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Comment by nighthawk648 | Hacker News Reader

> political agenda... So mayoral run?

It was the sheriff, which for some reason is an elected position.

the ghosts of reconstruction will never leave us.

Sheriffs being elected is actually extremely important. A sheriff is a constitutional entity who has far more influence than a typical police officer. Having the public choose such an official, rather than having them be hired by a city commission is very preferable - because they can be removed by the people.

This isn't to say everything sheriff's do is good, they're obviously just people and prone to corruption like anyone else. That said, sheriffs who refuse to arrest people for certain things (such as marijuana, or for their sexuality) has been a significant force in protecting people from unjust laws. [0]These days, that same power is being used to try to protect the 2nd amendment.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENLUaosbNXc

But doesn't that redefine "legal" into whatever is in vogue? I understand the appeal of having "direct" control, but I would think the law should be impartial to popularity - sometimes the police officers have to be the guy standing in the way of the angry mob.

The pro of refusing to arrest people also isn't solely in the domain of a public official - regular police offers can do that as well.

Also, what are the laws in regards to firing said elected official? I was trying to look up recall laws, but couldn't find anything definitive. How long can someone be bad before the people are able to act, compared to a hired office where the mayor could fire or suspend them in short order?

There's a few points here so I'll try to unpack them in order.

Historically, and still today, sheriffs tend to be very picky about when they choose to mandate non-enforcement in their jurisdictions. The most recent examples are the 2nd amendment sanctuaries, the refusals to comply with federal laws regarding marijuana, and refusals to detain illegal immigrants. The cases where they exercise this power are very often extreme, and unpopular. And as the sheriff is a real public servant and not a hired gun (which I mean literally, in the case of most police departments) they serve at the pleasure of the people.

If the police chief orders a police officer to make an arrest, the officer will be fired if he doesn't comply. A sheriff can't be fired as they are a constitutionally protected official. Further, a sheriff (this varies state by state) can often go so far as to effectively eradicate the existence of a law in their jurisdiction - this is what's happening with 2nd amendment sanctuaries now. Basically, it works because unlike a police officer, a sheriff can say 'I'm not using any resources to enforce this law, period. Oh and you can't do anything about it.'

Lastly, removing elected officials varies from place to place. It's universally easier than removing a sitting president and has the advantage that it's actually possible which isn't always the case for typical police (who are almost universally loathed for their lack of accountability and public recourse options).

> The cases where they exercise this power are very often extreme, and unpopular. And as the sheriff is a real public servant and not a hired gun (which I mean literally, in the case of most police departments) they serve at the pleasure of the people.

Aren't those two statements in exact opposition?

Not at all. Using marijuana laws as an example.

Federally, marijuana is very illegal. However, it is very popular, and almost nobody is still supporting its criminalization. So, many sheriffs decided to basically refuse to enforce the laws. IIRC there were also cases of interferance with enforcement by federal agencies. This protected the citizens from what is seen as a severe overreach by the federal government.

To me, that is the essence of serving the will of the people.

But not enforcing marijuana in that case wouldn't be "often extreme, and unpopular".

The war on drugs, which led to extraordinary harm to many people and communities, could certainly be categorized as extreme and unpopular. Could you elaborate on what you mean?

I just realize you mean that they use their power to not enforce something when that thing is "very often extreme, and unpopular. " The way you said it "The cases where they exercise this power are very often extreme, and unpopular." seemed to me to indicate that their choice to enforce their action was extreme or unpopular.

My apologies, I didn't realize at the time of writing that the sentence could have been interpreted differently. The err is mine.

The accountability issue swings both ways. If a sheriff's office has problems with certain enforcement issues (i.e. profiling, not taking domestic violence allegations seriously, etc.) and the electorate is not immediately interested in these issues, there's no other mechanism to encourage behavior changes - elections are fundamentally a binary state for an individual candidate. There's no nuance to the accountability, and the voting public is often ill informed on relevant policy problems and issues - there's been plenty of coverage about poor fiscal accountability, selective enforcement, etc. that illustrate the dangers with solely relying on the electorate as a quality control mechanism.

At the end of the day, this comes down to where you personally fall on the federalization debate.

