A Kentucky deputy went to Trump's D.C. rally. Now he's under ...

The debate has split a community already divided over Trump, the election results and the public’s trust in law enforcement.The sheriff’s office has been barraged with messages — both complaints about Farmer and praise for him.“Half of the county is against him, half of the county is for him,” said Capt. He thanked the activists for sharing their concerns, she said.The activists said they heard little about Farmer after that — until Jan. 6.Farmer’s critics say the detective should have known what the Jan. 6 rally represented, the rhetoric that would be voiced, and that extremists would be among the crowd.Powe said his participation in the rally “was adding more fuel to fire to what we felt we were experiencing with Farmer, and we wanted to know if something was going to be done.”Her group met with Goodrich, the public defender, and told him about the August meeting with Quire. The man, 26, who did not want to be identified by name out of fear of retribution, said he felt forced to plead guilty to low-level marijuana charges and became convinced Farmer was following him.“He targets you unfairly when you’re going about your lawful business and you can’t shake him off your back,” the man said.On Jan. 8, Goodrich and his colleagues sent a letter to Quire, asking him to investigate Farmer’s activities at the rally, and cases “which reflect targeting and racial profiling.”The letter also mentioned that Farmer had resigned from the nearby Versailles Police Department in 2011 after coming under investigation for misconduct. The Versailles Police Department declined to comment.“We will no longer silently stand by and allow Deputy Farmer to stain the reputation of Franklin County and cripple the individual lives who we represent,” the lawyers wrote.The local newspaper, The State-Journal, reported on the letter and continued to follow the issue as it unfolded.Quire considered the allegations for a few days, then released a statement supporting Farmer’s First Amendment right to attend the rally and saying there was no evidence that he had broken any laws. But Quire also announced an investigation into the complaints against Farmer, and his presence at the rally, and reassigned him from narcotics duty.Reached by email, Farmer declined to comment, but said his lawyers would speak on his behalf once the investigation, conducted by a former FBI agent, ended.Wills, the sheriff’s office spokesman, defended Farmer, who won the agency’s Deputy of the Year award in 2015 and 2019 and won a public poll that named him Frankfort’s “Favorite Law Enforcement Officer” in 2018.The honors, Wills said, reflected “the cases he worked, his work ethic, that he’s always willing to help people in the public, along with the deputies he works with.”Wills said Farmer’s reassignment to desk duty was not a punishment but a move to keep him safe while the investigation was underway.“He’s got a target on his back, and we can’t put him out there when so many people are against him,” Wills said.The investigation was welcomed by some in Franklin County, but it angered Farmer’s supporters, who believed he had done nothing wrong in Washington and was targeted because he was such an effective narcotics investigator.“When he came back from the rally, all the people that had grudges against him just got louder, just smelled blood in the water, and started attacking him, whether it had a credible basis or not,” Gerald Hedrick said.Hedrick, 51, who is white, said he has relied on Farmer to curb drug traffic in his neighborhood in Frankfort’s Thornhill section, where he lives with his wife, four adopted children and two foster children.