The Jail ... When Reason Goes Out the Window | Eastern North Carolina Now

    When reason gets stretched to the breaking point I start asking myself " What does everybody else know that I do not know?" Now it is time to start thinking outside the box. There are only two possible answers to this question. The first is that I do not understand the problem. The second is that there are facts and realities that I have not been willing to acknowledge. I am talking about the question that both I and fellow commissioners are repeatedly asked. That question is "Why do Commissioners Belcher, Langley, Klemm and Booth want to build a jail five miles south of Chocowinity?" Until now I have had to reply "I do not know". Even more surprising, none of the gang of four commissioners have been able to explain "Why build at the Chocowinity location" either.

    The jail issue is easily broken into two parts. Do we need to build a new jail? If the answer to this question is "yes'. Then, the question becomes, where do we need to build the new jail?

    I have explained many times that we do not need to build a new jail. Our jail has not been condemned by the State Jail Inspectors. It complies with the regulations at the time it was built and can continue to operate at an 85 prisoner capacity for ever. We have discovered that the District Attorney, Seth Edwards, is slow to call cases and he along with the Sheriff are using the jail to simply make their jobs easier by holding prisoners long enough to sweat out confessions and rat out other criminals. This contributes to over crowding. There is an issue with capacity. Sometimes we have as many as 20 more inmates than we are permitted to hold. We can house these people in Pitt County at a cost of $400,000 per year. Pitt County has unused cells. The new jail will cost an additional $3,000,000 per year to operate. This is a savings of two million six hundred thousand dollars each year.

    The puzzle is why the gang of four, Langley, Belcher, Booth and Klemm, want to build a new jail five miles south of Chocowinty at the entrance to a 200 acre industrial park rather than at the courthouse. The overall costs will be higher than the court house site and the service to the public will be terrible. Magistrates will be moved from Washington to the jail site, prisoners will have to be hauled to the court house for trial, and law enforcement will be located as far from the public as it can be and still be in Beaufort County.
Beaufort County Commissioner Hood Richardson making himself perfectly clear: Above.     photo by Stan Deatherage
    There is the decision making process. It is the same as was used to produce four other Beaufort County disasters. They are, the location of the US 17 bypass on the west side of Washington, the loss of the Beaufort County Hospital, the overbuilding of 2,000 seats in the school system, gifting of tax money to favored charities, and over running the 33 million dollar school bond issue by 7 or 8 million dollars. There has been no independent study to show the need to build a new jail. There has been no independent study to show the advantages and disadvantages in building a jail at any particular location. The people who are providing the information to the gang of four are the same architects and contractors who are planning to design and build the new jail. How is this independent analysis? A few political figures made the decisions to build the new jail and directed that information be prepared to support what they wanted to do with your tax money.

    So, what brings four people together to make this very bad and unpopular decision? Neither Booth, Langley, Belcher nor Klemm make decisions for Beaufort County unless they either fit their liberal view or enhance their political future. I believe their motives are entirely politically self serving.

    Let us start with Jerry Langley, the Chairman of the Board. Langley has a law enforcement career and has run for sheriff. The law enforcement community is like a fraternity. All for one and one for all. Any one within the fraternity who complains about the behavior of any other person in the fraternity will pay some kind of retribution. Those who expose the bad behavior of another fraternity member will suffer unmerciful persecution usually by all branches of law enforcement. This fraternal condition provides the backdrop to create heroes. Those who do exceptional service such as get a new jail built are entitled to rewards from all members of he fraternity. Doing it in such a way as to provide future arguments about location that could be used to get new sheriffs offices built and even the court house moved to a facility provide multiple rewards. New and bigger is good if you are in law enforcement and using the taxpayers money. So, Langley is probably laying the groundwork for another run for sheriff or career enhancement or a run for other political office. He, at worst, is doing his duty to the law enforcement fraternity and they are all obligated to reward him or at a minimum be neutral toward his future aspirations.

    Booth is a retired member of the law enforcement fraternity. He occasionally indicates that this or that maybe could be changed but he shows his loyalty by supporting the head man. Booth has no choice but to vote with Langley. To vote otherwise would shatter the black block vote and indicate that blacks may be able to think for themselves in these important matters. If Booth were to break with Langley in any way he would certainly pay a heavy price in the 2014 elections even though black Democrats are going to have their taxes raised ten percent along with everyone else in the county when the new jail is built.

    Now comes Al Klemm, RINO extraordinaire. RINO means "Republican In Name Only". Klemm is a loyal Democrat. He votes with the Democrats more than most Democrats vote with their own party. Klemm is the godfather of economic development in Beaufort County. He has been the contact man among the Economic Development Commission, the Committee of 100 and the Beaufort County Commissioners. In order to waste all that money Klemm has traded his vote to get money and concessions from the three Democrat Commissioners. Klemm's vote is the reason the liberal Democrats control the Beaufort County Board of Commissioners. Because the Democrats protected Klemm and the economic development spending, Klemm has no choice but to support the Democrats. They vote for him and he has to vote for them.

    Democrat Robert Belcher, the former Chairman of the School Board. It became known, during the 2012 elections, that he was running for county commissioner so he could do something for the schools. "Doing something for the schools" is code language for Democrats. It means spend more money on education.I believe Belcher is going along with Langley's jail plan because he expects the gang of four to give him a big chunk of money for the schools.

    This system of dividing up the tax payers money among Democrats has been working in Beaufort County during my entire four terms as County Commissioner. It is easily spotted when one senses that "Reason no longer applies". It is for sure there is no reasoning in this idiotic scheme to provide unneeded jail services to Beaufort County.