Scott Sonner / AP
Douglas County Sheriff Dan Coverley is shown during a news conference in Reno on Monday, Jan. 28, 2019.
Tuesday, July 28, 2020 | 6:20 p.m.
Citing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, the sheriff in a Northern Nevada county suggested Monday that his agency would not respond to calls at the Douglas County Public Library.
Less than 24 hours later, he walked back the comments.
Sheriff Daniel Coverley wrote in a letter to the library’s board of trustees that in support of the movement and “the obvious lack of support or trust with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, please do not feel the need to call 911 for help.”
“I wish you good luck with disturbances and lewd behavior, since those are just some of the recent calls my office has assisted with in the past,” the letter continued.
Coverley said he wrote the letter in response to a “diversity statement” the board planned to consider today. The meeting was ultimately canceled.
Since George Floyd died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer — sparking a national protest movement — libraries across the U.S. have adopted language condemning police violence against people of color.
In a statement posted today, Coverley “clarified” that his deputies, the only law enforcement personnel in Douglas County, would “impartially” continue to respond to the library.
“My response to the library’s proposed agenda item was to provide public comment about their proposed diversity statement and to further provide open commentary about how this could affect our local law enforcement profession,” he said.
“At this time, we are having active conversations with the library director to try and understand the intent of their proposed diversity statement,” Coverley continued.
Douglas County, with a population of about 47,000, is 89% white, according to the 2010 Census.
In the initial letter, Coverley condemned the actions of “bad actors” in the Minnesota police department that led to the death of Floyd.
“The Black Lives Matter movement openly calls all law enforcement corrupt and racist on their website. They call for the defunding of police, and we have seen how a lack of active law-enforcement has worked in Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon,” citing nonstop protests that have led to violent confrontations between protesters and law enforcement in the Pacific Northwest.
“To support this movement is to support violence and to openly ask for it to happen in Douglas County,” he wrote.
The Black Lives Matter movement is not monolithic, nor does the organization have an official chapter in Nevada.
Coverley said that killings of unarmed citizens by police only made up a tiny portion of use-of-force incidents and that most deaths were deemed justifiable.
But “recent history confirms that when myths about the police are not strongly repudiated by our local, state and national leaders, law enforcement officers lose their lives,” Coverley wrote.
Quoting his office’s values, Coverley wrote that his deputies will “continue to fairly and impartially apply laws and ordinances without regard to race, color, creed, sex or station in life. We shall honor the public trust issued and shall hold ourselves to the highest standards of professional police conduct and treat all individuals with tolerance, compassion and dignity.”
Most of the language on Coverley’s Monday statement was copied from a letter signed by 11 state attorney generals and addressed to leaders of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on June 22, the Nevada Independent reported. Coverley, who has been with the department for more than 20 years, became sheriff last year.
