How a Small-Town Sheriff Ended Up on a Crusade to Radicalize American Law Enforcement

[Nevilledog]

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Tess Owen
@misstessowen
Come for a chilling story about how sheriffs — and now entire counties — are getting radicalized into an extreme anti-government movement.....

...stay for a brief anecdote about a minor horse celebrity from Nevada

How a Small-Town Sheriff Ended Up on a Crusade to Radicalize American Law Enforcement
Richard Mack is the leader of a growing “Constitutional Sheriff” movement, which claims sheriffs hold ultimate authority over the federal government.
vice.com
8:20 AM · Jul 28, 2021

https://www.vice.com/en/article/epnkgn/richard-mack-constitutional-sheriff-movement

Across the United States, sheriffs have been rebelling, refusing to enforce public health mandates, disregarding gun laws, and rubbing shoulders with militias.

Many might see this behavior from law enforcement as a dangerous trend toward vigilantism. But when Richard Mack sees sheriffs behaving this way, he takes a victory lap. To him, those sheriffs are patriots, the fruits of his decades-long crusade to forge ties between anti-government extremists and local law enforcement.

Mack, a 69-year-old, several-times-failed political candidate and one-time reality TV star who goes by “Sheriff” despite having not held that office since the early 1990s, is the leader of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA). Long before he founded that group in 2011, he toured the country on the anti-government and patriot speaking circuit, stoking fears of an imminent power grab by the federal government.

As he lays out in his book, The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope, Mack believes that God enshrined sheriffs with the highest constitutional authority in the U.S., which gives them special powers to decide which federal or state laws to enforce and which to ignore. In other words: Sheriff Supremacy. CSPOA also believes that county sheriffs have the authority to arrest government employees who attempt to enforce laws they don’t agree with.

*snip*

[Lars39]

1. Small town I lived in a few years ago almost elected one

of these “constitutional” sheriffs. A realtor on a busy intersection let him put a sign up. Who else had a sign up there was a big help in deciding who wouldn’t get my vote.