Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones says family was ‘terrorized.’ But he says lots of things

A new campaign ad for Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, who is running for Congress, claims that “Even though his home was targeted, his family terrorized, Sheriff Jones stood up to BLM and stopped the riots. It takes courage to stand up to a mob.”

It does, but this wasn’t Atticus Finch at the jailhouse door.

Jones says he stood up to the mob by holding a news conference in 2020 at which he threatened to fill the county jail with protesters. But at the time, not even Jones blamed Black Lives Matter for the looting and vandalism that had gone on the night before. And why would he, when that’s just not what happened?

City officials did call in the National Guard, and the protests eventually did go pfft.

Only, it’s a stretch to say Jones “stopped the riots.” And was his family really “terrorized”?

BLM protesters did hold a candlelight vigil on the street outside his home in 2016, four years before the unrest that followed the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. Standing out there in the dark, an activist read a list of “charges” against Jones that included responsibility for the death of Adrienne Ludd, who was fatally shot by the longtime sheriff’s deputies in 2015.

In 2016 and 2018, BLM also “targeted” a park in Jones’ neighborhood, where they handed out flyers and juice.

No one wants to look out the kitchen window and see protesters, no matter how peaceful they are. And they aren’t always peaceful; at one protest at Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg’s home, there was vandalism, and some demonstrators shouted the names of his children, which is way out of bounds.

Jones, though, paradoxically positions himself as the toughest of tough guys, while also exaggerating threats against him and his — and campaigning on them.

His claims are not original.

Two days before Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley raised his fist in support of actual insurrectionists, he claimed that “Antifa scumbags” had vandalized his Virginia home and threatened his wife and newborn daughter.

“They screamed threats, vandalized, and tried to pound open our door,” he tweeted. “Let me be clear: My family & I will not be intimidated by leftwing violence.”

Police did not find any evidence of damage or intimidation. A 50-minute video of this “leftwing violence” showed fewer than two dozen people holding candles and writing in chalk on the sidewalk. The “threats” they screamed were, “Due diligence has been done, Biden-Harris have won!” They also shouted, “Hawley, Hawley, shame on you. Biden-Harris won through and through!” Terrible chants, yes. Intimidating, no.

Last weekend, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine also called police after finding this terrifying message written in chalk on the sidewalk in front of her home in Bangor: “Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA,” the Women’s Health Protection Act that would codify and expand abortion rights. That bill failed on Wednesday after Collins and all other Republicans in the Senate voted against it, as did Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin.

“Susie” didn’t vote no because somebody left a perfectly civil message she didn’t appreciate on her sidewalk.

But why give those who lust after aggrievement exactly what they want by showing up at their houses?

In 2020, what the Associated Press described as “scattered violence in downtown Sacramento,” Sheriff Jones called an “attempted insurrection.”

After the real insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last January, Jones saluted the constitutionally guaranteed right to protest, and defended those of his deputies who’d attended the pre-insurrection festivities.

If Jones, who is running for the new Third Congressional District seat against his fellow Republican Kevin Kiley and Democrats Kermit Jones and David Peterson, thinks that insurrections only involve those he doesn’t like, then how tough on crime is that?

“A riot is the language of the unheard,” Martin Luther King Jr. told us.

The unheard include many people who not only would never have marched with MLK, but came to love him only as an often misrepresented ghost.

But these days, a riot is also the language of those who only imagine themselves to be threatened and unheard. And the more of us who speak riot fluently, the worse off we all are.

This story was originally published May 12, 2022 at 11:19 AM.