Perry County sheriff raises ruckus with Facebook post

The Perry County sheriff said he did not mean to suggest in a recent Facebook post that he intends to defy Illinois's current stay-at-home order and allow people to risk their health by gathering in large numbers.

In Sheriff Steve Bareis's post he says intends to uphold his oath to protect individual rights that are ensured by the U.S. and Illinois constitutions.

"Our citizens have the right to worship, work, play, stay at home, and social distance themselves," he wrote. "I consider myself to be a constitutional Sheriff. We will not be part of a police state, stop vehicles for no reason, stop the worship of God, or interfere with legal activities on personal property."

Bareis clarified on Wednesday he is not sanctioning large groups and parties and calling for the bars to be reopened.

In his post, however, he doesn't make it clear what prompted his screed.

What set him off, he said Wednesday, was hearing that Kentucky police officers were taking license plate numbers and writing tickets for cars that were attending a drive-up church service on Easter.

"It infuriated me. I think that's a direct violation of a constitutional right," Bareis said. "Those people were not putting the public at risk."

Bareis said several Perry County pastors called him last week, asking if holding drive-up church on Easter was acceptable in the COVID-19 climate. The worshippers didn't get out of their cars, and listened to the service on an FM channel.

Bareis said if in fact, a pastor had decided to hold a regular church service on Easter inside a church, he would have gone in with a cease-and-desist order.

"I don't want a church to be a hot spot," he said. "The direction I got from Vernon Kelly (Illinois State Police) was that churches were encouraged to be an example to the community, but if they wanted to do the drive-in model it did not violate the governor's order."

Bareis said he also felt undue pressure to tell private property owners how to run their own land - specifically the owner of an ATV/UTV track in the northwest part of the county who still had people using the trail. He spoke with the property owner, who voluntarily agreed to shut down until the stay-at-home order is lifted.

Bareis is known as a conservative politician - in 2015 he added "In God We trust" decals to the Perry County squad cars (the decals were donated); and in 2018 supported the movement to make Perry County a "gun sanctuary" county.

He says he is not trying to diminish the seriousness of the pandemic and says we all need to do everything we can do for the health and welfare of our community.

But he's bothered by being asked to do things he believes are beyond his authority.

"How do I overlap what is prudent and what people's rights are?" he asked.