Cries, Lies and Chicken Thighs
Clay Today in Shout-Out to Our 'Good Story' on Darryl Daniels
The last several weeks have been busy for me. I made two grown men cry, or at least ugly whine.
I felt really bad. I really did. Really, except, you know, I didn’t really.
Both waterworks were generated by an article I wrote called “Sweet Home Alabama,” heretofore referenced as SHA.
All Clucked Up
After weeks of diligent research, I revealed in SHA that Clay’s scandal-ridden former sheriff Darryl Daniels, had qualified to run for his old job. The narrative explained how he may not have been eligible to run for sheriff in Florida since he was a legal resident of Alabama, and how he continued to violate election laws during his candidacy.
Clay News & Views posted SHA on its site and to numerous local Facebook sites. The truth seemed to upset Darryl and a couple of his supporters because they told the folks at Facebook that I was being mean to him. They created a bunch of fibs and fabrications and were successful in having the article removed from Facebook sites.
The incident brought back fond memories of growing up on our farm.
I was the chicken tender. (Not to be confused with those deboned fried chicken parts.) Occasionally, I would get distracted by frogs and fireflies and forget to lock the chicken coop gate. Around sundown, I’d invariably hear loud squawking and run outside to a poultry pandemonium. Feathers were flying as my chickens were free-range, flapping like they’d been catapulted around the farmhouse and enjoying the flock out of it.
I’d run around like a chicken with its head cut off, waving my arms and calling my feathered fugitives by name as if they might magically flutter back to the coop upon identification. Sadly, my fowl friends had fouled the back porch rockers, the truck, the laundry we kids had neglected to take off the line and more. As I ran to lock the gate, daddy would stand up on the porch and shake his head, while my older siblings stood beside him and gawked and giggled at their youngest sister.
“No use closing that gate now, Izzy!” he’d shout. “Your chickens have already left their cock-a-doodle do-do everywhere.”
Then he’d reassure me. “Sooner or later, they’ll come home to roost.”
While Daniels’ and his devotees conjured up their deceitfulness and thought they’d had a big win, I wore a big grin for days as I was transported back to the chicken yard and daddy’s advice.
Before Facebook removed the article, SHA had already flown around the county and was whooshed all the way to South Florida. It had been on the Clay News & Views and different Facebook sites for days, been read by more than 7,400 people, and was shared an abundance of times. It is still on CN&V’s site and still being read.
So, Darryl, in case you and your friends decide to invent more tall tales to have this article also removed from Facebook, you should know this. Most folks in our county have already had a good long look at your cock-a-doodle do-dos! No use closing the gate now.
By the way, I do declare, I saw your chickens roosting all around the county—especially at the voting polls.
Lying and Crying
Last week in Clay Today, Editor Don Coble wrote an editorial entitled Only the misinformed rely on social media, emails for news. The editor wrote how local and national folks on social media and emails tell “lies, lies, lies.”
He appeared to be paving the high road for Clay Today, suggesting everything in the print media is informed and true.
Raise your hand if you believe everything in print is true. Seeing no hands, I’ll move on.
“And a little closer to home,” Coble wrote, “a story written online recently at Clay News & Views claims I ‘twisted the truth like a pretzel’ to make former sheriff (Darryl Daniels) look like his one term had been a success.”
No lie, I really did write the pretzel thing in SHA.
Then Coble continued:
“Four years ago, there wasn’t anything to suggest his tenure as sheriff, not the developments with his personal life, wasn’t a success. I haven’t talked to him since he lost the election. The reporter didn’t cite any examples. You don’t want facts to get in the way of a good story.”
I thought it was really, really nice that Mr. Coble praised SHA as “a good story,” and I will oblige him by citing facts and examples.
Facts
Four years ago, there was a boatload of available facts to not only suggest the sheriff’s one term was not a success, but confirm it was not. I guess Mr. Coble didn’t want the facts to get in the way of his story, either.
Four years ago, Daniels had been investigated by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, arrested, lost an election, was removed from office by the Governor, and hightailed it to Alabama. Easily obtained records show violent crime in Clay County had reached its’ highest peak in 10 years when Daniels was sheriff.
Property crimes also soared and the response time during Daniels term was longer than any other time in a 10-year period. He lost the CCSO school police posts due to his greediness and inability to work with others. One-hundred-sixty-three employees left the agency the last couple of years he was in office, and a look at where he was spending with his sizable budget money indicated his maturity level was that of a 13-year-old in puberty.
Daniels also violated the morals clause of the General Orders of the CCSO which establishes a “Code of Conduct” for all employees as a condition of employment.
