Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. doesn’t mess around.
A recent passenger on a small plane from Milwaukee to Charlotte, N.C. on Saturday learned that lesson the hard way.
The incident started with an intoxicated Preston Blunston, 36, harassing passengers and flight crew and ended with Clarke pinning the man in his seat, handcuffing him, and turning him over to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police, Watchdog.org reports.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quoted an unidentified passenger aboard the 2-hour flight who said Blunston was “berating” Clarke throughout the flight, but the sheriff disputed that claim in an email to Watchdog.
“It wasn’t directed toward me, he was harassing other passengers and flight crew the entire 2 hour flight,” Clarke told the news site. “It if had been directed at me I would have kicked his ass.”
Clarke, a conservative black sheriff known for his no nonsense tell-it-like-it-is approach, said he felt compelled to intervene about half-way through the flight because Blunston was “giving the flight attendant a hard time.”
“He stopped, sensing I wasn’t playing around,” Clarke wrote in the email. “I thought that would take care of it but it did not.”
The Journal-Sentinel’s unidentified passenger told the news site Blunston became increasingly belligerent during the flight, “directing many of his comments at Clarke.”
“The guy was very abusive,” the passenger said. “Probably the last 20 minutes it really escalated and focused on Clarke.”
The Journal-Sentinel claimed Clarke told the passenger to “shut up” only once and did not provide any other details of the sheriff’s involvement.
Clarke told Watchdog Blunston “got out of his seat as the plane approached the runway on landing.
“That was enough for me,” he wrote. “As the wheels touched down I got up pushed him back into his seat as he tried to get up again and I pinned him down until cops boarded. I yelled for the Sgt and said give me your handcuffs and I cuffed him.”
Clarke confirmed that Blunston was not happy about Clarke taking control of the situation.
“After I pinned him across the seats to maintain control he said … ‘Oh you’re one of those kind of n*ggers,” the sheriff told Watchdog.
Clarke, who supports Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, was on his way to New Hampshire’s Cheshire County Annual Republican Shoot on Sunday.
Clarke said that once he turned Blunston over to the Charlotte-Mecklengurg Police, he continued to “be an ass.”
“In all of my years flying, I’ve never seen anything like it,” the unidentified passenger told the Journal-Sentinel. “The sheriff handled himself extremely well. It could have gotten a lot worse because the guy was not backing down.”
Clarke believes the incident illustrates why there’s a serious need for more security in the skies.
“Question I have is, why no air marshal on that flight? That program is a joke,” he said. “Very few marshals ride planes. Not good.”
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