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| "Comments from the Web" in the Portsmouth Daily Times (2/12/2012) |
Horner’s Son: People Who Live in Crack Houses Shouldn’t Throw Stones
David
Horner, son of the former Portsmouth police chief, has injected himself into
his father’s campaign for sheriff of Scioto County, thereby making himself a
campaign issue. Presumably it was Horner’s son who earlier this year signed a
post in an online chatroom as
DavidHorner2, responding to previous anonymous responders who identified
themselves as Pepprkorn, firstresponder1, and ramz711. Criticizing the three, who didn’t have anything
good to say about his father, DavidHorner2 began, “People like you kill me.” Then he turns in particular
to firstresponder1, who had asked “how in the heck does this guy run for
sheriff when he is on worker’s compensation????” Horner1 responded
snidely, “So your [sic] telling me if you had P.T.O. [paid or personal time
off, i.e. workman’s comp] you wouldn’t take it?” [F]irstresponder1 had also
written, “also i think the next sheriff will be the current one [Donini] we
have right now.” Horner2 replied to firstresponder1, “As to the Sheriff part, The
only reason I could think you don’t want [Charles] Horner in there and the
current one [Donini] to stay is because Horner actually does something besides
sit at a desk all day. Are you afraid he is going to make it hard for you to
score your drugs or is it that he already has and your [sic] mad?” (Quoted in Comments from the Web, in the Portsmouth
Daily Times [2/12/2012].)
The chutzpah of David Horner lecturing anybody about
drugs might
escape you if you didn’t know that the police chief’s son had not only been
using drugs but had been dealing them from high school onwards. That
adolescent stage
of David Horner’s drug career culminated on June 25, 2000, according to
Shawnee Sentinel writer John Welton, when he was arrested at the age of nineteen
and subsequently found guilty of
possessing drugs and drug paraphernalia. I looked in the Portsmouth Daily Times
archives for the whole month of June,
2000, but found no mention of David
Horner’s arrest. I looked also at court records, but found no mention of his
arrest there either. Does this mean Horner’s son was not arrested? Hardly,
because the PDT has a long tradition of not reporting embarrassing news about anyone
connected with the wealthy and influential crooks who control the city
politically and economically. When Jeff Barron made the mistake of reporting
that a drug dealer who was arrested worked as a mechanic at Glockner Motors, he
was fired not long afterwards. There was a report on the arrest of Horner’s son
in court records, according to John Welton, but it had been expunged. “The
criminal records of the Chief’s son had been hidden by court order in March
2003 by judge Richard Schisler,” Welton reported in The Sentinel on July 18, 2003. Welton, whose handle was Doug Deep, had
dug deep and found that David Horner’s arrest for drugs record had not
been completely expunged.
David Horner continued selling drugs after
his 2000 conviction. A person in a position to know told me that Horner’s
son had
brazenly sold drugs in Damon’s Restaurant, directly across from the Portsmouth
police station. I learned from published sources that he was also selling drugs
in New Boston, where an
ambitious New Boston sergeant, Matt Powell, was making
a name for himself as a drug-buster. Powell claimed he was close to arresting David
Horner for dealing drugs in New Boston, but Chief Horner, in an effort to prevent his son from being
arrested, began putting obstacles in Powell’s way. According to a
timeline John Welton assembled for these events, during January, 2003, David
Horner was “under surveillance by Sgt. Matt Powell for possible criminal
activity in the Village of New Boston. Drug dealers claim that they tipped off
Chief Horner that his son was being investigated by Sgt. Matt Powell.”
Even after his conviction in 2000 David Horner as a
twenty-something continued to receive preferential treatment when he got in
trouble with the law. A very reliable person told me of hearing on a police
scanner that a David Horner had been found to have drugs and paraphernalia in
his car when he was stopped by police in West Portsmouth. No report of this incident appeared in the local
media nor is there any reference to it in David Horner’s rap sheet. Another
person told me of hearing on another
occasion that Horner’s son had been stopped in Sciotoville and found to be in
possession of drugs.