Information obtained from a public records request, revealed that members of Florida’s law enforcement agencies didn’t buy the jury’s not guilty verdict. After the September 2022 verdict, Glen Hopkins, Bureau Chief at the Florida Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission sent a letter dated December 12, 2022, to the Clay County Sheriff’s Office. It directed them to forward all records of the Daniels case to the commission as the charges “may require disciplinary action against former Sheriff Darryl Daniels’ criminal justice certification.”
Still looking like a twisted pretzel, Don.
Java Jive
I read through Clay Today archives and most all stories written about Daniels. During Darryl’s term, before Coble, it appeared Clay Today focused primarily on Darryl’s obsession with coffee. Although, there was one article dated Wednesday, June 29, 2016, written by former editor Eric Cravey called Be careful what they tell you. Essentially, Cravey called then-candidate Daniels a big fat liar for making a false statement at a political forum. Maybe that’s why he’s the former editor.
But after Coble came to Clay Today, things changed. Coble still talked a lot about Daniels’ coffee consumption, but as he favorably featured Darryl in numerous stories, it appeared the two were kinda having a bromance. Even after he was arrested and charged, Coble continued to defend him. On August 21, 2019, the editor’s headline was Daniels should be judged by his job, not his personal life.
Coble wrote he hadn’t talked with Daniels in four years, but when our shamed former sheriff registered to run against Sheriff Cook last September, the editor made a big whoop-de-do about it. On Sept. 14, 2023, this was Coble’s front-page headline:
The September story featured a large picture of a somewhat slimmer Daniels taken five years before when he was sheriff. In the photo Darryl was wearing a big ole white cowboy hat and his lifted cowboy boots, as he walked down a wide center aisle shaking hands like a reality star.
Coble quoted Daniels as he blamed everybody but himself for losing his job. The editor wrote the former sheriff believed he lost his 2020 re-election bid because some state officials conspired to run him out of office.
In the September’s article, Coble penned that Daniels “gained national acclaim for his bravado, primarily during major drug busts.”
Truthfully, the only national bravado Darryl gained was when the movie production company (bought and paid for with our money) created a video of Daniels and sent it to almost every television, print media, and online news source in the U.S. and beyond that would accept it.
In his movie, wearing his white hat, he strongly proclaimed that if Black Lives Matter came to Clay County, he would deputize all county gun-owners to run the organization out of town. Black Lives Matter had never organized, protested, or even been to our county and many county folks didn’t even know who they were.
But Daniels’ threats appeared to be a personal invitation, so they came. Although a few county citizens were cleaning their firearms in preparation, the sheriff didn’t deputize anyone as we found his publicity stunt was based on a lie because it was illegal.
Throughout the Sept. 2023 story, as in others, Coble continued to remind citizens that Daniels was innocent of destroying evidence and lying to law enforcement. But in the story, he offered an excuse which (oops!) actually confirmed Daniels guilt as he wrote:
“He admitted to destroying his cell phone and not being forthcoming with investigators with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, but he said he did it to hide the affair from his wife.”
Coble closed out the September article by playing the “Trump card” for Daniels as he had done in past stories. The editor wrote the former sheriff drew parallels to his “legal problems and President Donald Trump.”
Legal Ad Lifeline
In the editor’s defense, I understand his willingness to pander to elected officials. Like other small-town newspapers, Clay Today has been hanging on by the skin of its teeth. Before 2022, our elected constitutional officers were required to print all their legal advertisements in newspapers. Clay Today was the only traditional newspaper in our county, so they got the big bucks for the legals and stroked those who paid their bills.
In 2022, HB7049 was passed which allowed local governments to publish legal notices on their county’s publicly accessible websites. This would have saved the taxpayers a bundle as our taxes are soaring to keep up with development, infrastructure and the desires of some school officials who are spending our money like teenagers on TikTok Shop with their daddy’s credit card. Nevertheless, some officials got together and decided to continue to pay Clay Today for the legals to subsidize a “local newspaper” for the county.
The subsidy of Clay Today has good points and bad. It’s good to see local faces doing good deeds, receiving awards and our kids and grandkids pictured in attaboys. Their reporters have covered issues about which we need to know. Yet, swooning affirmative yarns are spun about individuals and elected officials who actually deserve our contempt, but benefit because they pay the bills or are close to those who do.
Since Coble likes examples: Tax Collector Diane Hutchings and Darryl Daniels.
Small communities like Clay County need gate keepers. We have a good sheriff and a justice system that mostly provides justice. But we don’t have people to watch our elected, appointed and anointed chickens and alert citizens when they are running amok for their own pleasures and recompense. Clay News & Views was created to do just that. We have our paid jobs, our fireflies and frogs that need tending, but we do investigate hard issues and have the guts to inform our community—for free.
I knew this missive would cause you to whimper, so I dropped you off a box of tissues at your office. I felt really bad. I really did. Really, except, you know, I didn’t really.
Consider this another shout-out for your excellent reporting. Keep it up, Susie!
Best news in North Florida.