Sheriffs in America Are Going Absolutely Hog Wild
From fraternizing with fascists to arresting innocent lawyers, Sheriffs all across the USA have been on a roll lately.
The Tri-County Sheriffs Forum
On April 23rd, 2022, sheriffs from Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino hosted the first Tri-County Sheriffs Forum in Chinco Airport, home to an aviation museum. Militarized festivities abounded; gaudy displays of death and destruction could be reveled in at the entire venue. Recalling the visuals of the event, Vishal P. Singh, who documented the tri-county carnival as it transpired on Twitter, saw:
Supercars, guns, gadgets, snowmobiles, helicopters, military-grade special operations gear, armored vehicles, scuba-diving equipment, and even a rocket propelled grenade launcher? There was quite a militarized spectacle on display at the April 23rd event.
But neither the antiques in the aviation museum nor the military tech the real dangers of that day. The real dangers were in an old hangar where the sheriffs of the three counties and their supporters decided to convene. Here their words more than sufficed to perturb the conscience of the level-headed.
As a far-right Three Percenters flag displayed outside the hangar, some of the most powerful and influential sheriffs in the country decried “wokeness,” the media, the left, sex workers, and the houseless. In particular Alex Villanueva, sheriff of LA county, suggested stuffing houseless people into trains and sending them elsewhere by giving them a “one way ticket back to wherever they came from.” Sheriff Chad Bianco of Riverside, a former member of the Oath Keepers, said: “Our government will never fix this issue if we keep calling it homelessness, because it has nothing to do with homes or lack of homes. It’s a drug-induced psychosis…”
This far-right clown show served no other purpose than to legitimize and normalize the dehumanization of those who’ve been at the brunt of sadistic police might. This is why they decry “wokeness,” the media, or anyone or anything that sheds light on their own behavior: to them, merely pointing out their faults (or their associations) is tantamount to attacking them or being biased against them.
This is what happened to Vishal, who faced harassment at the event.
Once the forum ended, I couldn’t stay very long. I had been live-tweeting about the event, and some of the audience members recognized me and took issue with me sharing the image of the Three Percenters flag at the entrance. I was the only journalist who shared images of that flag. I was verbally accosted before I could leave my seat, and was forced to exit the forum for my own safety as right-wing activists pointed and screamed at me and onlookers watched on in confusion.
So what is going on? Why are some of the most powerful sheriffs in the country fraternizing with far-right memorabilia, ideas, or individuals?
Current Data on Sheriffs
According to a survey of 500 sheriffs (1/6th of all sheriffs nationwide) conducted by the Marshall Project in collaboration with political scientists Emily Farris and Mirya Holman, nearly half of the 500 respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their authority as sheriffs supersedes federal or state authority in their counties. The majority (69.8%) agreed or strongly agreed that they are willing to intervene when they believe a state or federal law is unjust.
This demonstrates an increase in the influence of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, a reactionary police movement spearheaded by Richard Mack, a former member of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers. According to polling, 11% of sheriffs personally support beliefs held by the Oath Keepers, and a leaked membership list shows that many sheriffs are or were members of the militia, along with elected representatives and active military personnel.
When Richard Mack heard the results of the 500 sheriff survey, he was “pleased,” and “surprised.” “The people of the country are getting behind us.”
Of course, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers association isn’t a peaceful, impartial organization, not only because of their ties to Oath Keepers, or even Richard Mack’s affiliation with white supremacists. A study conducted on Constitutional Sheriffs shows that there is a correlation between county Constitutional Sheriffs and the political violence they enable towards government officials.
Xenophobia and racism are also quite prominent among sheriffs, according to the same 500 sheriff survey which polled their opinions on race and immigration. According to the data, 69.5% of the sheriffs strongly agreed on tightening border security and curbing illegal immigration. Only 2.4% disagreed in any way. Around 62% of respondents agreed that immigrants should bootstraps their way out of oppression instead of receiving any “special favors.”
