More Questions Than Answers After Sheriff Prator’s ‘Heated’ Comments During Debate

A video recently surfaced online that has many in our city talking. The video is extremely short, curiously short in fact. It features our current Sheriff Steve Prator and his opponent, Eric Hatfield, during a debate.

It's titled, "Steve Prator Has Meltdown At Sheriff Debate," but I struggle to find the "meltdown." The video claims he was asked a question by an audience member in regards to a criminal being shot 29 times by three law enforcement agencies. I say "claims" because (for some strange reason) the video doesn't include the actual question, instead, it provides the question in text-form.

As the final text finally leaves the top of the screen, Star Wars style, the actual video begins playing. It features Prator commenting on a subject that is clearly a hot topic for him. He leads by saying to not ask him, but ask the family members of the police officers. The audience member interrupts him and says, "Just answer the question!"

That clearly struck a nerve with the Sheriff, who quickly quipped, "Would you just shut up and listen to me!"

The room collectively gasped. Hatfield immediately hit a classic "Good lord!" followed by "Hey, that's not necessary." Prator and Hatfield then turned their attention to each other before the video mysteriously stops as Prator returned to the audience member.

I'm not a huge fan of the sheriff telling an audience member to shut up, but I am certainly curious as to why the entire video wasn't published.

Here are my questions after watching the video:

1. Why not show the audience member asking the question?

If the question was exactly what the video publisher typed, then why not show the actual question being asked? It seems like rolling the text slowly to the top of the screen would take much longer than actually showing the question. That's a red flag for me.

2. Why cut the video off before Prator continued his answer?

This one is the most puzzling. I'm sure Prator had more to say after his quick stand-off with Hatfield. Why not show the rest? Maybe what he said next was respectful and insightful, which would fly in the face of whoever published this footage? Maybe they are saving the best for last with another upload coming soon? We'll see!

3. Why is the video only uploaded to this less-than-credible website?

I've never heard of The Informer, but the website seems like one of those you see all the time that thrive off of creating click-bait content with skewed information. It seems like a shady site, but maybe that's just me.

We should certainly wait to see the full video before we pass judgment of any kind, but as of right now, we're left with more questions than answers.

To see the video, click HERE!