Black Byrd
Charlie Byrd has been the Sheriff-Coroner of Siskiyou County for the past sixteen years, and he's running for a fifth term. Siskiyou is the California county that straddles I-5 as it climbs into Oregon. It's population of 44,000 -- the county ranks 43rd out of 58 -- is mostly concentrated in a few towns along the interstate, with the rest scattered in this very rural, mountainous area a bit larger than Rhode Island. Only one percent of the people in Siskiyou County are black, and Charlie Byrd is one of those. Just before the last balloting, Byrd was pulled over for his driving, and it was reported that there was an open bottle on the front seat. Nonetheless, he won the primary with more than 57% and didn't have to run in the general.
Why do you care? You don't, but you might be interested to know that he'll probably win again despite or because of an incident at the local airport. Byrd was tossed off a flight from Redding on his way to a peace officers meeting in San Diego. Here's what happened. Byrd arrived at the airport an hour early for a 6:30am flight. He's a looming kinda guy with a dominant nose but looks nothing like a young Arab male, and yet he was, he reports, excessively eyeballed by the security guard entering and exiting the rest room. Byrd then went through the metal detector without a beep, but was pulled over for a "random" search. He complained, saying he usually was wanded -- another nice recent addition to the lexicon -- only if he set off the alarm.
The corporate flack in Utah says Byrd was belligerent and "said some very profane things." Hard to imagine, huh? All of us have felt like saying something pointed to the intellectually-stunted who choose their victims at almost anything but random. Most of us sigh, and try to smile instead of bark. Byrd doesn't say that he wasn't rude. Nonetheless, they let him on the plane, which was a full flight.
Then, however, a passenger complained that she and her child were afraid to fly with Byrd on the plane, apparently as a result of his encounter with wand-er, so the pilot (also black) asked the Sheriff-Coroner of Siskiyou County, California, to get off the plane. Which he did, without any apparent disruption; he then drove two hours to the Sacramento airport to continue his travels. Commented his campaign manager, "They didn't tell him to get to the back of the bus. They told him to get off."
It should be noted that Byrd wasn't carrying a weapon, and that he didn't identify himself as a peace officer: "I didn't flash the badge or anything -- I don't do that." Nor should he have had to, though many cops do and get through such situations with a minimum of hassle, and usually an extra bag of peanuts. If they thought Byrd was safe enough to get on the plane, they should have let him fly.
I don't know what kind of job Charlie Byrd has done for Siskiyou County, but the voters seem to think it's at least satisfactory, since four times they've said he's better than they might expect from his opponents. A coupla guys who know says that Byrd's not a bad guy; that the worst you can say about him is that he has an attitude that comes with winning four consecutive elections. They should have chucked the woman and child off the plane instead.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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