Elgin councilman involved in plot to ‘harass' Kershaw Co. deputies | News

KERSHAW COUNTY, SC (WIS) – An online video posted over the weekend details a plot to "harass" Kershaw County deputies over one group's anger about what it calls, "the police state of South Carolina." Elgin town councilman Larry Risvold and Kershaw County Patriots leader Jeff Mattox spoke to a group in Cayce about their plans last Saturday.

Risvold, an Elgin mayoral candidate last fall, told the crowd in the video that his Patriots group had fallen from 260 members to three after WIS reported last July that Mattox clicked the "like" tab on a Facebook article titled, "When Should You Shoot A Cop." Mattox lost his co-chairmanship in the county's Republican Party after the reports.

"The article was not about killing cops and all this other stuff," Risvold told the crowd, "It was a thought provoking article to make you think, when is enough, enough? Tyranny; when the Nazis packed up all the Jews, it was too late to say something after they'd been taken off to the camps."

Risvold then blamed the Kershaw County Sheriff's Office for "pressuring" business members of his group, which he claims cut its membership.

Risvold, who the Highway Patrol charged with driving under the influence nearly one year to the date of the video, then spoke out against what his group calls, "the police state of South Carolina," and compares law enforcement's efforts in stopping drunk drivers to Nazi Germany, "It's called a safety checkpoint and what happens is your car stops, an individual officer comes up there and says, ‘Can I see your papers,' Sound familiar? Sounds like another foreign country doesn't it," Risvold asks the crowd.

"The other cop walks around, peeking in the windows to see if you have anything they can arrest you for and if they can't find anything there, then they let you go. In the meantime, you were stopped for being a good citizen and doing nothing wrong," Risvold said.

"This is a dangerous situation," Mattox told the crowd, "The sheriff really has us concerned."

Mattox told the group that Kershaw County Sheriff Jim Matthews, a retired Drug Enforcement Agency agent, is part of a national trend of former federal law enforcers who have won sheriff's elections. "It looks like it's a concerted effort, in order to kind of infiltrate the federal government into local affairs."

Mattox, who refused to apologize for clicking the "like" link on the facebook article that cost him his GOP position, said Matthews and county council used the county's highest-in-the-state deadly DUI numbers as a ploy to gain more law enforcement authority. Mattox argued that the county's DUI rate was, "not as big a problem as he's (Matthews) has made it out to be."

In 2009, the Kershaw County coroner's office worked 18 alcohol/drug influenced-related traffic deaths. That number fell to 14 in 2010 and after Matthews installed a four-man traffic unit in 2011, the county's traffic deaths fell to 10; the lowest number of people killed on Kershaw County roads in nearly a decade, according to county officials.

Mattox argued that the number of people killed, when compared to the county's 60,000-plus population, isn't a concern to him, "If we do a little math, that's .000623 percent of the population that died on highways. Due to drunk drivers and all," Mattox told the gathering, "It's not a massive; like everybody's out drinking and driving. It's not as big a problem as he's made it out to be."

Mattox echoed councilman Risvold's thoughts over what their group perceives as a "massive show of force and thuggary against the citizens," when describing the safety checkpoints around the county. "It's  just a massive fishing expedition, catching all the fish in the sea, just to catch a few," Mattox said in the video.

The Kershaw County Patriots, according to Mattox, have a plan to fight back, "We're already planning our tactics against this. We're going to do the same thing they're doing to us; harass them," Mattox told the Lexington County audience. "When we find out that there's a check point, we're going to have a mass of people that go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. We've got to stop it."

The group plans to use "young people" to use social networking Web sites to warn drivers of Kershaw County check points and to let their supporters know where the check points are, in order to participate in the "harassment" of officers there, according to Mattox. Another "tactic" would involve putting up yard signs near the check points to warn drivers of the check point, and offer detours around them.

"They're going to continue their thug action until people stand up and say no," Mattox said.

WIS went to both Mattox and Risvold's homes and left a written note, for their comments on this story. As of this request, neither man has returned our calls.

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