Save Our Sheriff

SOS Admin wrote on 1276038565|%e %b, %H:%M (%O ago)
Tags: sos

Terrorist attacks and natural disasters often happen without warning. For one Louisiana sheriff, that's reason enough to start training a 200-member paramilitary force — just don't call it a militia.

Larry Deen, the sheriff of Bossier Parish, told the Shreveport Times he came up with the idea for "Operation Exodus," a volunteer corps made up of parish residents, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

It was in the tense hours after planes flown by terrorists felled the World Trade Center and slammed into the Pentagon that Deen and his men guarded then-President George W. Bush at Bossier City's Barksdale Air Force Base, roughly 340 miles northwest of New Orleans.

Nearly nine years later, Deen put out a call to prospective volunteers, and "Operation Exodus" finally became a reality. Some 300 of Bossier Parish's 110,000 residents responded, and of those, 200 have been chosen for training. The first classes began a month ago. Just five of those approved for combat roles are black and there are no women.

When asked by the Times whether the newly formed group could be described as a militia, Deen bristled. "We run from that word," Deen said. "We're just the opposite of that word."

"The main thing that we're trying to do," Chief Deputy Doyle Dempsey said in a video posted on the department's Web site, is "set up a prevention mode to implement during Operation Exodus. And what the means is, if we can show an overwhelming show of force prior to any major incident taking place, we can hopefully prevent it from starting before it ever happens."

The two videos below shows how the mainstream news media has taken this story and started to spin it: