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St. Louis Deputy Fired by Sheriff After Declaring Campaign for Sheriff
By Danny WicentowskiElection drama has returned (again) to the St. Louis City Sheriff's Office.
Hired in July, deputy Alfred Montgomery had only worked the job a few months before he knew he wanted to run for elected office — specifically, the one occupied by his boss, St. Louis City Sheriff Vernon Betts.
But Montgomery's announcement of his campaign, made through a Facebook post on December 15, turned out to be one of his last actions as an employed deputy. One day later, on Monday, Montgomery again took to his campaign's Facebook page — which uses a photo of Montgomery in uniform as its profile image — to claim that he had been fired for "exercising my constitutional 1st amendment right to run for Sheriff for the City of St. Louis."
In an interview with RFT, Montgomery claims Betts approached him several times after hearing about his plans for candidacy. Montgomery says he initially planned to run in the 2024 election cycle. Those plans changed, though, after Betts "kept trying to intimidate me."
Read more: https://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2019/12/19/st-louis-deputy-fired-by-sheriff-after-declaring-campaign-for-sheriff