To Protect and Stand Around Watching it Burn


A gay man in Oklahoma is suing the Sheriff, Under Sheriff, Mayor, and six other officials of Hitchcock, OK.

There is, naturally, some he said/she said going on, but according to Randy Gamel-Medler, his home was burned down in a “mysterious fire”:

The lawsuit alleges that some Hitchcock residents, including defendants Patsy and Kenny Meier, watched the fire from their lawn chairs nearby.

And:

Despite being a block away from the fire station, Gamel-Medler alleged the department did nothing for an extended period of time.

The problem is, that Gamel-Medler is gay and is married and has a black son. Apparently that’s too much for small town Oklahoma to handle.

“Meradith Norris, one of the trustees, had seen him in the yard and asked if he was our son,” Gamel-Medler told NBC News. “She said to me, ‘What are you going to do when your house burns down and we don’t send out the firetrucks?'”

Gamel-Medler also recalled an incident in early May, a few weeks before the fire, where Jonita Pauls Jacks, who is named in the lawsuit, allegedly attempted to enter his car while he was performing his duties on the road as town clerk. When he locked the door, he said Jacks shook his truck and said, “You f—–g queer, I’m going to grab your little boy, rip his n—-r head off and sh-t down his throat.”

Gamel-Medler said he immediately brought the incident to Sheriff Almaguer, who allegedly said Jacks was practicing free speech. “No report, nobody does anything,” Gamel-Medler said.

Small-town America is pretty far from civilization. Sounds like they need some “regime change” out there.

Out here in rural Pennsylvania, the usual passive-aggressive comment is, “I sure hope you don’t have a hunting accident.”

Comments

  1. says

    Yeah. I can not imagine sitting in a fucking lawn chair, watching a neighbour’s house burn down, and not doing one damn thing about it. These are the people who don’t go to neo-nazi marches, they don’t fly swastikas, but they are the rotten nazis in the woodwork. Heil Amerikkka.

  2. jrkrideau says

    @ 2 Marcus
    Well I’m okay on 1 & 2 and even have a white beard but I never even heard of carhartt before. And I’d have a funny accent.

    Well, if not Syria, perhaps just the old standby France. I cannot go right now but it would be a good time to be there.

  3. says

    WMDKitty — Survivor@#7:
    You know, growing up, I thought we’d be past all this by the 2010’s.

    They tried to teach me and my classmates that it was over by the 70s. So, the 80s were just a big economic roller-coaster and everyone enjoyed the cocaine. It was all lies.

  4. jrkrideau says

    @9 Marcus
    France is nice if you’re white and have money!
    With my trusty bicycle and an eye out for really cheap hotels one can still have a not–bad trip.

    And, somewhat cynically, after a terrorist attack like the one on the soldiers in the Paris suburb, a lot of tourists, especially Americans, get scared away which makes finding hotel space and so on a lot easier.

    Never saw a line-up even at the Louvre on my first trip to France. Heck, only a very small crowd around the Mona Lisa.

  5. lanir says

    I’ll never understand people in government or law enforcement that want to deny the equal protection under the law to some people. They seem to expect it their victim to always cower in fear but that’s not always the case. They also increasingly seem to tell everyone when this happens and bring pressure from outside to bear on the screw-ups. And as embarassing and costly as that might be, it isn’t even the worst possible outcome. What happens when they screw up and target someone who isn’t a better human being than they are? What if that person has the same stupid gun fantasies?

    Morons.

  6. se habla espol says

    @lanir, #11:

    What happens when they screw up and target someone who isn’t a better human being than they are? What if that person has the same stupid gun fantasies?

    A) They’ve got him outnumbered: if not initially, they wait ’til they do.
    B) The survivors writes the history (news story or book).