The Anna Maria Island Sun Newspaper


Vol. 17 No. 16 - February 1, 2017

HBPD officers report for presidential security detail

Anna Maria Island Sun News Story

Courtesy HBPD

Holmes Beach Police officers Mike Walker, left, Tommy Fraiser and
Joel Pierce, right, with Sgt. Vern McGowan brave the cool
temperatures Jan. 21 in Washington, D.C., to help provide
security along the inauguration parade route for
President Donald Trump.

 

HOLMES BEACH – Four police officers joined more than 28,000 members of law enforcement from around the county to help provide security along more than 100 city blocks Jan. 21 during the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

Sgt. Vern McGowan was joined by officers Tommy Fraiser, Joel Pierce and Mike Walker in Washington, D.C., in protecting a section of the inauguration parade route as a part of the National Law Enforcement Protection Detail Team.

"It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience," McGowan said. "It was just amazing. I was impressed with how well our officers represented the county and their dedication to what they were doing. It was an honor, not a little vacation."

McGowan, Fraiser, Pierce and Walker were flown to the nation's capital along with 42 other law enforcement officers from Manatee County, who all volunteered to help safeguard the festivities.

McGowan said the officers were given a few hours to sightsee after arrival before being sworn in on Thursday before beginning their duties on Friday.

He recalled the officers being picked up from the hotel before dawn to begin working a security detail at 4 a.m., a duty that didn't end until after 8 p.m. Despite cool temperatures and a light rain, McGowan said the officers were proud to be on-hand for the occasion.

"Just to be there and be a part of it, you don't mind that little bit of discomfort," he said.

The one downside was the officers had to face the crowd and away from the parade. "We didn't get to see the president as he came by," McGowan said.

HBPD Chief Bill Tokajer said once he received the invitation from the city of Bradenton to join other officers from Manatee County, he asked one officer from each shift to volunteer, sending McGowan along as a supervisor.

"I was sort of voluntold," McGowan joked.

"If we are asked to participate in an inauguration again we would be honored," Tokajer said. He added that if the opportunity does present itself again, he would seek volunteers from the officers who didn't participate this year.

McGowan said he'd love to experience the nation's capital again.

"I would definitely like to take the family there on vacation," he said.

The big Gulf shrimp fraud

The selling of American seafood has become a scandal.

The seafood Americans eat has stopped being American.

Ninety-one per cent of the seafood consumed by Americans now comes from Asia.

At best, only 2 percent of it is being inspected. Of that 2 percent, some 90 percent is regularly condemned.

The scandalous part is that much of that Asian seafood is being repackaged and sold in markets and restaurants as something else. One of the greatest menu lies is Gulf shrimp.

It is possible to get Real American Gulf shrimp, but you have to work a little harder to find it, and you have to pay more for it – as much as 100 percent more.

Almost all of what restaurants are calling Gulf shrimp is coming from shrimp farms much closer to the Gulf of Thailand than the Gulf of Mexico.

Asian shrimp is farm-raised in pools in salt marshes near river deltas. Virtually none of those shrimp pools are inspected.

I spent some time in Thailand and North Vietnam. Everybody upstream is peeing in the river and the shrimp farms are located in tidal pools near those rivers.

And the peeing is not the worst of it.

I observed one shrimp farm that was placed between a leather tannery and a cement plant.

When the pools of shrimp become polluted and the shrimp begin to die – all of the shrimp are just harvested, and the shrimp farmers move on. Sometimes the shrimp is rinsed with a bleach solution to clean up the smell.

Chances are good that cheap Asian shrimp is not only chemically tainted but morally tainted as well.

Asian-farmed shrimp are fed fish meal made from trash fish captured in the Gulf of Thailand and the China Sea. The ships that catch the trash fish are manned by up to 70 percent slave labor. Children are picked up from the streets and forced to work on the slave ships.

Often Asian shrimp is not only cheaper by weight but they are already peeled and deveined. Asian shrimp can be sold more cheaply than American shrimp that haven't been peeled and deveined because the peeling and deveining of Asian shrimp is accomplished in shrimp factories also manned with slave labor.

I wish I was making all of this up, but my imagination is just not that perverse.

The documentation of slavery in the Asian shrimp industry is the subject of a Pulitzer Prize winning report in the Washington Post.

So much of the shrimp consumed in this country is of the inferior Asian type that Americans don't know what real shrimp tastes like any more. Increasingly, I hear comments that the real Gulf shrimp are tough.

They are not tough but they are firm – and much firmer than the soft and mushy bleached Asian shrimp that almost everyone is serving.

What is a shrimp fan to do?

Next time you are buying shrimp in a grocery store turn the package all around until you find the tiniest print on the package. Chances are better than excellent it will say "Product of Indonesia or Vietnam or China."

And the next time you're in a restaurant that is bragging about its Gulf shrimp, ask which Gulf, and watch how awkward everybody gets.


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