The Washington Post reports Trump-style divisiveness is infiltrating the nation in its smallest communities.
Palmyra police chief Paul Blount reports a “growing sense of unease” in his tiny town of 1,719 tucked between Milwaukee and Madison.
“Given the climate and recent media headlines, we are taking the following precautionary measures for this weekend’s event,” Blount had warned members of the Palmyra board in the days before homecoming weekend. He’d even taken to using neighboring county drones to scan the rooftops for threats. “My team and I are proactively preparing for the worst-case scenarios while continuing to hope for the best.”
The Post reports Palmyra has two bars, one grocery store and two gas stations, but its police chief was catching reaction from his application to use town resources to train new ICE agents.
“ICE had approved his application, and then came a statement from the ACLU, the TV news crews and emails to Paul saying he’d ‘sold his soul for money,’ and now, so much of what he saw unfolding across the country felt like it was creeping into life in the village he was supposed to keep safe,” the Post reports.
When Paul had written his warning to the village board about the national “climate,” a gunman had just driven a pickup truck into a Mormon church in Michigan, and, a man had opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas. MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk had been shot and killed on a college campus and now Paul was watching footage of masked federal agents shooting protestors with rubber bullets and firing tear gas just two hours away in Chicago.
Suddenly, there was a rally brewing in Palmyra — something Blount hadn’t seen in his eight years as a police officer. And then came the email. The village clerk sent his phone a screenshot from “a concerned citizen.” Paul studied it, then bumped into assistant fire chief, Dan Schiller. He gestured Dan inside his office, closed the door behind him, and sat at his desk.
“Well, I got my first death threat,” Blount told him.
“The board is crooked,” the writer said of the seven-member board. “They don’t listen to what we tell them” … “Only way to … to put gun on head and do it!!!!’”
“I would have thought that would be somebody out of the area,” Blount said.
At least one member of the town board had already told Blount that the attention from the ICE agreement was making them nervous enough to pull their vote. Blount notified each member of the board about the threat and passed the info along to state officials.
“We already know who it is,” Blount said. “It’s a local. He does have guns, unfortunately.”
Eventually, as news of opposition grew and public sentiment soured the small-town board abandoned the idea of conducting ICE training, despite needing the federal revenue it would bring.
“We deeply value the feedback we have received from our community,” a statement from the board and the police department would read. “… We believe that at this time, the best course forward for Palmyra is to take no further action on the proposed agreement.”
Today, the Post reports Blount is back on his job. But he is catching police codes on his scanner that used to only make an appearance in bigger cities.
Read the Washington Post report at this link.
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