Sheriff Tramples First Amendment
March 14th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Maybe the Duval County Sheriff Santiago Barrera Jr. skipped over that whole bit in his oath of office about “protecting and defending the Constitution.” Maybe he just never got around to learning the First Amendment. The Associated Press reported yesterday that the South Texas sheriff threatened to lock up Alice Echo-News reporter Christopher Maher if he continued to write stories Barrera didn’t like. The paper reported the incident on January 29 but the publication of the AP article has made it a national story.
Barrera, 67, has been sheriff in Duval County for two decades. Over the years he has gained a reputation as an autocrat and acted as a law unto himself. In 2006, he released a 65-year old man arraigned on nine accounts of child sex abuse. Barrera put him on house arrest because he was a diabetic, according to the AP report. He also demoted a drug task force commander to a lesser position as punishment for announcing he planned to challenge Barrera for sheriff.
Nicole Perez, managing editor of the Alice Echo-News, said that given the volatility of politics in South Texas, the newspaper didn’t discount the sheriff’s remarks. “We took his threat very seriously,” she says. “He said that he hated our newspaper and didn’t like our stories.”
What triggered Barrera’s anger was recent coverage by Maher of the lawman’s son Miguel Barrera’s arrest for public intoxication and resisting arrest.
When Maher returned to the newsroom he told Perez about the incident. “He wanted it to be known in case something happened to him, ” says Perez who reported the incident to the Duval County attorney.
‘We are not pursuing charges, but we wanted it to be documented,” she says. “We hope to have a more positive working relationship with the next sheriff.”
On March 4, Barrera lost the sheriff’s race to challenger Ramiro Ramirez, the one who he had earlier demoted.
Reporter Maher will have to be on his guard for a few more months though. The new sheriff won’t ride in to town until next January.
