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Cordele Commissioner Royce Reeves took his seat during the Pledge of Allegiance for the second straight commission meeting on Tuesday.

Reeves said after the first meeting when he sat that he is sitting in protest of a variety of issues.

“I don’t know what ‘liberty and justice for all’ means anymore,” Reeves said. “I’m not sure that ‘all’ really means everyone.”

Reeves spent much of the early voting period for the November 6 General Election driving throughout Cordele in a limousine provided by J.W. Williams Funeral Home and giving residents free rides to the Crisp County Government Center so they could vote.

On October 24, Reeves was cited by the Georgia State Patrol for illegally parking the limo. Earlier that day, Reeves and a writer for the New Yorker magazine had pointed their cell phones at a state trooper as he conducted a traffic stop as if to give the impression they were filming the stop.

Reeves claims he was cited in retaliation for the incident and even perhaps in an effort to suppress his efforts to get voters to the polls.

Audio from the trooper’s dash cam doesn’t indicate that there was a deliberate attempt to retaliate against Reeves for anything. Reeves admitted he was illegally parked and demanded the trooper write him a ticket so they could both go about their day.

When Reeves became argumentative, the trooper called for backup, which prompted a swift response from multiple units from multiple jurisdictions.

A spokesperson with the state department of public safety said she could not comment on the specifics of the case until either the fine had been paid or the matter was settled in court, but stressed that there was no attempt on the part of any of their personnel to suppress voting efforts and they simply wanted Reeves to move the limousine to a safer parking location.

Reeves said he regrets the incident, which became a central part of the New Yorker writer’s article.

“I regret that it happened and I regret the way it was handled,” said Reeves, who added that he plans to pay the fine for the parking ticket.

He also said he doesn’t plan to stop sitting for the Pledge of Allegiance any time soon.