Feud erupts between Bethel’s mayor, police chief
Argentine rocker Fito Páez goes full throttle during the pandemic
It’s been a rough year in the village of Bethel.
The Clermont County community and its 2,800 residents are still stinging from the national attention they got last June when bat-wielding, gun-toting counterprotesters descended on Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the village.
The fallout from that debacle, along with a series of other, less publicized problems, is now at the heart of a feud between suspended Police Chief Steve Teague and Mayor Jay Noble, who is trying to fire Teague.
Noble accuses Teague of lying, bullying, incompetence and neglect of duty. Teague says the mayor is making him a scapegoat for his own failures and for the national embarrassment that resulted from the Black Lives Matter protests and counterprotests.
“I’m not going to mince words,” said Teague’s lawyer, Kelly Lundrigan, at a Feb. 11 administrative hearing. “This is a hatchet job that is masquerading as a fair hearing process.”
An audit issued last month found the department was ill-prepared for the protests and criticized Teague’s leadership style.
The mayor’s accusations against Teague run the gamut. One of the 11 administrative charges filed earlier this month claims the chief allowed the June protests to get out of control despite a known threat of violence. Another charge says he risked public health last spring by ignoring COVID-19 safety rules.
And another accuses Teague of acting recklessly in October when trying to apprehend and euthanize a pair of runaway cows, one of which was shot as many as seven times with handguns and a shotgun before dying.
Noble said the shooting of the cows, which the administrative charges refer to as “The Cow Incident,” occurred in part because “Teague wanted to participate in killing cows for his own personal pleasure.”
“These charges merit the chief’s removal from office,” said Village Solicitor Emily Supinger, who presented the charges to the village council at the fivehour hearing on Feb. 11. “The issues with Chief Teague have grown and mounted.”
Lundrigan said the problem is the mayor, not the chief. At the hearing, Lundrigan said the administrative charges, which are not criminal but could result in the chief’s firing, are the product of a personal vendetta involving the mayor and his clerk.
Lundrigan also suggested the political views of the chief and his wife, particularly their support of the Black Lives Matter movement, are in part to blame for the attacks against him.
He said Teague briefed the mayor, the solicitor and others about his plan for handling crowd control at the Black Lives Matter protest and everyone signed off on it. In a brief filed before the hearing, Lundrigan said the mayor and council members were “highly complimentary” of his work in the immediate aftermath of the protests.
“The mayor has now apparently changed his mind,” Lundrigan wrote in the brief.
The administrative charges against Teague came seven months after Black Lives Matter counterprotesters flooded the village’s streets, and less than a month after the independent audit of the police department concluded Teague mishandled the protests on June 14 and June 15.
The audit found local police had ample warning that motorcycle gangs and other counterprotesters intended to disrupt the Black Lives Matter demonstration, possibly with violence. Several people were injured and police arrested about a half dozen counterprotesters.
The audit also found Bethel police had not completed required training, had failed to properly maintain the evidence room and mishandled the “cow incident,” creating a safety risk and causing the wounded cow to suffer for 30 minutes before dying.
“Recent events have brought the deficiencies to the forefront,” wrote the auditor, Scott Hughes, a police academy commander and the police chief in Hamilton Township in Warren County. “Without significantly more resources and a leadership focus, the department – and community – may continue to suffer.”
In the administrative charges, Noble said Teague frequently ignored proper procedure and, in some cases, lied to him. One of the charges claims Teague worked a paid off-duty detail in Loveland in October while also being paid his full salary to work in Bethel.
“The chief’s priority should be on the Village of Bethel,” Noble wrote in the charge, which alleges theft in office.
He said Teague also disregarded the mayor’s COVID-19 safety protocols and frequently made unnecessary visits to the firehouse, endangering other essential workers.
Noble, who declined comment Thursday, said at the Feb. 11 hearing that Teague’s conduct was unacceptable and reflected poorly on the village. When Supinger asked him about the Black Lives Matter protests, Noble said media coverage of the counterprotesters confronting peaceful demonstrators gave the community a black eye.
