Douglas County Sheriff John Hanlin — who is overseeing the investigation of the mass shooting at an Oregon community college — posted a video on his Facebook page that suggested the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax, according to Mother Jones. One month after the Connecticut shooting that claimed the lives of 26, 20 elementary school children and 6 adult staff members, Hamlin linked to the video called: “The Sandy Hook Shooting - Fully Exposed.”…. On his post he wrote, “This makes me wonder who we can trust anymore… Watch, listen, and keep an open mind.”
There’s no doubt but that the massacre at Umpqua Community College is a tragedy of epic proportions. My purpose here is not to take Sheriff Hanlin to task for his response to this tragedy, which will be parsed over the coming days and weeks. No, my purpose is to shine a light on a public servant who’s a conspriracy theorist convinced the government is out to take our guns. I want to ask if someone willing to entertain the theory that Sandy Hook may have been a part of a government plot to take our guns is even fit to serve the public in a law enforcement capacity.
The video makes several distressingly untrue claims only a committed conspiracy theorist could love- including that there may have been more than one shooter and that the grieving parents who appeared on television were acting. That anyone could even entertain such offensive assertions is beyond comprehension. That a democratically elected law enforcement officer has done just that should be offensive to any mortal with even the barest shred of compassion and human decency.
Almost as bad is Hanlin’s frequently vocalized conviction that the government is out to take our guns. The fact that there’s absolutely no evidence to support this belief is something that seems to trouble Hanlin not at all.
The sheriff, who has done an admirable job in not glorifying the perpetrator from yesterday’s mass shooting at Umpqua Community College, is also an avid guns rights supporter and a possible member of the Oath Keepers, a group that claims to be upholding their oath to defend the Constitution from any perceived threats—such as expanded gun control.
I don’t know enough about Sheriff Hanlin’s job performance to be able to evaluate or question his competence…but I have to wonder about a law enforcement officer so willing to broadcast that he holds some strongly anti-government positions. This is a man elected by the public to protect public safety and paid by their tax dollars; at the very least it would seem incumbent upon him to be more circumspect about his Far Right-wing nuttery.
Hanlin has the right to express himself as a private individual, but the public has the right to expect that a public servant isn’t necessarily going to perform the duties of their office based on those beliefs. That he can honestly entertain the absurd idea that Sandy HooK was an elaborate government plot designed to help in disarming the public should offend any decent human being.
I have to wonder about a sheriff willing to be so openly political, and I wonder even more about the Douglas County voters who elected him. Law enforcement officers shouldn’t live in a Left wing or Right wing world; while in uniform they should live in a world in which the rule of law is all that matters.
The people of Douglas County may love him, but to me that says more about their lack of commitment to professional, dispassionate law enforcement and their desire to see their Conservative ideology enforced. While in uniform, law enforcement personnel should be apolitical and willing to protect and serve people of all ideological stripes. Their job is to protet the public, NOT pursue a private political agenda.
