Tormented PA Sheriff Who Lost His Son to Fentanyl Explains Why Sen. Bob Casey Abandoned His Family With His Lax Border Policies – DNyuz

EBENSBURG, Pennsylvania — Blair County Sheriff Jim Ott is a big, muscular man who has spent his entire life in law enforcement.

But he still can’t talk about the loss of his son Josh to a fentanyl overdose without getting angry.

“I thought I was a good father,” Ott said, on the verge of tears. “People say time heals all wounds. It doesn’t.”

The central Pennsylvania police officer said he’d like to go back and ban the 33-year-old from using drugs altogether, but deep down he knows there’s only one solution.

“What we need to do is try to reduce it,” he told The Post.

But instead of taking meaningful steps to actually achieve that goal, “we relaxed the border. We opened our borders. We made it easier for illegals to come in,” he fumed.

By lowering these standards, Ott says, “it has become easier for the cartels to smuggle poison across the border.”

That’s why Ott is speaking out against Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey and other Democrats, who he says helped create the open borders that allowed powerful narcotics to flood across the border, killing 100,000 Americans last year alone.

Ott is the face of a heartbreaking new ad for Casey’s November opponent, Rep. Jim McCormick, that criticizes Casey for his border policies — and attempts to link him to the drug plague plaguing rural Pennsylvania.

He criticized Casey for failing to secure the border in the Senate for 18 years.

He believes McCormick will take a “tougher stance” on the border and provide Border Patrol and the DEA “the tools” to “go after the cartels” and stop the importation of fentanyl.

“You’re not going to eliminate addiction that way, but you are making it harder to get the toxins out into the world,” Ott said.

In a wide-ranging conversation with The Post, Ott shared the heartbreaking memory of hearing the “bloodcurdling screams of his family” when they found Josh dead in April 2020.

He said he had worked hard to save his son from addiction, and told him, “You’re either going to jail. Or die. Or both.”

Ott also said he was furious that he didn’t have enough evidence to catch Josh’s dealer when he finally tracked him down.

“I told him he was lucky to be alive,” he recalls.

Ott believes Democrats have been slow to address the problem. Casey co-sponsored the FEND Off Fentanyl Act, which would crack down on “trafficking in fentanyl and its precursors by transnational criminal organizations, including cartels.”

“When did that come out? April 2024. When did it become known that we had a problem? Why did we wait until now?” he said.

According to Ott, it is precisely those same soft measures against migrant crime that present an important contrast that Americans must choose between this November.

“I think the direction under the Trump administration was to create a more secure border,” he said, praising the former president for his record of curbing illegal border crossings.

“Under the Biden administration, the steps that were taken to move forward have been reversed,” he said.

The only way to limit the amount of deadly drugs entering U.S. territory, Ott said, is through strict border controls and a government that enforces the law.

“I’m not saying Bob Casey killed my son,” Ott said.

“I say the poison that is crossing the borders, and the poison that is in our community, and the lack of security of what is crossing our borders, is the fault of the current leaders that we have, and he happens to be one of them.”

“No family should ever have to get a phone call like that,” he said, looking at a photo of his son.

“That their loved one died of an overdose because of the poison that comes into this country.”

The post Troubled Pennsylvania sheriff who lost his son to fentanyl explains why Sen. Bob Casey abandoned his family with his lax border policies appeared first on New York Post.