I’d heard that this this belief was popular among the far-right before, but now it’s organized. The numbers and influence described here are chilling. “Over the last five years, the group has hosted trainings, rallies, speeches and meetings in at least 30 states for law enforcement officers, political figures, private organizations and members of the public, according to the Howard Center’s seven-month probe, conducted in collaboration with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.”
These guys aren’t just Stupid or Evil-they’re both. Is it any wonder many don’t trust small-town cops? Not that city police have a rosy reputation either, of course.
IMHO, every member of that “constitutional sheriffs” group should be ejected from office for the simple reason they are not abiding by their oath of office. The San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association has the Calfiornia peace officer oath of office. Looks to me like those clowns the OP’s talking about are self-disqualifying from their job.
I think this specific point of view is hilarious; just imagining one of these yahoos trying to assert this so-called authority makes me grin. It’s only disturbing as a general indication of what highly placed local law enforcement believes, which is bad enough, not arguing that.
The “Sheriff as ultimate authority” idea has been around since I was a kid. Like most forms of Reactionary Wacko Traitory, it’s just become more acceptable to say in front of a larger audience over the years. But the rural West (can you say “Ted Bundy” or “Bo Gritz”?) has been harboring this nonsense since forever.
The low population density “leave me alone in my ignorant monoculture” crowd has always liked the idea. The fact it greatly elevates each local citizen’s power over their imagined local circumstances is just a bonus.
Which, mind you, is an office nowhere mentioned in the Constitution.
Yet one more thing that might have worked way back when you had no professional Law Enforcement at all so you had to pick someone from the community to raise a posse of volunteers to do the enforcing, but the world has changed.
Of course, in a bunch of places in the US it has assumed the form of a “professional” Law Enforcement that considers itself independent from the body politic and not accountable to anyone but their own organization… so, yay, progress?
Well, yeah, because there’s a chance that actual professionals will be appointed for the job.
Besides, anyone who runs for election is by necessity a politician, and politicians should not have the authority to arrest people. Politicians, after all, serve the public (or as more often occurs, the part of the public that elected them), while law enforcement should serve the law.
If I had my way, I’d cancel all law enforcement agencies in the United States below the state level. Let the state police handle everything. At least that way you’ll have some sort of consistency in training, doctrine and accountability.
I can see two problems here. One is that there’s nothing stopping appointed LEO’s in your system from just being a crony of their appoint-er. That doesn’t seem much better than electing one.
And only having state police would both IMHO stretch resources too far and lose a lot of local relationships and knowledge, which can be useful. I do think a middle ground would be best, but I don’t know how that would look.
I would go with Ammon Bundy. Cliven is out of the picture while Ammon is still fucking around and wasting taxpayer money. Ammon is the king of the pocket constitution brigade that would be behind these constitutional sheriffs.
The thing about a large, state-wide police force s that it will have an organized professional command structure. Sure, the governor will be able to appoint someone of like mind as commissioner, but they’ll have to raise them from the within the ranks and not just appoint some random crony.
I mean, there’s no reason why the resources that are now given to local police can’t be given to state police, and they’ll certainly expand their numbers. One large police department will be able to assign its resources much more efficiently than several hundred small ones. I also think that the police will still be local, serving in the same police stations they do now, except that their command structure will at the state level.
This is nothing new - plenty of countries around the world run their police forces this way.
