For good reasons, this story has been making the rounds on social media, and via email, since it was released Thursday evening. It’s a story that deserves to be widely told, though it seems, unfortunately, you won’t be able to read about it in the Frederick News Post.

On October 3, 2014, a complaint was made to Maryland State Police about the purposeful destruction of yet another large Jan Gardner campaign sign, this time a sign on Route 26 near Monocacy Boulevard.

It is not an exaggeration to say that a few dedicated volunteers have put in hundreds of hours installing the larger signs for the Gardner campaign, and that a significant portion of those hours has been spent re-installing or replacing signs that have been knocked down, spray painted, driven over, cut into pieces or smashed and shattered.

This has been happening for month after month after month. At some locations, signs have been damaged or destroyed numerous times, only to be restored or replaced. Calls had been made to law enforcement a few times, but on October 3rd, the call was a little different.

Next to the sign was a cell phone, left behind by accident, almost certainly by the individual who had broken the wooden sign posts. That person was Adam Avery.

I’ll let the details in the police report below speak for themselves. Please take a few minutes to read it of you haven’t already, and consider sharing it with others.

I’ll restrict any further comments to making it clear that Adam Avery is not just an overzealous Blaine Young supporter. Adam is a very close friend of Blaine, and a long time confidant, who has been working on Blaine’s campaign. This is the same Adam Avery that Blaine Young recruited to run for county commissioner, as part of his hand-picked slate in 2010.

(Adam did file to run, but had to drop out of the race when he was disqualified to run based on the residency requirement.)

For years now, off and on, online on offline, Adam has played the role of attack dog for Blaine Young. Examples abound, but suffice it to say that he has told me directly, on at least three occasions, that his “job” is to do the dirty and nasty work of attacking others, for Blaine, so that Blaine doesn’t have to do it.

There is a lot more that could be said about Adam, or about the long and close relationship between Adam and Blaine, or about many other examples of awful and indefensible statements and actions by one or both of them. This is just one story, but it is completely consistent with what we have seen and heard — what we know — about them.

The case has only been closed because it was the only way for this official information to be made public before the election. Some will dismiss it as something no more significant than a Halloween prank, or write it off as bad behavior typical of most campaigns. But they shouldn’t. This is part of a longer, larger and ongoing story.

It’s really about a lot more than the “Malicious Destruction of Property.”

Read the Incident Report below, from the Maryland State Police, and you be the judge.

Immediately below are all six pages of the report. Click on each image to open a larger and easier to read version.

—–

—–

—–

—–

—–

If you are interested, you can read or participate in the active discussion about this on the Envision Frederick County page on Facebook.