Sheriff David Beth has some feelings about people who may have stolen some property and he's not afraid to say so in a press conference discussing 5 suspects accused in 2018 of stealing about $4,800 in merchandise. Via Kenosha News:
Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth issued a public apology Monday amid backlash for his comments during a news conference late last week.
On Thursday, Beth spoke to the media after the arrest of five suspects Wednesday who had allegedly stolen approximately $4,800 in merchandise from a Prime Outlets mall store in Pleasant Prairie.
While evading police, the suspects’ car, driven by Sandra Smith, 20, of Milwaukee, crashed into another vehicle at the intersection of 88th Avenue and 38th Street. However, no one was seriously injured.
“I think at some point society has to get so fed up that they are no longer willing to tolerate people who are not an asset to society,” Beth said at the news conference. “I think we have to create a threshold where, once you cross the threshold, Wisconsin, the United States, builds warehouses where we put these people who have been deemed to be no longer an asset, that are really a detriment, like these five people.
There was more that the paper didn't report.
"Let's put them in jail," he said. "Let's stop them from going out and getting ten other women pregnant and having small children."
Putting emphasis on the point, he continued, "Let's put them away. We have to get to the point where we will no longer put up with the garbage people that fill our communities. They are a cancer to our society."
That little rant earned a complaint from the NAACP, after which he apologized for making the comments instead of staying focused on the press conference about the crime. In other words, he shouldn't have said the things he was thinking.
I agree, but he shouldn't be a sheriff if that's what he's thinking. He needs to remove himself from everything to do with the Jacob Blake case, the Black Lives Matter protests, and the investigation into the deaths and injuries to protesters, allegedly at the hands of a 17-year old white supremacist.
(h/t Oliver Willis/Twitter and Tim Dickinson/Twitter)