It is news — but where do you stand?

Do you stand with Silsbee’s Chief of Police, Shawn Blackwell, or do you believe he should be reprimanded? In this case, does the punishment of reprimand fit the offense of public intoxication?

I don’t know Chief Blackwell personally, and this certainly isn’t how I intended to first learn about a man who has served Silsbee for so long. In this instance, I’m an outsider — I wrote the story for the newspaper last week.

I hope you found the story factual. Everything printed was true, but I did omit one thing, which I’ll address here. I spoke with the Mayor of Silsbee and told him the newspaper would simply report the council’s decision and give the council the space to decide.

The decision is not up to me, the newspaper, or even you, the reader — it falls to City Manager DeeAnn Zimmerman, according to the council’s report. I reached out to Mrs. Zimmerman on Monday and was told she was in a meeting and to call back. I got busy and didn’t — that’s on me. But I wasn’t calling about Chief Blackwell anyway; I was calling about the Fourth of July.

I wasn’t calling about Chief Blackwell because, after 30 years publishing newspapers and reporting on cases like this, I have my opinion — but my opinion doesn’t belong in the news story.

In Johnson City, the chief of police couldn’t answer calls after 4:30 p.m. because he was at the liquor store every day at 4:30. Or take the sheriff in Williamson County — caught by his own officers driving drunk. I’ve seen so many of these cases that I’ve learned to just report the facts and stay out of the fray.

Where do you stand? That’s the important question. But if you want my opinion — well, that’s what this space is for.

In my view, the level of offense here does not justify reprimand or demotion. I’ll tell you why.

I grew up in Johnson City, just 30 minutes from Fredericksburg, a place I love dearly. Ken Cooke, publisher of the Fredericksburg Standard-Radio Post, is a good friend of mine.

When we saw the mugshot on social media, I asked Ken if the arrest was in his jail log. “No, we don’t put PIs in the jail log — they don’t send them over. There are just too many,” Ken told me. So I asked how many is too many. “Every weekend — I have no idea, but it’s a lot.”

That made me wonder: is Fredericksburg, as a city, deriving serious revenue from PI arrests? They host more than 300 events a year — that’s a lot of German beer festivals. Certainly something I would look into if I were at the helm of the Standard Post-Radio

None of this excuses what happened or suggests the Chief didn’t deserve the charge. But it is a PI — a fine, a Class C misdemeanor — basically no different than a speeding ticket.

I’m not trying to justify it, but to me, the offense doesn’t fit a life-altering punishment or a reprimand even. We’re all human. From what I can gather in my short time covering Hardin County, this looks like a simple hiccup in an otherwise solid career.

But in the end, it’s not my opinion that matters — it’s yours.