>Lastly, removing elected officials varies from place to place. It's universally easier than removing a sitting president and has the advantage that it's actually possible which isn't always the case for typical police (who are almost universally loathed for their lack of accountability and public recourse options).

In theory this sounds great, but in practice I'm not so sure. The average person seems to get stonewalled at best, harassed or targeted at worst, when trying to file formal complaint against an officer. I can't imagine trying this against a sheriff that is popular with the police unions.

How are you going to avoid this? You either elect the sheriff directly, or you elect the people who appoint the sheriff. Either way, they are going to be subject to political whims.

So if we do end up in the same place, then "Sheriffs being elected is actually extremely important." is still false.

I'm not saying that either system is perfect, but it seems to me the idea that somehow being elected makes a sheriff better is outright false.

Fair enough, although there might be SOME benefit to having separate election systems for the two roles; it might provide some check against one of the election systems being compromised.

The problem arises, however, that everything becomes about re-election, rather than, say, policing.

The candidate with the biggest marketing budget, the most bluster, the lowest common denominator support base, wins - not the candidate who would make the best sheriff.

It’s a stepping stone. You go for sheriff, then assemblyman, then congress, then the senate. Your performance in the job doesn’t matter - just how many donors you can attract by pandering to their interests.

I entirely agree. Unfortunately, this issue rests with democracy as a whole. I once tried to promote the idea of performance reviews for candidates and blind elections based only on experience and presented plans/documentation. Unfortunately, I think that even that system would fail because voter participation is abysmally low.

Possibly in the past but no other developed country has partisan political elections for posts that should be impartial and non political.

Honestly, the American way of doing elections is awful by any objective standard. It systematically homogenizes the political positions into two camps where neither camp actually reflects the will of the people. In every election the most common phrase I hear is 'lesser of two evils' because nobody believes that a candidate really represents their interests.

That said, I can't recall ever hearing of a sheriff with a single-digit approval rating, unlike [0[Congress.

[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx

I live in a country where law enforcement isn't an elected position.

Not once have I heard anyone from any political camp argue that it would be better if it was. And yes, it's not totally unknown that this is how it is in america, and therefore an option.

Sure, this isn't much of an argument against elected law enforcement, but calling it "extremely important" is a bit of a stretch...

Countries are package deals. You get different election mechanisms, political structures, cultures, laws, and so forth. In the context of American history specifically, sheriffs have played an important role in balancing power within our political system. Your country, being different, has different ways of handling the issues it has faced. I'm sure in some ways it has been better, but in others, it may have been worse at various times.

Ultimately, countries are straight-up complicated. Nobody has solved how to do government in a way that doesn't screw over somebody. And every time people have tried, you could count on some human being in the system to screw it up.

Just for clarity, I've lived in Sweden and Germany and operate a company in the UK. I've tried several times to make an honest holistic comparison of everywhere I've worked or lived. My conclusion is that nowhere is perfect, and that whether the place you live is good, bad, or neutral is really a matter of time more than anything else. Looking at [0]pictures from the middle east in the 1960s and 70s drives this point home.

[0]https://www.businessinsider.com/iran-before-the-revolution-i...

This sounds great in theory, but in practice the results seem to be that Sheriffs obtain enormous amounts of power without the (sometimes still insufficient) checks and balances that traditional police departments have. It turns out that when you have something as powerful and capable of abuse as a police force, you want lots of experienced people overseeing it, and (most importantly) subjecting it to routine investigation. A popularity contest every few years doesn’t accomplish this well.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.governing.com/topics/public...

Hey, uhm not arresting people for drugs is probably because they are in the pocket of drug dealers or politicians who are in the pocket of dealers.

Anyways sheriffs do shady things all the time, like money seizures and home foreclosures and tenet eviction. All of which are typically tied to shady business practices, unethical eviction, robber baron rent hikes.

Not sure about most of the US (well I kind of am) but in New York that is how it is. Everything is corrupt when elections and money and power is involved and sometimes the wrong people have injustice strikes against them.

Unfortunately public elections don’t mean much as to convince a populous of people to elect the right way is an impossible task by two fold.

A) any candidate you elect will have to succumb to tradition and president set by the office previously, especially when finances are considered.

B) even if the running platform is maintained getting a candidate who can do such and getting the populous to back the candidate will be an arduous task.

So the sheriff can be fired by the people for bad sherrifing

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