As concerns the special election for sheriff of Dallas County, all you are doing is broadcasting some cheap negative campaign message personally written by Brickner, the only candidate the Democrats could come up with.

FACTS:

1.The city of Perry has the highest violent crimes per 1,000 residents in Dallas County, Iowa, double any other town in the county. You can find the numbers on the FBI’s website.

2. The Perry PD, operating by Brickner’s magic “blueprint, had a latino gang leader almost hired as their bilingual cop; they were giving him rides in a squad car, he was posting pics of himself on MySpace with the guns in the squad car.

3. The Perry PD approved, through a half-hearted background check, a convicted criminal for a local liquor license — it took a tip from a local citizen to set that straight.

4. Dan Brickner does have ties to the Dallas County sheriff’s department in many ways… the most obvious are his 2 ex Perry Police officers who work there.

Would you move your family to Perry, where Brickner’s BLUEPRINT is at work?

I don’t expect you to post this, but I hope you will share it with each other… shame on you… you’ve already sold out and you don’t even know you are being used.

I am not sure what you thought was negative in my post. I didn’t say anything particularly critical of Chad Leonard (whom I assume you know personally), but I could have if I had wanted to. I will say, though, that Chad was one of Dan’s strongest supporters in 2004, which makes me wonder why that’s the case if your four “facts” are supposed to be so compelling.

Among other things, Dan has cut Perry’s crime rate nearly in half over the 12 and a half years that he has been police chief there. He has worked hard to build bridges with community members, and he really knows his stuff, which most people he meets immediately notice and respect.

That said, the polls are closed now, so it’s out of our hands.

And comments get posted directly to the internet. We don’t censor people simply because they disagree with us, because to do so would undermine the intellectual debate we hope to foster.