Letter to the Editor — by Robert C. Esson of Kootenai County, LASD Commander (retired)
Elections are always filled with antagonistic rhetoric and mud slinging that candidates aim toward opponents in an effort to show themselves unblemished. That is unfortunately the way American politics seemingly work in a campaign’s effort to gain votes and support.
Locally, here in Kootenai County, you can find that very behavior on multiple levels; however, what I watched and heard yesterday brought me to a level of umbrage that found me writing this outreach to my fellow LASD transplants and partners.
While scrolling through Facebook, a “Dan Wilson” for sheriff popped up on my screen. If you’re unaware of this opponent to Sheriff Bob Norris, I would suggest you educate yourself. From what I have discovered, Dan Wilson is a former part-time reserve officer from a county in Washington who has never held a full-time law enforcement position anywhere else in the nation. He has taken on tactics in his election bid that are, at the very least, “mud slinging” and include some pretty ugly attacks on Bob Norris and his family.
Yesterday, during his electioneering visual monologue, Dan Wilson utilized a very broad brush and with one audible stroke stated absent equivocation that the “Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is the most corrupt police department in the world.”
I ruminated on that for a while and thought about my partners over the years; those I worked with whose courage cannot be dismissed and the number of operations performed at every level. Then, I saw myself at every funeral attended, some of whose flags I folded, and the eventuality of standing before that memorial wall where the names of our brethren lost in battle can be found; remembering not only the lost ones but the families represented within each loss.
My anger rose as I recounted those words from Dan Wilson, for he did not merely dribble his sputum upon his own being, but hurled a viscous gob of ill intent and perhaps hate upon not only our personal reputations, but upon the history of thousands, and especially upon those many souls we lost and remember in our hearts.
I understand politics are at times filthy with scoffers, or scoffers who are filthy, and when you have no substance within your own campaign often seek to besmirch the opponent because his persona is substantive and laden with professional experience enhanced by time spent in courageous fashion. However, to take on an entire history of a department with its current and past members of tens of thousands and paint them and the 124 men and women whose names are on the LASD memorial wall in one inarticulate stroke of ugliness in an effort of negative political fecundity leaves me believing Dan Wilson is not merely desperate, but at a level of moral bankruptcy indicative of his true persona and leadership abilities.
Dan Wilson is not merely desperate, but at a level of moral bankruptcy indicative of his true persona and leadership abilities.
Robert Esson, Commander (retired)
I shouldn’t be surprised as it is, after all, politics. But I would have thought that if Dan Wilson had truly carried shield into battle, even with an iota of courageous intervention each of you have performed, he would understand that as such, you are tied within that eternal bond to each other as courageous individuals who sought to heed a calling. While we always hold each other accountable; we especially hold each other dearly. I doubt that Mr. Wilson came to know that intrinsic level of love that holds us professionally and personally, otherwise his commentary would have been thoughtfully driven, not of repugnant banality laden by hate.
