As President Trump plans a trip to Kenosha Wisconsin, both the governor and the mayor are begging him not to come. One of the reasons given is that it would tax local LEO resources. Is this just based upon tradition or do local police have to provide security, do traffic control, etc for the president? Could they just say “FU. Do it yourself.”
I think there should be a GQ answer to this question but I figured it would end up here due to its political nature.
Maybe not required , but I don’t think local cops/sheriffs wants the bad PR by saying no. The locals normally handle shutting down roads. I guess the state police could handle that if local cops refuse to do it. Secret service has uniformed cops so I guess they could come along if needed. Trivia, Federal Reserve has their own police force. Started in 2000. I found out when I saw one of their cars.
There may not be a requirement that they do cooperate. If it exists, due to constitutional constraints, it would still probably have to be tied to funding – like, you won’t get these federal law enforcement grants if you don’t cooperate with secret service requests, so it would still technically be optional. I strongly doubt such strings are tied to federal law enforcement grants to states though, mainly because no one would have expected that to be a problem.
And it should not be. The president should generally probably listen if local officials are saying please don’t come here at this time, and there are valid reasons. (Like, not just, Obama/Trump is not welcome here). And unless it is ultimately truly unfeasible, local officials should make law enforcement resources available. This is not something that should become politicized. I am literally counting down the days until Trump is not president,* but having state and local police not cooperate with the Secret Service to protect any president would cause tremendous damage to our democracy, when it is already in need of enormous repairs from Trump’s own damage.
*142 days
The President of the United States may go wherever he wishes in this republic under the rule of law. Local law enforcement in any ordinary time would help protect him, as they always have, because it’s the right thing to do, as a courtesy, and to avoid the inevitable political fallout if they didn’t. If push comes to shove, under the U.S. Constitution, it and federal law are supreme over any state constitution or law.
Just about any other President in our history, begged by local leaders in a time of turmoil not to come to their community for reasons that an objective observer could see were not intended as a partisan slap at him, would agree, with good reason, to stay away.
But Donald Trump is not that President.