Unsurprisingly, many of these xenophobic, white supremacist-fraternizing sheriffs are also conservative, which explains why they’re so enamored by Richard Mack and his calls for sheriffs to investigate election integrity.
Much of this data isn’t revelatory. Historically, sheriffs in America were at the forefront of oppressing racial minorities or opposing racial justice movements. On the western frontier, sheriffs often facilitated the genocide of native Americans and Mexican citizens, according to scholars Farris and Holman in their forthcoming book about sheriffs. And in the south, it was often the sheriff who was the slave catcher; after slavery, they would often detain freed African Americans and hire them out to private companies in accordance with racist Jim Crow-era “Black codes.”
This historical animosity towards black and brown people extends to this very day, whether it takes the form of Sheriff Tom Dart in Chicago fighting against modest criminal justice reform or criminal charges being filed against lawyers for serving Sheriff Daniel Guida of Aitkin County a subpoena, the flames of racial hatred and settler colonialism are ongoing.
Likewise are the growing emanations of a neo-fascist movement among sheriffs. Carlson Tucker, an attorney representing multiple sheriffs in Michigan, wrote an email to Trump allies requesting that they seize Dominion voting machines during the 2020 election cycle.
“My client Barry County Sheriff and several other county sheriffs in Michigan would like to consider issuing probable cause warrants to sequester Dominion voting machines if there is evidence of criminal manipulation.”
Unsurprisingly, this effort was spearheaded by Sheriff Dar Leaf, a self-described “constitutional sheriff” who didn’t enforce COVID-19 orders at the beginning of the pandemic.
Richard Mack & CSPOA
Former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack is the founder and leader of the CSPOA, or Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, a reactionary organization which espouses the idea that local sheriffs have greater authority than federal or state governments. As the data above demonstrates, the ideology of this association has gained momentum among sheriffs across the country.
In 2021, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement approved official training from the CSPOA, allowing the group to perform training sessions with Texas law enforcement. Apparently 10 other states have slated the CSPOA as well, according to Stephanie Mencimer from Mother Jones who interviewed Richard Mack. He has also been busy touring the country, promoting his books and giving speeches. In the words of Mencimer:
But since the pandemic started, business has been booming. He had to quit his teaching job in November because of the renewed demand for his public appearances.
In many of these public appearances or law enforcement trainings, he employs the help of his far-right posse who lead the attendees in public prayer or proclaim the divine right of laws and the duty of the sheriff in upholding these laws.
Michael Peroutka
One of these assistants is Michael Peroutka, a GOD nominee for attorney general of Maryland in 2022 and founder of the Institute on the Constitution, their website offering course materials on constitutional sheriff philosophy including a 2 minute clip from the action thriller Clear and Present Danger starring Harrison Ford. He is also a former board member of the League of the South, a neo-confederate secessionist group which helped organize the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. Peroutka actively assists Mack in “training” sheriffs. Mencimer explains what he teaches them:
Peroutka tells the crowd that he always teaches sheriffs and other law enforcement that “the purpose of civil government is not to make you wear a seatbelt.” He, too, teaches that the sheriff has unilateral power to decide which laws should be enforced. “When a peace officer refuses to enforce an unconstitutional enactment or order,” he explains, “a peace officer is not breaking the law but upholding the law.”
KrisAnne Hall
And during at least three distinct Texas law enforcement trainings, KrisAnne Hall was present teaching classes on subjects such as “The Importance of the American Sheriff.” She is a former Florida state prosecutor and self described “constitutional attorney” who was part of the Stop the Steal movement leading to the fascist coup attempt on January 6th, 2021. She has also been associated with the League of the South and the Oath Keepers.
