Ohio sheriff's lieutenant apologizes for 'won't help Democrats' post, blames sleep medication

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Ohio sheriff's lieutenant apologizes for 'won't help Democrats' post, blames sleep medication

2024-11-05 05:44 Last Updated At：05:51

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio sheriff's patrol commander who declared on Facebook that he would not help Democrats and would require proof of who a person voted for before providing them aid has apologized, blaming prescribed sleep aids for causing his “out of character” actions.

Lt. John Rodgers, a 20-year veteran of the sheriff's office in Clark County, where Springfield is the county seat, made the statements in several posts on Facebook, WHIO-TV reported.

“I am sorry. If you support the Democrat Party I will not help you,” Rodgers reportedly wrote in one post. Another said: “The problem is that I know which of you supports the Democratic Party and I will not help you survive the end of days."

The sheriff’s office said Rodgers, who has commanded the department's road patrol, would remain on duty, with a written reprimand for violating the department’s social media policy.

“We’ve been in this battle over the last few months, with the attacks on the Haitian community and other immigrants, and we protect people’s rights and we don’t support the conduct to the contrary,” Mike Young, the county’s chief deputy, told the Springfield News-Sun. “I can’t go back in time and take that post away; the lieutenant made the post and he has received consequences for that.”

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and his running mate JD Vance, drew Springfield into the national spotlight with false claims — some made during a nationally televised presidential debate — that the city's Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pet dogs and cats. Springfield is in southwestern Ohio between Columbus and Dayton.

Clark County Elections Director Jason Baker said Rodgers was not scheduled to be at the county elections board on Tuesday night, but that the sheriff's office is still planning to send other officers there to provide security during the election count.

“I think the public should still be safe, with the Clark County sheriff's department and the Springfield Police Department at work,” he told The Associated Press. “We're all fighting for the same outcome, which is to have a peaceful day.”

A sheriff’s office statement said the posts do not reflect the office’s mission and values.

“It is understood that while these comments are highly inappropriate, they in no means reflect the Clark County Sheriff’s Office delivery of service to ALL our community," the statement said. “The community has a right to be upset over the actions of Lt. Rodgers and he, as well as the Sheriff’s Office in general, will have to work even harder to replenish the trust of members of our community.”

Rodgers formally responded to the reprimand, writing in a letter in his personnel file that he does not recall writing the posts or taking them down, and was alerted to them when a coworker asked if he was OK, the Springfield News-Sun reported. Rodgers wrote that he did not find them on his page when he searched for them and that the first time he saw them was during a meeting with a department official.

Rodgers said he sometimes takes a prescribed sleep aid that can cause him to send “out of character” texts, phone calls or other forms of communication as a side effect. The lieutenant said that as soon as he learned of the messages on Tuesday, he deactivated his Facebook account and stopped taking the medication, the newspaper reported.

Clark is not the only Ohio county dealing with controversial statements made by law enforcement officials on social media.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s election monitoring operation is on site in Portage County, in the northeastern part of Ohio, to ensure the county complies with federal voting rights laws during early voting and on Election Day.

That’s after Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski, a Republican, was accused last month of intimidating voters. Zuchowski, who is running for reelection, posted on social media that people with Kamala Harris yard signs should have their addresses written down so that immigrants can be sent to live with them if the Democrat wins the presidency.

In the wake of the comments, the Portage County Board of Elections voted to forego using sheriff's deputies for election security this year.

Asked at a news conference Monday about how the two cases might impact voters' feelings of safety, Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose said some law enforcement officials — particularly when they’re running for office — can sometimes make comments that are “ill-advised.”

“But that doesn’t, in any way, implicate the dedicated sworn deputies that work for them,” he said. ”Those are dedicated people that are first and foremost lawmen and women. They’ve sworn an oath to do this. They put their life on the line to do this, and I have every confidence that they take that duty very seriously.”

Harris and Trump's final Election Day push brings them to the same patch of Pennsylvania

2024-11-05 05:48 Last Updated At：05:50

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump made their final pitches to voters Monday in the same part of Pennsylvania, at roughly the same time, spending the last full day of the presidential campaign in a state that could make or break their chances.

Focusing on the state's southeast corner. Trump took the stage in Reading, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles from Allentown, where Harris held her own event about half an hour later.

“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole ball of wax,” Trump said. “It’s over.”

Indeed, a Trump victory in Pennsylvania, flipping its 19 Electoral College votes, would puncture the Democrats' “blue wall” and make it harder for Harris to win the necessary 270 votes.

