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Dildo Drone Interrupts ‘Tough on Crime’ New Mexico Sheriff’s Speech, Chaos Ensues

Image for article titled Dildo Drone Interrupts ‘Tough on Crime’ New Mexico Sheriff’s Speech, Chaos Ensues
Screenshot: Andrellita Trujhero / Facebook (Fair Use)

A New Mexico sheriff running as the tough-on-crime candidate for the mayorship of Albuquerque was buzzed at a campaign event on Tuesday by a small drone with a giant dildo attached to it.

Per the Albuquerque Journal, Bernalillo County Sheriff Manuel Gonzales III was speaking at Revel Entertainment, a venue with multiple bars and restaurants, when he was “grilled by an agitator” and the drone flew close to the stage. In a video of the incident uploaded to Facebook by a Gonzales supporter (embedded at the bottom of this post), a woman can be heard saying “Is that a dong on a drone?” as it hovered near the sheriff. Gonzales responded that “We have a gentleman over here that’s trying to be cute.” About half a minute after the one-legged drone made its debut, another man can be seen in the footage attempting to pull down the craft by the shaft, after which another individual rushed forward and a scuffle ensued.

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The paper reported the “Dongcopter” has been seen at least once before, outside a church on Sunday hosting Republican Mark Moores, who lost his bid for a U.S. House seat days later.

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Metropolitan Court records show that 20-year-old Kaelan Ashby Dreyer, who police say was the man who started the scuffle, was taken to jail on “charges of petty misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor resisting, evading or obstructing an officer,” according to the Journal. Police asserted that during the incident, Dreyer swung his fist at Gonzales. According to KOB 4, Dreyer instead said he was angry because Gonzales was addressing the crowd disrespectfully and never intended to hit the sheriff, just swing his fists in the air. Gonzales suffered no injuries during the incident, although Dreyer was repeatedly thrown to the ground during his detainment and arrest and had to be examined at the University of New Mexico Hospital.

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Video of the event shows that at least one protester present other than Dreyer had held a sign saying “the unsheltered need beds, the sick need meds, we have no need for more cops, guns and feds.” It wasn’t clear she was connected to Dreyer or simply opposed to Gonzales, who flirted with Donald Trump’s administration as it was weighing dispatching the type of goon squads it sent to beat protesters in Portland to more cities.

Opponents say Gonzales has a long track record of hostility to civilian oversight of police and would continue to stymie reforms to the Albuquerque Police Department, which reached a settlement with the Department of Justice in 2014 for patterns of excessive force and civil rights violations but has since failed to change its behavior as required by the settlement’s terms. Independent monitors wrote in a report in May 2021 that APD “has not had and currently does not have an appetite for taking serious approaches to control excessive or unwarranted uses of force during its police operations in the field” and is “willing to go through almost any machination to avoid disciplining officers.”

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The Journal wrote that Gonzales is portraying the helicockter incident as the work of trained “political operatives” using “guerrilla tactics” to derail his candidacy, seemingly implying it was the work of incumbent Democratic mayoral candidate Tim Keller:

In a press conference Wednesday, Gonzales said he believes Dreyer and his companions are “political operatives” and that “it was a coordinated effort, very intentional, and these people were trained.”

Gonzales has until June 19 to get enough signatures to be on the ballot.

“Those people were planted there,” Gonzales said. “They went there. They didn’t go over there to have a civil discourse, they were there to disrupt. And they did act out that violence. So to me, it’s very intentional.”

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Keller’s campaign denied any involvement to the Journal, while Dreyer told the paper he’s not even a Democrat.

“Manny Gonzales is trying to associate me with Tim Keller or radical leftist behavior,” Dreyer told the Journal. “I’m not a fan of Tim Keller either and identify as libertarian.”