An at-large member of the Monroe County Council is being fraudulently accused of threatening to murder a member of the Monroe County Commissioners. A few weeks ago, inmates at the Monroe County Jail vandalized toilets, causing a sewer backup into the Justice Building. After a complaint that the offices were not properly cleaned, Monroe County Councilor David Henry was unhappy about allegedly unsafe working conditions for Monroe County employees. He said the following:
If you have a direct responsibility over that facility and it is not still cleaned up as of nearly two weeks later, I hope you bring your body armor to budget season, because I have a lot of questions to ask as to why people in that building are still working in conditions that are unsanitary
The response from one of the Commissioners was that it was a “violent threat.” This, obviously, is absurd. No, a member of the county council is not threatening to bring a gun to the budget hearings and murder the county commissioners. This is an outright lie, which is a disqualification to continue to serve in public office and something the voters need to remember in two years.
This, once again, illustrates the absolutely absurd “all or nothing” mentality in our politics. We cannot have restrained criticism, much less recognize that nuance exists. We have to jump to the most extreme interpretation possible. Councilor Henry was not promising pointed questions about safety of employees, he was threatening to murder an elected official of the same political party.
Do you know it is actually possible to criticize Councilor Henry’s language without accusing him of murderous threats? It could go something like this: “We understand that questions need to be asked, but the use of needlessly provocative and incendiary language makes it more difficult for the Monroe County Council and Monroe County Commissioners to find a solution to this problem. We need to expect a higher standard of professionalism from an elected member of county government’s fiscal body.” Is that really so difficult?
Here is the reality: The commissioners are embarrassed that there is an official complaint about employee safety, so now Commissioner Julie Thomas is trying to distract from the commissioners’ failure to protect county employees by pretending that a county councilor is threatening to shoot her dead. She knows that is not what Councilor Henry said. Did Commissioner Thomas file a police report? Did Commissioner Thomas seek a protective order? If not, we know this is all a hoax. The County Commissioners need to be more concerned with actual threats to the health and lives of county employees instead of lying about the language used by other Democrats.