Adding To Its Long List Of Arrested Deputies, Polk County Sheriff Arrests Deputy For Capitol-Related Threats
from the pro-trump-euphoria-will-fade-long-before-the-sentence-ends dept
Another law enforcement officer has lost his job after being unable to accept the outcome of a national election. Lots of officers around the nation are under investigation for their participation in the Capitol Hill raid earlier this month. There’s another name to add to that long list — one who used to work for one of the worst law enforcement officials in the county, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. (h/t WarOnPrivacy)
Trump repeatedly made it clear he preferred cops to the people they served and would be willing to overlook almost any sin they committed, as long as they did it with a uniform on. Trump claimed not liking cops was “wrong” and that he would fix it. He praised extrajudicial killings by federal officers and encouraged beat cops to beat arrestees.
That love for cops is paying dividends. But probably not paying enough to offset the loss of a law enforcement salary. A Polk County deputy has been fired for threatening messages about the January 6 raid on the Capitol.
Judd said another deputy reported the action, making threats in connection with violence against the U.S. Capitol, to a lieutenant.
“Our deputy that reported this is a hero,” Judd said, adding that the reporting deputy was also investigated but cooperated fully and is not in trouble.
The suspect is accused of a “mass shooting or act of terrorism” threat, Judd said.
Judd said Heneen had made comments such as “Need to make the streets of D.C. run red with the blood of the tyrants” and “should have dragged the tyrants into the streets and executed them.”
The screenshots made public by Sheriff Judd show Deputy Peter Heneen stating he’ll “fucking kill bitches,” “slit the throats” of any federal officer who “touches his family,” and promising to “make them suffer.”
Now, Heneen is not only out of a job, but he’s been arrested and charged. This is something that seems to happen to an alarming number of Grady Judd’s deputies. Here’s a recent sampling:
August 2013: Deputy Mark Hicks arrested for sending lewd messages and images to a 17-year-old girl. (This is especially ironic given Grady Judd’s numerous stings utilizing deputies who pretend to be minors and engage in sexual conversations with adult targets.)
January 2014: Deputy Julio Garcia arrested and charged after sexually propositioning arrestees.
September 2015: Deputy Consuelo Gallego-Bias arrested for assaulting her husband.
July 2017: Deputy David Clark arrested for driving under the influence after crashing his car into a utility pole.
September 2017: Deputy Russell Hilson arrested for assaulting his girlfriend.
April 2018: Deputy Thomas Strickland arrested and suspended for assaulting his wife.
March 2018: Deputy Silvia Lara arrested for aggravated stalking, burglary, and misuse of the drivers license database.
October 2018: 19-year veteran Scott Walker arrested on sexual battery charges after groping and digitally penetrating a deputy trainee.
November 2019: Detective Dennis Jones, Jr. arrested and charged with 22 counts of falsifying records and forgery.
February 2020: Deputy Seth Morozowski arrested for driving while intoxicated.
May 2020: Deputy Alfredo Marenco arrested for driving under the influence.
May 2020: Detention deputy Yessenia Turcios arrested for domestic violence.
September 2020: Sheriff’s Office employee Candace Lewis arrested for domestic battery and filing a false report.
So, there are a couple of ways of looking at this. The more positive take would be that Sheriff Judd doesn’t tolerate criminal acts or misconduct and moves swiftly to charge and remove troublesome deputies. The more negative view would be that Judd’s department attracts and hires thugs, miscreants, and people with self-control issues. It can also be both! Counter-productive, if true, but the job still pays the same whether you’re making things better or just looking busy.
Filed Under: capitol, insurrection, peter heneen, police, polk county
Comments on “Adding To Its Long List Of Arrested Deputies, Polk County Sheriff Arrests Deputy For Capitol-Related Threats”
Polk County, Where?
Polk County, but what state? I assume Florida because, well, you know.
Re: Polk County, Where?
We are apparently talking about Polk County Florida, as opposed to Iowa, Wisconsin, Oregon, or North Carolina.
Per capita, there were 150 or so DUI arrests per 10,000 in Florida (2017 stats). The Polk County Sheriff’s Department is 550 strong, so having 4 deputies arrested for DUI over 7 years is about the state average. Not to excuse them (nor yet excuse the other crimes committed), but "paragon of humanity" is not one of the job criteria for law enforcement, no matter how much we wish.
… and if the arrests were for DUI while on the job, I would expect the post would have mentioned that. So I’m guessing nope on that. Included to fluff up the stats, then?