According to Richard Mack, one of the teaching sessions that the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) endorsed was an event in The Woodlands, Texas, hosted by the CSPOA where 40 sheriffs attended. A flyer promoting the training stated:
“This training is absolutely guaranteed to provide irrefutable evidence that sheriffs and local officials of each county or parish, possess the power and duty to protect their constituents from ALL enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Robert David Steele
Aside from official police trainings, Mack spent much of the summer of 2021 in the “Arise USA!” tour spanning 111 days and 87 events where they promulgated reactionary nonsense about vaccines and the results of the 2020 presidential election. The tour was organized by former CIA agent Robert David Steele who promotes anti-semitic conspiracy theories about satanic zionists replacing white people.
When the executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights emailed TCOLE about Richard Mack’s affiliation with Steele, they didn’t cancel CSPOA’s trainings.
Why is This Happening?
I could go on and on about fascist recruitment within the police. I could summon a blistering prolix of people and organizations involved in fascist police organizing so long that it would make the most enduring investigators weary. There certainly isn’t a dearth of data on this phenomenon. However, this will never get to the root cause of the fascistization of police. Continuing on like this makes the implicit assumption that if we just purge these specific elements, these particular organizations and individuals, then far-right recruiting will cease.
But it won’t. This is an endemic problem that will get worse as time goes on.
To get to the bottom of this we must first dispel with the myth that police exist to enforce the law. As pointed out by Mark Neocleous in his seminal work A Critical Theory of Police Power, the very existence of the police is one of discretionary impunity where enforcing bourgeois order necessitates breaking past any limitations set upon it.
The capacity to oversee such a wide and heterogeneous range of affairs means that to some extent the police power is without parameters. Or, more tellingly, it is a form of power that persistently manages to break through any parameters imposed on it.
Mark Neocleous, A Critical Theory of Police Power
This is why it is extremely rare to see police receive any sort of repercussions for their actions. Police aren’t impartial purveyors of the law, but rather a sovereign force which protects private property rights through the proactive fabrication of wage labor. To put it plainly: police are vital to maintaining the capitalist system we live under. This system is constantly insecure and needs to be made secure by the police, this “security” in turn recreating the insecurity of poverty in the first place.
Put simply: a massive and intensive police operation on the part of the state is a necessary feature of civil (i.e. class) society, for the simple reason that the class of poverty and the indigent rabble generated by civil society in turn pose a threat to private property and commerce, rendering civil society insecure.
Mark Neocleous, A Critical Theory of Police Power
So during economic downturns or social unrest, the police power becomes more important than ever in maintaining capitalist hegemony. This is why police and liberal governments of interwar Germany and Italy hired or abetted fascist paramilitary organizations to repel socialist uprisings. This is why police join or coordinate with neo-fascist groups in the modern day when the economic order undergoes a spat of destabilization.
Fascism is a reactionary, militarist, ultra-nationalist, conspiracist, anti-intellectual social movement predicated on defending the capitalist class by crushing working class movements, aestheticizing politics, and eliminating class distinctions through appeals to nationalism. Or, for a modern day definition of fascism:
Twenty-first-century fascism and a global police state involve a triangulation of far-right, authoritarian, and neo-fascist forces in civil society with reactionary political power in the state and transnational corporate capital.
William I. Robinson, Global Police State
It’s important to remember that law enforcement aren’t the only policing institution that exists. Policing involves the repression of working people through militarized groups that receive legitimacy from the state. In this sense, fascists represent a latent extension of liberal policing as the discretionary power of police becomes more aggressively overt.
As expounded in a recent article, police in interwar Germany and Italy were integral to the rise of fascism in these countries, whether it involved coordinating with fascists through giving them vehicles or weapons or involved directly deputizing fascists.
When capitalists need to expropriate more wealth from the lower classes or they need to repress social unrest, they not only turn to the police and military but they fund think tanks, institutions, and media apparatuses which reinforce reactionary modes of thought that distract people from the material realities of global capitalism. A good example of this is the recent acquisition of Twitter by Musk.
Another good example is appealing to the racist, settler-colonial mythos of the sheriff.