Name: Texas Guard to send troops to cities for possible ‘postelection’ disturbances
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Texas Guard to send troops to cities for possible ‘postelection’ disturbances

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateThe Texas National Guard said Monday that it would dispatch up to 1,000 troops to five major cities around the state, including San Antonio, as early as this weekend to provide security in case disturbances break out after the Nov. 3 election.The activation of troops was for “postelection” support of local law enforcement and the Texas Department of Public Safety, “as we did previously to deter any civil disturbance at sites in various cities within Texas,” said retired Maj. Gen. James K. “Red” Brown, chief of staff to the guard’s commander.Officials in San Antonio said they weren’t consulted and didn’t think the move was necessary.Texas Guard spokesman Brandon Jones could offer few details and referred questions about the reason for the deployment to Gov. Greg Abbott’s office, which did not respond to questions about it Monday afternoon.Jones said troops could be sent to Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio. He didn’t know how many troops would be deployed to each of those cities. The plan calls for troops to be posted at the Alamo and the state Capitol, among other places.“Right now we could go to 1,000 troops in support of civil disturbance operations,” Jones said. “We’re going to guard buildings just like we did during the George Floyd protests earlier this year. We are not going anywhere near polling locations. That has not been requested.”In an earlier interview, Jones said the scope of the mission might broaden. “We have not been asked to go to any polling locations as of yet. Now, that could change, leading up to the election or after the election,” he said.Asked if it was possible the guard’s mission might change to include voting sites, Brown said, “We never make any speculation associated with any possible mission. That’s not what we do. We respond to requests from the governor.”Guarding polling sites or providing security before the election “has not been on any mission request or in any conversation with the governor’s office,” he said.On ExpressNews.com:Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who turns 80 on Tuesday and has lived in San Antonio for 70 years, said he’d never heard of the guard standing sentry against possible election-related disturbances and didn’t think it was needed. San Antonio has never had any serious problems with elections, he said.“I don’t anticipate any,” he said. “Let me emphasize, we’ve got a good police department, a good sheriff’s department, we’ve got a good emergency department. …We really don’t need any help.”Neither Wolff nor Mayor Ron Nirenberg had heard from Abbott’s office about plans to send guardsmen to San Antonio.“We have not had informal discussions or received official confirmation that Texas National Guard troops will be sent to San Antonio,” Nirenberg said in a statement issued Monday evening. “And we have no indication that they will be needed.”The mayor has said Abbott did not ask if the city wished to have the guard posted in San Antonio before sending it early last June. The troops arrived after a night of vandalism downtown and later scuffles with police that marred protests in the immediate aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police May 25.The troops were withdrawn within a few days, and peaceful demonstrations continued nightly for another week.The guard in recent weeks has said its commander, Maj. Gen. Tracy Norris, had been asked to draft contingency plans in case of trouble in major Texas cities. Across the country, the National Guard Bureau said Monday, state elections commissions are asking their governors for guard assistance to provide personnel to local municipalities that need help in staffing polling sites.Guardsmen in that role are not allowed to carry weapons, bureau spokeswoman Nahaku McFadden said. The missions might include cyberdefense, logistical and administrative support, setting up polling stations, sorting ballots or screening for the coronavirus.“Due to the nature of this mission, we don’t want to give the perception of influencing the voter or ballot process,” she said in an email.But McFadden added that governors also have the authority to order the guard to polling places to protect peoples’ lives. “So if the governor determined that the lives of the citizens were in jeopardy for some reason, then they would have to make that decision based on the situation that’s occurring but at the local level,” she said.On ExpressNews.com:Bexar County Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen said that in her 24 years with the office, she’s never seen the kind of trouble at the polls that would require the guard’s presence.So far in early voting before the general election, she said, there have been disturbances at Windcrest and Lions Field involving campaign workers who failed to abide by a rule requiring them to stay 100 feet outside of the polling place. In another incident, a brief fistfight occurred last week at Palo Alto College between a pair of rival campaign workers “for different parties,” she said.“The voters are being just absolutely fantastic because they’re doing their social distancing,” Callanen said. “If they had to stand in line, they’re standing in line, but again, if the people act up, well, we’re ready, we have people on standby, and the judges can usually handle everything. They do a really, really, really good job.”covers the military and its impact in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Sig, . | Twitter:

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateThe Texas National Guard said Monday that it would dispatch up to 1,000 troops to five major cities around the state, including San Antonio, as early as this weekend to provide security in case disturbances break out after the Nov. 3 election.The activation of troops was for “postelection” support of local law enforcement and the Texas Department of Public Safety, “as we did previously to deter any civil disturbance at sites in various cities within Texas,” said retired Maj. Gen. James K. “Red” Brown, chief of staff to the guard’s...

Texas Guard to send troops to cities for possible ‘postelection’ disturbances

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