He said he and others in village government received thousands of emails, calls and voicemails from people around the country upset by the images from Bethel on social media and the national news. Someone even hacked the village’s website, Noble said.
“It was an ugly day. It was a bad day for our town,” the mayor said. “It was horrible.”
Teague could not be reached for comment and his lawyer declined comment Thursday. But at the Feb. 11 hearing, Lundrigan said his client’s reputation had been “smeared in a very serious way.”
He noted that Teague had worked for the city as a police officer for 17 years before becoming chief in 2019 and had never been disciplined in any way for his conduct.
Lundrigan suggested the mayor is making Teague a scapegoat and said all of the administrative charges are based on personality differences, not on actions that could legally result in Teague’s dismissal. He described the charges as “malicious, gratuitous slurs.”
“Chief Teague can’t be fired because of a personality conflict,” Lundrigan said.
The village council will decide what happens next. When the hearing is over, council members will vote on whether to dismiss the charges, discipline Teague for his conduct or fire him. The hearing is set to resume March 2.
“I’m not going to mince words. This is a hatchet job that is masquerading as a fair hearing process.” Kelly Lundrigan Lawyer for Bethel Police Chief Steve Teague
The last time we heard from Candice Keller, the former Republican state representative from Butler County was defying mask mandates.
She was asked to leave Gettysburg Visitor Center and Museum for refusing to wear a mask during a July trip to the Civil War battlefield. A few days later, she took a photo of her going maskless to a local Walgreens.
She left the General Assembly Dec. 31 after losing a bid for the Ohio Senate last year.
Now she’s starting a new conservative political group, Patriot America, to get more conservatives to run for local office. She hasn’t decided what the group will be yet – a political action committee, nonprofit or just an informal group.
“This is not about Trump,” Keller told The Enquirer. “This about local control. We can’t do anything about the national election, but we can do something about these local races.”
Keller said it’s not a split with the Republican Party. But it’s clear Keller and Republican leadership have their differences.
Butler County Republican Party’s chairman Todd Hall in a statement to The Enquirer slammed the new group, saying Keller “lusts for attention and power.”
Keller responded Hall runs “a good ol’ boys club.”
‘Blind and naked political ambition’
More than 300 packed Oasis Church in Middletown for the first meeting of Patriot America on February 13.
When asked the group’s politics and purpose, Keller said they were Trump loyalists but that it’s “nonpartisan.”
It clearly has drawn the ire of the Butler County Republican Party chairman. When asked by The Enquirer what he thought of Keller’s new group, Hall didn’t seem happy about it in an emailed response.
He first touted the 114,000 Butler County residents who voted for Trump in 2020, more than any other Ohio
county that Trump won. He said the party in Butler County is “already filled with patriots.”
“The story of Candice Keller is simply one of blind and naked political ambition,” Hall said in the statement. “With a blend of self-serving pious and bitter rhetoric, Keller talks a good game and fools some very good people into backing her carefully crafted agenda.”
Keller criticized Hall as part of the “swamp” and being disrespectful to “female Christian candidates” such as herself. Hall doesn’t speak for a majority of Butler County Republicans.
“Nobody in Butler County has heard of Todd Hall,” Keller said. “They don’t know who he is.”
Based on that first meeting of Patriot America, titled “How We Will Take Back America,” the organization appears it will share Keller’s conservative politics. Photos posted by Keller on Facebook showed few wearing masks. Speakers included Ricki Pepin with the tea partyaffiliated Institute on the Constitution, whose website teaches a course connecting Constitution with the Bible.
Taking her show on the road
Keller attracted controversy during her four-year tenure in the Ohio House of Representatives from 2016 to 2020. Ohio Republican Party Chairwoman Jane Timken called on her to resign in 2019 after a Facebook post Keller made in the wake of a mass shooting in Dayton. In the post, Keller blamed “drag queen advocates,” the Democratic Congress, former President Barack Obama, and violent video games, among other
things, for the shooting that killed nine people.
