Monday, Aug. 24, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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The Las Vegas Police Protective Association, the union for Metro Police officers, showed astonishingly bad judgment last week in endorsing Republican congressional candidate Dan Rodimer.
In endorsing Rodimer, who is trying to unseat Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., they’ve lined up behind a man with a disturbing history of violence. Rodimer is hardly a poster child for civil behavior — more like one for how not to behave himself.
He’s certainly no stranger to Metro and police in other states.
As reported by the Associated Press, Metro twice responded to 911 calls from his home in 2018 to report alleged domestic violence. He was accused of assault in three separate incidents in Florida from 2010 to 2013.
Rodimer, a former WWE wrestler who stands 6-foot-7 and goes by “Big Dan,” was accused in 2010 of grabbing a man by the neck and throwing him to the ground at a Waffle House restaurant in Florida. According to the victim, Rodimer attacked him after being told to stop verbally harassing a group of women in the restaurant. In that incident, Rodimer entered a deferred prosecution agreement in which he admitted committing the offense of battery. However, he did not plead guilty to the charge. Per the agreement, Rodimer completed a six-week anger management course and prosecutors agreed not to continue the case against him.
In the other Florida incidents, Rodimer was accused of being involved in confrontations at nightclubs. It’s unclear why charges were not filed in either of those incidents. And in one other run-in with Florida police, this one in 2006, a neighbor called 911 to report possible domestic abuse after hearing Rodimer and a woman arguing in their apartment. Rodimer and the woman both told police no violence had occurred.
Rodimer has said he regrets the battery arrest, but he’s also claimed he was provoked in that incident and in the others. And in a Fox News interview, he downplayed his actions in the Waffle House, saying, “Just a shove, that was about it. But my shove’s a big shove.”
“Just a shove” — so much for contrition.
Then came Rodimer’s move to Las Vegas, and the 2018 calls to his home. Police records show that his girlfriend, Sarah Duffy, who is now his wife, reported at the time that Rodimer had assaulted her and stolen property such as jewelry and firearms. Rodimer was neither arrested nor detained after either of those calls. After the first one, records show that officers determined “there was no crime, just a verbal argument and we did not want to embarrass them or make them any more upset.” In the second call, officers advised Duffy to “give a 1 week ‘cooling period’ to see if male returns home and they can resolve this matter without police involvement as this is largely a civil matter.”
Rodimer’s campaign wrote off those calls as big misunderstandings.
“Dan and his wife have five kids and like every couple, they have had some verbal disputes over the years. They are happily married with a new baby on the way,” campaign manager Alex Melendez said in a statement.
Here’s hoping Rodimer has genuinely turned a corner.
But regardless, the union made a mistake in endorsing him. The group said it backed him because he opposes so-called “defund-police” reforms that have gathered strength amid the Black Lives Matter protests, but that feels like a knee-jerk reaction to the defund movement. Union members should know that the community supports good policing, which should also be the goal of the union representing those who serve and protect us.
Police officers should be opposed to violence and violent people. Rewarding someone’s bad behavior with a congressional seat is completely off-base.
If there is a misunderstanding about all of this, it should be on the part of the public, which can not possibly understand what the union must be thinking.
Or maybe that’s it: They weren’t thinking.
CORRECTION: • The original version of this editorial contained a significant factual error about Rodimer. The editorial stated that Rodimer was a “convicted criminal” with a battery conviction on his record stemming from a 2010 incident in Florida, but that was incorrect. Instead, Rodimer entered a deferred prosecution agreement, in which he admitted to committing the offense of battery but did not plead guilty to the crime. Rodimer completed a six-week anger management course and prosecutors agreed not to continue the case against him. The Sun apologizes to Rodimer and his family for this error. • Update, Sept. 8: In the original version of this correction, the Sun reported that Rodimer had pleaded guilty to the battery offense. But that information, which the Sun gathered from reports in the Associated Press and elsewhere, was incorrect. On Sept. 8, the AP issued a correction on its reporting, saying that while Rodimer had admitted to committing the offense of battery as part of the deferred prosecution agreement, he did not plead guilty to the charge. Instead, he completed an anger management course and prosecutors agreed not to continue the case against him. The Sun, based on our own reporting, concurs with the AP’s correction. This editorial and our original version of the correction have been revised accordingly. | (September 8, 2020)
