PBA must cease efforts to intimidate voters

THOMAS Who could have imagined that, in 2009, some members of the law enforcement community would attempt to deny people of a city in the deep South the right to vote?

That is exactly what the local police union, the Police Benevolent Association is threatening to do to the citizens of our city. The oppressive tactics used today are part of a pattern that has been employed by the PBA for the past 2 ½ years to intimidate supporters of the citizen oversight panel.

Last year, PBA President Cecil Pendergrass held a news conference and announced that police officers would be going door-to-door to get people who signed the petition to withdraw their support. Our ACLU attorneys quickly responded to the city manager's office that any such attempts would be viewed as voter intimidation and forwarded to the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division. Then, after the New York Times and

St. Petersburg Times sent reporters to our city to do a story about the PBA's actions, they ceased their proposed efforts.

It is apparent that the union never intended to go door-to-door in Dunbar. No one would commit such a blatant transgression; they only wanted to chill our efforts to collect signatures. This insidious strategy worked, as some of our citizens did become fearful of signing the petition. However, in spite of that tactic, we still collected the necessary signatures to put it on the November ballot.

Now, the PBA, having lost the support of a substantial number of our citizens, has seen the city council unanimously impose a weaker and less-effective review board. The PBA realized it has lost the political debate. So what does the PBA do? It sends out another news release and says it wants to go to court to stop the people's vote.

Let me be clear: We will resist any effort by the PBA to disenfranchise the voters of our city. Too many lives have been lost and too much blood shed for the people to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

We are confident that legal precedent is on our side, specifically a recent Orange County case, provides no support for the PBA's legal efforts. However, more importantly, we are confident that the moral and equitable underpinnings of our efforts to bring accountability to our law enforcement community are strong. Our effort should not and cannot be challenged in good faith by members of our community with its best interest in mind.

What we seek is a community voice and transparency. As the words etched into stone on the façade of the Federal Courthouse in downtown Fort Myers state, "The First Duty of Society is Justice." We seek only a mechanism whereby both our law enforcement officers and the community can ensure that no individual, regardless of his or her socio-economic standing or color is denied his or her right to fair treatment before entering our already overburdened judicial system.

These efforts to intimidate the voters by questionable press releases or our court system are despicable. They represent nothing short of efforts to quiet voices primarily in our minority communities. Certainly in this time, we recognize that such efforts are socially and morally foul. Members of our community have the constitutional right to express themselves through fair and transparent vote, free of intimidation. We have fought too long and hard in the South for these rights. Our forefathers faced Gov. Wallace's raging fire hoses to stand up against intimidation by law enforcement. Let it be known that we today remain resolute to stand up against those same figurative hoses, in the form of press intimidation, baseless legal action or whatever other tactic the PBA may attempt.

We have come too far and we are not going anywhere until we have our right to a fair vote.

— Anthony Thomas is chairman of Citizens for a Better Fort Myers Government.