By the 2010
census, Scioto County, which covers about 616 sq. miles, has a population of
79,499. The city of Portsmouth, on the
other hand covers only about 12 sq. miles and has a population of only about
20,226. Which do you think is the more challenging job,
being the sheriff of Scioto County or the captain of the Portsmouth Police
Department? If Horner couldn’t handle the job of police chief, how is he ever
going to handle the job of sheriff?
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| Scene of botched drug bust. Sergeant Horner didn't sleep here. |
For some
time Horner has screwed up royally as the
Portsmouth police chief. In fact, he was a screw-up even before he was chief.
He was screwing up royally back in 1992, when he was only a sergeant. In that year plainclothes officers under Sergeant Horner’s command mistakenly broke
into the home of an elderly couple in Portsmouth who had just returned from evening
church services. Had Sergeant Horner been on the scene he might have been able
to point out the house where the bust should have been made, but for some reason
he wasn’t there. Was the reason he wasn’t there because he didn’t want to put
himself in the line of fire? Once he was told that the wrong house had been broken into, the
incompetent Horner, in an attempt to cover his own ass, rushed over to the house his men had broken
into and practically got down on his knees to beg forgiveness from the traumatized couple. Would
they sue him? Would they cost him his job? That’s what he was obviously worried about. He offered to sleep overnight on
their living room couch if it would make them feel safer. They declined his
offer. Would it help them to sleep knowing the incompetent sergeant was
sleeping on their couch, the same sergeant whose men, even after they had
broken in the door and saw they were an elderly couple, continued to treat them
like drug dealers? (For more on the botched drug bust, click here.)
Horner has
been masquerading lately as a sheriff,
as sheriff Matt Dillon of Dodge, Kansas, but back in 1992, he did a much better
imitation of Inspector Clouseau. As police chief, Horner was
asleep on the job as Portsmouth gained notoriety as one of the ten most
dangerous American cities to live in and as the Oxycontin capital of America. He
has been figuratively sleeping on the couch as the city has gone to hell. Now
he wants to sleep on the couch of the county. Neither the city nor the county
should be burdened any longer by this man and his physical and psychiatric ailments.
He is offering his services to the county, but like the couple in Sciotoville,
the voters should, to coin a phrase, “Just say no to Horner.”
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| Just say no to Horner masquerading as Matt Dillon |