One thing Keller’s new group is not is a political party, Keller said.
Keller supports Trump but doesn’t think Trump loyalists should break from the Republican Party.
Some disaffected Trump supporters across the country have tried to start a “Patriot Party” as an alternative to the Republican Party. That’s not what Patriot America is, Keller said.
“We don’t need a third party,” Keller said.
As of Thursday, no one in Ohio has filed anything with the Ohio Secretary of State or Federal Election Commission to create a “Patriot Party.”
While Keller said Patriot America is not a political party, Patriot America will be involved in local politics.
She spoke at the meeting about how to file for office and when local governments meet. She encouraged people to get involved in township and other local governments.
For now, Keller plans to take the show on the road. She said she has requests to hold similar presentations around the state and in other states, including South Dakota and North Carolina. The next meeting will also be at Oasis Church in Butler County on March 6 and another one in Warren County at Solid Rock Church on March 20.
It will feature a roster of conservative activists and personalities.
“It is about getting people involved locally,” Keller said. “We have such division in the country, but we all live under the same constitution.”
MEXICO CITY – In times of a global pandemic, Argentine rocker Fito Páez feels it is his duty to document what’s going on in the world through his music. h It’s something he aimed to do with “La Conquista del Espacio” (“The Conquest of Space”), his 2020 album that is competing for best Latin rock or alternative album at the March 14 Grammy Awards. h “It’s not a very happy world, but it’s the one we have,” Páez said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “We all are on this ship and the ship is sinking slowly … In any case, I will be part of the Titanic’s band – I want to play until the end. That is my task.”
“La Conquista del Espacio” won him the best pop/rock album Latin Grammy in November, while the track “La Canción de las Bestias” (“The Song of the Beats”) – which questions how we’re going to fix a looming future – won best pop/rock song.
Páez’s album is both an apocalyptic and cheerful soundtrack with songs like “Las Cosas Que Me Hacen Bien” (“Things That Do Me Good”), “Nadie Es de Nadie” (“Nobody
Belongs to Nobody”) and the bittersweet “Gente en la Calle” (“People in the Street”), which features Argentine pop star Lali.
“And if you read it or listen to it now in ‘COVID key,’ it works very well. It seems like a record almost made by a futurologist, in a sense,” the 57-year-old explained.
But on a personal level to Páez, “La Con
quista del Espacio” is an album of redemption which allows him the possibility of being born again.
“I would say that in the end it’s like a story in which everything can be done and redone,” the eight-time Latin Grammy winner said.
It’s been 20 years since Páez was last nominated for a Grammy Award, and he welcomes the nod for best Latin rock or alternative album with joy even though he doesn’t feel his latest album –which combines piano with sounds of pop, blues and symphonic music – fits within in the rock or alternative music genres.
“If you ask me, I feel that I do Argentine popular music in a sense … although we also know that this is a very delusional area because music itself does not have a concrete definition,” he said.
Throughout his career, which began in the early ’80s, the performer been consistent in his quest of experimentation. If there is one thing that characterizes him, it is that he’s never standing still.
“It’s my natural condition,” he said. “I will always be curious about what I don’t know musically. Overall, it happens to me with everything in life, but with music I can express it.”
Also a writer and a filmmaker, Páez was at full throttle during the pandemic. He finished a script that he had pending. He did a virtual press tour to promote his album. He created new music and, between July and November, he wrote the first 30 years of his autobiography.
“That was all,” he said. “A hurricane.”
Directions: Unscramble these four Jumbles, one letter to each square, to form four words.
Next, arrange the circled letters to form the surprise answer, as suggested by the cartoon.
CHALLENGER JUMBLE
nicer strand image higher The rocker had been in their family for generations, and they would — “Chair-ish” it