A senior citizen couple told me they were near Andy’s Glass shop on 8th Street
when David Horner drove into the back of a truck. Obviously in a drugged state,
Horner was detained by two Portsmouth police officers until Chief Horner
arrived and drove him away. That accident was not reported in the media, nor is
there any record of it on David Horner’s rap sheet. These
unreported incidents took place about ten years ago. But as recently as two
years ago, while Horner was still chief, a Portsmouth police officer
told me Horner was still protecting his son. That’s all he would tell me, and I
think he regretted telling me that much, because he was taking a chance telling
me anything.
Being father of a son,
but one who fortunately has never had a drug
problem, I can sympathize with Horner’s father doing everything he could to prevent his son from being arrested and sent to
prison, but I cannot condone his failure to uphold the law, which as a police officer,
he was sworn to do. Horner
elbowed his way up the ranks of the Portsmouth police force, from Sergeant
Screw-up, to Captain Incompetent, to Chief Enabler, finding it easier to ignore and cover up
than confront his son’s drug problems.
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| Did an automobile accident in front of Andy's Glass go unreported? |
I began this piece by
quoting Horner’s son boasting that his
father “actually does something beside sit at a desk all day,” the implication
being that that’s all Donini does, sit at his desk all day.
But John Welton thought that that was just
what the father was guilty of, as far as
his addicted son was concerned—he sat on his rear. “I have an agenda for
you Chief Horner, Welton wrote in The
Sentinel. “Get off your butt and do your job. Why don’t you go to
the Sciotoville crack house where you have admitted to Sentinel staff
members that you were aware your son is buying his crack. Call me a liar Chief
Horner. We notified you of the drug house, as we have done on many of your
local busts, and your words were, ‘I know he’s there but what can I do? If he
doesn’t buy it there, he will buy it somewhere else.’ Well heck, Chuck, if you
shut off his supply then he might have to leave town with the other drug users
and our town would be safe. That is a terrible reason for not busting a dope
house you know exists.” Yes, Welton is an ex-felon, but in my experience in
Portsmouth the indicted felons are far more truthful than the unindicted felons
who control the city poitically and economically. If the scales of justice had
been balanced, David Horner himself would
probably be an ex-felon.
It would have been better for his father, for his mother and for
himself, if Horner’s son had not gotten
involved at all in his father’s campaign because in doing so he calls attention
not only to his own history of drug abuse but to his father’s helping to cover it
up. In fact, it would
have been better for everybody in Scioto County if Horner had not chosen to run
for sheriff because if he is elected, the same cycle will probably begin again.
Horner cannot help being Horner. And now there is someone else who could end up
paying for the sins not only of the father but also of the grandfather. There is in David Horner’s
rap sheet, if it too hasn’t been
expunged, a record of his paternity case against a woman who bore two children
while she consorted with him during his drug daze. David legally challenged that he was the biological father of one of
the two children, and DNA tests proved he was right. He therefore was not legally
obligated to provide financial support for the unrelated child. For the sake of
the child whom he did accept as his, it would be better if that child did not
have a grandfather who might become the despised sheriff of Scioto County, just
as it would have been better for David if he had not had to grow up as the son
of the despised Portsmouth police chief.
In view of
David Horner’s past drug-dealing, and in view of his father’s reported covering
up for him, it is ironic that members of the SOLACE group are backing his
father for sheriff. I believe some members of SOLACE have
been bamboozled by Horner, but those who know him best—and who knows Horner
better than members of the Portsmouth police force?—want no part of him. In a straw vote conducted by the Portsmouth police
union, Horner got not a single vote favoring him for sheriff.
I would not
have written this particular post about Horner’s son if he hadn’t implied firstresponder1 was a druggie just
because firstresponder1 predicted Horner’s father would not be elected sheriff.
“Are you afraid he is going to make it
hard for you to score your drugs or is it that he already has and your [sic]
mad?” Horner’s son asked responder1. Apparently Horner’s son has not learned that people who live in crack
houses should not throw stones.