Re: Re: Polk County, Where?
I live in Polk County, Minnesota….Thought it was a local story at first
Screenshots
Technical problem.
Embedded in the linked article, I’m actually seeing three screenshot PNGs
https://www.baynews9.com/content/dam/News/2021/01/19/POLK-PETER-HENEEN-SCREENSHOT1.PNGhttps://www.baynews9.com/content/dam/News/2021/01/19/POLK-PETER-HENEEN-SCREENSHOT2.PNGhttps://www.baynews9.com/content/dam/News/2021/01/19/POLK-PETER-HENEEN-SCREENSHOT3.PNGHowever, with direct links, the response from the remote Apache is
Content-type: text/htmlrather than the expected
content-type: image/pngand I think that’s why the images aren’t rendering properly on Firefox (78.6.1esr)
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0even though, afaict, the PNGs I get back are valid — at least the first one is downloadable, and looks perfectly fine rendered with Gwenview.
Anyhow, since you don’t control the remote server, probably the simplest thing is to just remove the link to the one PNG from your article above.
Alternatively, if the screenshot PNGs render fine in other people’s browsers, then you maybe you should link to all three in your article.
You could just as easily say the same thing about the public schools with the number of times they get caught with teachers sleeping with students. Bad people tend to go where they can achieve the bad outcomes they want to achieve. This shouldn’t surprise us.
Re: Re:
Law Enforcement == Public Education
Quite the claim ya got there, I fail to see the similarity.
Re: Re: Re:
Because you’re an idiot who hasn’t paid attention to all of the stories out there of teachers committing sexual felonies with their students.
Re: Re:
"Bad people tend to go where they can achieve the bad outcomes they want to achieve. This shouldn’t surprise us."
…and apparently to an alarming degree the places a bad person can go to to achieve a bad outcome is a sheriff’s department.
The real reveal – or would have been had this not just been the latest such in a very long and very old list – is that US law enforcement is so shabby about implementing actual standards of behavior that veterans in the police corps have sufficient expectation as to what they can get away with that what they finally go down for is some pretty damn rank shit they performed in front of witnesses and/or evidentiary which, for once, didn’t just shut up and/or vanish.
In corporate environments if the company has gone down a bad road what is done is usually a reorganization. Abolish every current role, build a new job matrix, and cherry-pick among the employees for candidates to fill the new positions.
The police should do something similar and GET RID of every last of the fuckwits who took the job because they thought being a gang member with a badge was legitimate employment.
Of course that may be a tough sell to a cadre of people so entitled and pampered by the contracts their strong-arm unions have gotten them they’re used to practicing assault and armed robbery without consequences.
Re: Re: Good cops are part criminal
Effective cops tend to have a little bit of a criminal mentality inside of them. If you purge that completely and without requiring actual crimes being committed, you’re going to end up with only the mall cop types left on the force. Say goodbye to your detectives.
Re: Re: Re: Good cops are part criminal
That makes less sense than the Chewbacca Defense. Even if we accept the dubious premise of a "little bit of criminal" inside them that is completely different from joining to be a gangster with a badge. Furthermore it is contradicted by policies barring even reformed felons from being police.
We really shouldn’t accept said absurd premise at face value – do we need sexual assault investigators to be rapists, homocide detectives to be murderers and property theft case detectives to be thieves?
law enforcement hiring - and firing
Seems to me that law enforcement, given their defined role in society, should be somewhat more rigerous in their hiring standards than the general business environment. Most ‘good corporate citizens’ don’t have most of their employees carrying lethal force, with the expectation they will use it at their determined need. So right away, we can see that law enforcement officers need careful and continuing training to make sure that their perceived need for lethal force places that as the ‘last resort’ and not the ‘big easy hammer in my hand’. Next, since the law enforcement community has employees moving from organization to organization, the tracking of disciplinary problems and resolutions should follow those employees, so problem employees can’t just ‘bail to another company’ where they continue unprofessional behavior. We give law enforcement officers unusual power over other citizens, we can and should require higher standards of professional performance and behavior – and their performance to those standards should stay on their records throughout their career. If those requirements are unwelcome, then a different career choice is recommended. How many of the Polk County problem officers had similar problems at other agencies before joining the Polk County Sheriff’s crew? We should know that – and those problem people should have been avoided, or overseen very closely until deemed reformed. Instead, we see officers fired at one locale soon rehired at another agency, where their unprofessional abuses continue.
Charges Dismissed
Not surprisingly, his charges were totally dropped.