the local citizenry but acknowledged that is not the case in many parts of the country.
“I just wanted to take a stand with these men and with these women who feel the same way that I do: Lawlessness, that’s unacceptable in this country,” he said, adding a stern warning to anyone who might be considering bringing chaos to his community.
You can watch the local news station's report on the matter right here:
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