DEPUTIES DRUNKENLY DUKE IT OUT AT DINNER

[S. Franklin]

Yet another case of mishandling by the Shiloh County Sheriff’s Department strikes the county. I’ve received exclusive reports and footage from the Emergency Response Team’s annual awards banquet that shows several deputies of the Shiloh County Sheriff’s Department drunkenly brawling inside the Hotel Arcadia’s ballroom. We were able to exclusively interview several of the security guards and hotel staff that were present.

Reports state that the awards banquet was preceding as it normally does, with awards being handed out for Firefighter of the Year, Ambulance Driver of the Year, and Law Enforcement Officer of the Year, as well as others. After the ERT Commissioner had left the stage and the awards were over, it appears that two officers in particular, as of yet unidentified, initiated a drunken brawl with another banquet attendee. Footage sent to us from an anonymous source shows one of the officers accosting a woman seated at a table and when she rejects him and her husband intervenes, the officer starts a fight with the man. They brawl for a short while before a second deputy jumps in, followed by a bystander that appears to try to break the fight up. The four men fight on, destroying hotel property in the process, before hotel security attempts to intervene. Security attempts to restrain the two, yet they continue to resist. Strange how when the tables are turned and they’re the ones being restrained, ‘stop resisting’ doesn’t seem so simple a command to follow, does it? One deputy is even seen jumping from a table to a dessert cart, destroying it in the process, while trying to run from security. Both deputies were eventually restrained by security and escorted from the premises, but only after causing hundreds of dollars of damages, injuring at least three security professionals, and all the while fighting the security guards. At the height of the fight, reports state one deputy, seated at a table, trip a security guard, causing him to fall onto a chair and injure himself. This deputy has been identified by several hotel employees as the deputy who won Shiloh County Law Enforcement Officer of the Year 2020, Sergeant Jason Patterson. A supervising deputy, and yet he also found this behavior acceptable enough to participate in it. What is happening at SCSD? Is Sheriff Brunner actually in control of his people?

We all know Shiloh County Sheriff’s Department has a reputation for toeing the line of civility. Yet this takes it to an entire new level. Sheriff’s deputies, at a departmental event, drunkenly duking it out with private unarmed security professionals and resisting their efforts to deescalate the altercation and restrain the parties involved. And no other deputies in the crowd moved to break up the altercation. We reached out to the Shiloh County Sheriff’s Office for a statement and received the following in reply:

“There was a disturbance where an off duty deputy observed a hotel security officer using an illegal chokehold on another duty deputy following a verbal altercation with an unidentified party guest. During the ensuing chase one of the security officers allege that an off duty sheriff's sergeant tripped him. Right now this is under internal investigation by the ERT and the Sheriff’s Department."

Of course, no charges have been filed on any of the deputies that assaulted the security professionals. It’s no surprise to us, of course, the Thin Blue Line prevails and the blue wall fiercely protects its biggest mistakes, no matter what they’ve done. Shiloh County should be ashamed to have this happen on their watch. Is this really the way we expect our uniformed officers to behave? Is this acceptable to the sheriff? We’ll be sure to remember this at election time, and I hope all our readers will as well. Shiloh County needs change.