Harris, the Democratic nominee, spent all of Monday in Pennsylvania, the largest prize among the states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome. In addition to Allentown, she visited Scranton — the birthplace of President Joe Biden — and had a stop planned in Reading before ending with a late-night Philadelphia rally that was to include Lady Gaga and Oprah Winfrey.

“Are you ready to do this?” Harris yelled Monday in Scranton, with a large handmade “VOTE FOR FREEDOM” sign behind her and a similar “VOTE” banner to her side.

Trump went first to North Carolina before visiting Reading. He will head to Pittsburgh, at the opposite end of the state, before concluding in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he will hold his last campaign rally in the same place he concluded his 2016 and 2020 runs.

Southeast Pennsylvania is home to thousands of Latinos, including a sizable Puerto Rican population. Harris and her allies have repeatedly hit Trump for a comedian's dig at Puerto Rico during the former president's marquee Madison Square Garden event. The comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”

“It was absurd,” said German Vega, a Dominican American who lives in Reading and became a U.S. citizen in 2015. “It bothered so many people — even many Republicans. It wasn’t right, and I feel that Trump should have apologized to Latinos.”

But Emilio Feliciano, 43, waited outside Reading’s Santander Arena for a chance to take a photo of Trump’s motorcade. He dismissed the comments about Puerto Rico despite his family being Puerto Rican, saying he cares about the economy and that’s why he will vote for Trump.

“Is the border going to be safe? Are you going to keep crime down? That’s what I care about,” he said.

Trump stuck to talking about his proposed crackdown on immigration. He called to the stage Patty Morin, the mother of 37-year-old Rachel Morin, who was found dead a day after she went missing during a trip to go hiking. Officials say the suspect in her death, Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, entered the U.S. illegally after allegedly killing a woman in his home country of El Salvador.

About 77 million Americans have voted early. A victory by either side would be unprecedented.

A Trump victory would make him the first incoming president to have been indicted and convicted of a felony, after his hush-money trial in New York. He will gain the power to end other federal investigations pending against him. Trump would also become only the second president in history to win non-consecutive White House terms, after Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century.

Harris is vying to become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office — four years after she broke the same barriers in national office by becoming President Joe Biden’s second in command.

The vice president ascended to the top of the Democratic ticket after Biden’s disastrous performance in a June debate set into motion his withdrawal from the race — one of a series of convulsions that have hit this year’s campaign.

Trump survived by millimeters an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. His Secret Service detail foiled a second attempt in September, when a gunman had set up a rifle as Trump golfed at one of his courses in Florida.

Harris, 60, has pitched herself as a generational change from 81-year-old Biden and Trump, who is 78. She’s emphasized her support for abortion rights after the 2022 Supreme Court decision that ended the constitutional right to abortion services, and she has regularly noted the former president’s role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Assembling a coalition ranging from progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney, Harris has called Trump a threat to democracy and late in the campaign even embraced the critique that Trump is accurately described as a “ fascist.”

Heading into Monday, Harris has mostly stopped mentioning Trump by name, calling him instead “the other guy.” She is promising to solve problems and seek consensus.

Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillion said on a call with reporters that not saying Trump’s name was deliberate because voters “want to see in their leader an optimistic, hopeful, patriotic vision for the future.”

Harris talked in Scranton about once being a longshot while running for San Francisco district attorney in 2002 and how she “used to campaign with my ironing board.”

“I’d walk to the front of the grocery store, outside, and I would stand up my ironing board because, you see, an ironing board makes a really great standing desk,” Harris said, recalling how she would tape her posters to the outside of the board, fill the top with flyers and “require people to talk to me as they walked in and out.”

In Allentown, home to tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans, the vice president rallied with rapper Fat Joe. Later, she’s scheduled to visit a Puerto Rican restaurant in Reading with Ocasio-Cortez. Both Fat Joe, whose real name is Joseph Cartagena, and Ocasio-Cortez, are of Puerto Rican heritage.

Standing in line for Harris’ Allentown rally, 54-year-old Ron Kessler, an Air Force veteran and Republican-turned-Democrat, said he planned to vote for just the second time in his life. Kessler said that, for a long time, he didn’t vote, thinking the country “would vote for the correct candidate.”

But “now that I’m older and much more wiser, I believe it’s important, it’s my civic duty. And it’s important that I vote for myself and I vote for the democracy and the country.”

As recently as Sunday, Trump renewed his false claims that U.S. elections are rigged against him, mused about violence against journalists and said he “ shouldn’t have left” the White House in 2021 — dark turns that have overshadowed another anchor of his closing argument: “Kamala broke it. I will fix it.”

Superville reported from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Barrow reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Makiya Seminera in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Zeke Miller, Will Weissert and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.