{"id":125923,"date":"2022-05-20T06:23:16","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T10:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=125923"},"modified":"2022-05-20T06:23:40","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T10:23:40","slug":"one-sheriffs-race-two-cases-of-stolen-valor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=125923","title":{"rendered":"One Sheriff’s Race: Two Cases of Stolen Valor"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Rick Jowers<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An article on the website WeAreTheMighty.com<\/a> highlights the sheriff’s race in Callahan County Texas in which the two candidates tried to “out hooah” each other with military claims.<\/p>\n

One sheriff\u2019s race: Two instances of stolen valor<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

by Bethaney Phillips | May 19, 2022<\/p>\n

In rural Callahan County, Texas, a town of about 4,000, a normal sheriff\u2019s race turned up something unusual. Where not one, but two candidates were accused of stolen valor. Later, it was proved that, while both were veterans, they had invented stories about their time in the service.<\/p>\n

In their attempt to out-hooah one another, opposing candidates in the race at Callahan County ended up inflating their service. So much so, that it was soon beyond belief and caught the attention of bystanders. One-upping war stories is one thing, but rather than holding out hands saying, \u201cMy gun was this big,\u201d the sheriff candidates falsely claimed awards, achievements and rank.<\/p>\n

It went down like this:<\/p>\n

Leroy Foley was an active member of the Clyde Police Department, a small town near Abilene. As a sheriff candidate, his campaign was built on his military service. He listed a Purple Heart and Silver Star, even placing their graphics on his election posters. He also publicly announced that he had served as an Army Ranger for 11 years.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Leroy Foley<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He was ousted by militaryphony.com, which found these claims to be stolen valor. However, he might have gotten away with it if it weren\u2019t for his neighbors. As a police officer of Clyde, Foley didn\u2019t reside within Callahan County. He rented a house \u2013 that was obviously empty to his neighbors \u2013 and they began poking around. Upon finding the Silver Star (and knowing this was very difficult to earn), they sent his campaign poster to militaryphony.com.<\/p>\n

However, when reviewing the sheriff candidate\u2019s speeches from the local debate, the other candidate, the local favorite, came into play.<\/p>\n

His name is Rick Jowers, and in his speech, he claimed that he was also a staff sergeant and an Airborne Ranger as well as a Navy SEAL and Green Beret. (No wonder his case was looked into!) Ousters also looked into Jowers\u2019s military history, where it was found that he only served a few months before going MIA. He was released with a discharge status of other than honorable.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s likely even worse, is that his reasoning for the desertion was also debunked. His issued statement about said he was dealing with the loss of family members, who were proven to have died years, even decades, after his desertion.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more at the above link.<\/p>\n

I should say that I’m not sure that I recall a claim of Navy SEAL.\u00a0 At the very least it was not something we had evidence of a public claim for.<\/p>\n

As the article states – it was a classic case of “my gun is bigger than your gun.”\u00a0 Ranks as one of the most classic cases of stolen valor that this community played a huge role in bringing light to.\u00a0 Kudos to all of you for staying on top of this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article on the website WeAreTheMighty.com highlights the sheriff’s race in Callahan County Texas in which … One Sheriff’s Race: Two Cases of Stolen Valor<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":125924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[392,461,457,408,183,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armyposer","category-purple-heart","category-ranger","category-stolen-valor","category-stolen-valor-act","category-valorvultures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125926,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125923\/revisions\/125926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/125924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}