The ouster of Nashville immigration attorney Elliott Ozment from a community advisory board on the heinous 287g deportation program is indicative of one truth: Metro Nashville Sheriff Daron Hall is willfully ignoring it.
Ozment was really not ousted for uttering an untruth about the grossly ignored sheriff's panel. It was assembled two years for a program Hall sold as only going after undocumented workers with a criminal record and posing a violent threat to the community.
Now Hall denies the obvious heard by many people. And the torture of a very pregnant Nashville mother over the Fourth of July weekend and beyond by the sheriff's department has left this politician in a corner. Ozment's real offense is being the attorney for the tortured woman, Mrs. Juana Villegas (DeLaPaz). And he is readying a civil rights lawsuit against Hall, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and hopefully congressmen Jim Cooper and Marsha Blackburn. They brought 287g to Metro Nashville.
The gross dysfunction of the sheriff's advisory board was well known before Ozment's public comment on a TV program. Gregg Ramos, a Nashville attorney and chairman of Catholic Charities for the Dioicese of Nashville, has said that the sheriff does not even listen to board members. And Hall did not invite members of the board to his political dog and pony show earlier this year touting the success of the program in mistreating undocumented human beings.
The following comment from a reader purporting to be a board member ran after one of my political blog posts: "Abuse exists, and hiding behind jurisdictional restrictions appears to interested outsiders as wink wink, nudge nudge(we know we are on shaky ground here, but, you know, nobody will care).
"How much better would it have been for a high-level Sheriff's dept official to say 'we agree that the actions by the jailers in this case went well beyond the intent of the Departmental S.O.P., and we intend to review and ultimately change how we treat women in our care, regardless of their citizenship status?'
"This sends two messages: first that we acknowledge that Mrs. Villegas came to us in a vulnerable position, and we failed to treat her with at least the minimum level of care any human being deserves, and, second, that while we have no control over who ends up in our care, we are committed to the highest level of professionalism when dealing with them.
"I've been shouted down for raising valid concerns by Sheriff Hall after being invited to be a member of his 287(g) Advisory Council, so I think I am allowed in this forum to make a few observations that I could not make during our meetings."
Hall has become a citywide embarrassment to competent law enforcement officials at the Metro Nashville Police Department and chamber of commerce officials fearing a loss of Nashville's supposed reputation as a friendly city.
The ouster of Ozment just widens the shame and is another reason people of conscience outside this city and state should boycott Nashville as a place to visit, hold conventions and buy country music products.
Hall and other Nashville officials continue to show they are without conscience and any feeling for the truth about this heinous wrong brought to Music City.
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