I’m catching up on the show, Season 6 Episode 5
The mayor tries to force Walt to resign, but Walt refuses and crumples up the resignation letter.
Sheriff are elected county wide, so how did the Mayor think he had any power over Walt’s job?
Police chief Bill Gillispie (heat of the night ) was fired. He came back as sheriff the next season.
Writers often mix up the powers of mayor.
The mayor in the Andy Griffith show threatened to fire Sheriff Andy Taylor.
Griffith said (in a interview) he disagreed with creating the mayor’s character because he had no power over a county sheriff. The show dropped the mayor character after a few episodes.
I remember Griffith said the writers wanted to create conflict for Sheriff Taylor. Make the character answerable to someone.
It sounds like the Longmire writers had the same idea.
But a Sheriff has a lot of power to make decisions about local law enforcement. He can get in trouble for committing a crime. The same as any citizen.
Yeah, shows and movies often confuse the roles of sheriff’s department and police department.
In most states, the sheriff is a constitutional, elected position who is an independent executive officer answerable only to the voters of a county.
Police chiefs, on the other hand, are employees of a city government answerable to whatever municipal authorities are above them.
In Reno 9-1-1 it was often unclear whether the characters answered to a police chief or to a sheriff. Their uniforms looked like sheriff’s deputy uniforms and there was occasionally mention of a sheriff, but I believe the sign outside their headquarters said “police department.”
The only answer to this question that really matters is that season 6 suuuccckkkkedddd
I think that’s why in the SovCit interactions I’ve seen on various videos, not TV shows, the SovCits often seem to defer to the Sheriff because He/She’s an elected official.
There’s overlap between SovCits and the “Constitutional Sheriffs”, who believe that a sheriff is the highest constitutional official, with power to ignore laws that the sheriff concludes are unconstitutional.