Conservative Florida Town Balks At Providing Security For Clinton
[su_center_b]
Davie, Florida doesn’t want to provide security for a Friday campaign event hosted by Hillary Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton will attend what is being billed as a “grass-roots” rally Friday afternoon at Broward College in Davie, a town of 90,000 people about 25 miles north of Miami. The college is accustomed to dignitary visits: the school hosted last year’s debate for governor and has provided security for Michelle Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his wife, Jill, and even the Dalai Lama.
But this time, when crowd expectations began to swell, the Davie Police Department balked at spending several extra thousand dollars on police overtime, according to several people familiar with the preparations.
The town’s sudden turnabout raised eyebrows about whether the decision was political in nature. Broward County is a Democratic stronghold where President Obama won 67 percent of the vote in 2012. But Davie is a rural enclave, with an old western atmosphere that stands out from the rest of the county. A rally in support of the Confederate flag took place this summer nearby.
An assistant police chief who attended an interagency meeting to prepare for the visit announced the news that the city would not provide security. The Secret Service officials who were at the meeting did not take it well, and promised to name names about the episode if ever called before Congress, according to one of the people at the meeting, who was not authorized to discuss the private session.
[su_center_ad]
[su_facebook]
