Worse still, the governor used those false claims as the basis for calling people of color the enemy. And even that scrapbook doesn’t back up his claims. Yet he pointed to a scrapbook that he compiled on his own as evidence that people of color are responsible for Maine’s drug problem. The governor - the top official in our state - has agencies at his disposal that collect arrest data. In other words, the governor greatly exaggerated the role people of color play in Maine’s drug trade. While it is impossible to tell the race of all arrestees included in the binder, at least 50 of the 90 people pictured appear to be white. While the binder paints an incomplete picture of the demographics of drug arrests in Maine, it very clearly does not support the governor’s assertions that over 90 percent of the people in his scrapbook are Black or Hispanic. Some contain handwritten notes from the governor himself: “get photo for my album ” “please be sure we get all mugs with release ” “file pictures in my binder for historical value.” Some press releases don’t include photos of the arrested. What we received could best be described as a scrapbook: a random, incomplete collection of newspaper clippings and press releases from the Maine Department of Public Safety. On Monday, we got in line at the state house to receive our copy on CD. We couldn’t believe that was true, so we filed a public records request for the binder. LePage once again got our attention when he claimed to be keeping a binder of “every single drug dealer who has been arrested in our state,” 90 percent of whom, he said, are Black or Hispanic.
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