The first time I remember meeting Ben (not his actual name) was at one of the schools. There was concern about safety with gang violence and other criminal activity. After the presentation there was a QA session and Ben provided three phone numbers to call. One was the local police department, one was for the Sheriff’s office and the last one he gave he said was his personal number. I had programmed all three into my phone but had only used one and never the other two.
Ben had run for office as the
Sheriff head cheese – which was not the official title but he had worked under
the Sheriff head cheese not as a deputy but an acting sheriff and had run
against the head cheese I don’t know how many times. He was running the year I dragged my husband to an
adjoining neighborhood to support his campaign.
I remember liking his facebook page which I guess at the time qualified
me as an automatic member of his group.
In 2011 we were living in West
Valley (not a prestige neighborhood by any means) and Ben was serving in law
enforcement in the overly prestige Cottonwood Heights (nearly 30 miles apart)
when he had been caught using public funds for personal gain. Whether it was intentional or not I do not
know. His work had provided him with a
gas card to fill up the city vehicle that he used – however there was a
suspicious 44 dollar discrepancy that could not be accounted for. Investigation proved that the money had been
spent on personal transportation. Now I
don’t know how often this was done as that is the only amount I come across as
I search through old records. At the
time rumors made it sound like a regular occurrence.
I remember I was asked to sign a petition to “save” Ben from having to go to court, jail, prison . . . whatever the misdemeanor punishment was. Ben did have a lot of charisma. People liked him and surely he could be forgiven of this one minor mistake. I liked him – I still do despite his tarnished reputation – but my initial thought was NOT to sign the petition but rather to make an example out of him. If we dismissed the small act of crime (or perhaps it really was an accident?) perhaps a larger felon could be committed by someone in a higher office (say the mayor or the governor) and perhaps the public would look away and dismiss his actions. No, the public had to know that Ben had committed a crime and would not be allowed to get away with it.
If a
public figure punished for something that seemed so small (how many tanks could
44 dollars fill in 2011?) but yet might ruin his reputation others may think
twice before committing something worse.
If Ben didn’t get away with spendings 44 dollars of the taxpayers money
(again, the amount could have been more but that is the only amount I have come across in my research at this time) would anybody else be able to get away with more?
In my last post I talked about a shared video that was removed from the page I had posted it on. I had sent the shared video to my brother who is no longer on facebook but is on messenger. He wrote back the following:
“I enjoyed the TikTok video. I do
think the removal of the video on the church page is an unfortunate example of
missing the larger message at the expense of a minor bit of innocuous
profanity. But I also recognize that the administrators of the page have set
some ground rules that they need to abide by.”
I thought of this example of Ben. I also thought about the evolution of programming. Married couples (such as Rob and Laura Petrie or Ricky and Lucy Ricardo) were depicted as sleeping in twin beds. Today’s programming shows you what they’re doing in bed – often not being married (at least to each other).
Where do we draw the line?
They are introduced to chocolate chip cookies “which isn’t the same as chocolate cake”. What may seem acceptable to some may offend others. Where do we draw the line? How about we stay within the boundaries that our Heavenly Father has set for us? Perhaps this was a lesson I had forgotten and need to remember.
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