Long before she was elected president of the Montgomery County Council, Valerie Ervin encountered her share of tough-talking union leaders. She was one herself, after all, having worked to organize smelter workers in Oregon and catfish cleaners in the Mississippi Delta.
But there was a line, Ervin says, and in the run-up to a contentious budget vote last month, she thinks a top police union official crossed it.
According to Ervin, Walt Bader, a police officer and a longtime leader of the Montgomery police union, said the council’s moves to cut spending would turn Montgomery into the “Wild West.”
“He basically started making these threats: ‘You obviously don’t want to have labor peace, and it’s not a pretty sight to have,’ ” Ervin said.
Bader added, according to Ervin, “ ‘I’m sure you don’t want you and your neighbors to see cops with guns on the street with picket signs,’ or something to that effect . . . like we should be afraid of the people who had taken an oath to protect the public.”
Ervin said she was unsettled by Bader’s remarks. “He’s a bully, and there’s potential that the guy’s dangerous,” she said.
1 comment:
From what I have read recently, it seems that county already is a 'wild west'.
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