As if there wasn't enough weirdness coming from the Romney campaign, Mitt has assembled his own police power and they're roaming the streets looking for suspects.
Eyeon08 has posted a reminder of the 'secret service' Romney was operating during his tenure as Governor:
t turns out that Romney maintained as governor an Office of Operations that was sort of informal secret service for the governor. Here’s a description of his operation from a 2005 Boston Herald article:
Some office staff, who all wear LXX pins, fashion themselves as U.S. Secret Service agents, referring to Romney in their earpieces and audio-equipped wrist pieces as "70" - similar to the way the Secret Service agents identify President Bush as "43" because he is the 43rd president.
Nice. Romney has his own goons. Chief Goon is a guy by the name of Jay Garrity. Jay got his own story in the paper when it turned out that he had a bunch of illegal police equipment … while working for the governor. From a March 2004 Herald article:
A top aide to Gov. Mitt Romney was cited last week for tooling around with illegal police equipment in his private car - from lights and sirens to batons and heavily tinted windows.
Romney’s director of operations, Jay A. Garrity, had parked the car illegally in the North End and police ordered it towed.
Police discovered a set of red-and-blue flashing lights hidden in the grill - equipment for which Garrity has no permit.
Cops also found a siren and public address system, multiple police radios, strobe lights on the wheels, a police baton and a metal plate with a photo of a state police patch that said “official business.'’
“Apparently this kid’s a wannabe cop,'’ said one source familiar with the situation.
Turns out the dude is still around. He is mentioned in the "Five Brothers" blog:
Here he is with Governor Bill Weld and Senator Jim Talent (and the ever present Jay Garrity in the background–he deserves his own post some day)
Sure as hell sounds like he deserves his own post. So I gave him one. But I bet they have even better stories than the papers…
Total Weirdness!
UPDATE: The Boston Globe has an update on Romney's super sleuths.
Romney found Garrity's faux police stunts worthy of appointing him as Director of Operations, where he's assembled a rogue Massachusetts State Police Force for Romney's Presidential Campaign.
In the phone call to the Wilmington company, which was recorded by an answering service and obtained by the Globe, a man who identifies himself as "Trooper Garrity with the Massachusetts State Police" complains about the driving of a van owned by Wayne's Drains Middlesex Sewers of Wilmington. The caller repeatedly says he is a trooper and questions when the driver will return to the office.
"I'm going to get the address of your company," the caller says during the May 13 call. "I'm going to come down to your company. I'm going to personally issue this driver a citation for both speeding, driving erratic, cutting across."
"The whole thing was just hinky," said Wayne Barme, owner of the Wilmington drain and sewer cleaning company, whose wife, Dot, contacted State Police after receiving the complaint.
Mind you, this is a completely different incident than one involving the New York Times reporter.
Yesterday, The Romney camp issued denials that their private police powers told the NYT reporter they had run his license plate. But, the latest incident has the same MO:
This week, Romney's campaign denied that the Times reporter's license had been checked or that his vehicle was pulled over. The reporter, Mark Leibovich, is sticking by his report.
In the Massachusetts incident, the purported trooper says in the call that he was driving through the Ted Williams Tunnel and was unable to pull over the driver who was cutting off cars.
Later, he adds: "Unfortunately, I could not catch up with him, but I did witness him driving like a maniac through the tunnel, cutting off vehicles, and I just had the Mass. Pike department of video surveillance go through the video so I could pull the license plate number and the company name off this vehicle."
Barme's wife contacted the State Police and provided the caller's cellphone number, which has since been disconnected.
In 2004, the Globe reported, Garrity was cited and fined for driving a Crown Victoria with red and blue lights mounted in the grill, a siren, a PA system, and strobe lights; and for having a nightstick and identification showing a State Police patch that read "Official Business."
Today, Romney's goons are distancing themselves by saying Garrity was not working for the Romney campaign on the day the incident took place.
Aside from not finding it credible that in the middle of a work week Garrity had a random day off - it's a little late in the game to be claiming Romney didn't recruit Garrity for his "expertise" in "secret service/police work" and put him to work to assemble secret service trooper police.
The photo of Garrity in the paper edition is absolutely creepy!
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