And that's actually fine, because sheriff is an elected office. The good citizens of Alameda County voted for a sheriff who enables warrior cops, they get to pay for the cops' actions because they support the state of affairs.
> The Alameda County Sheriff's Department has learned from this Streisanding, and has since made it official policy to forbid the playing of copyrighted content for the sole purpose of thwarting the recording of officers by members of the public.
In many counties the candidates for sheriff must be active employees of the department or similar, making for an extremely narrow pool of candidates with plenty of opportunity for the incumbent to make their competitors ineligible to run.
https://www.acvote.org/candidates/how-to-run
Ballotpedia has a more complete narrative description:
https://ballotpedia.org/How_to_run_for_office_in_California
It's not even clear to me that there is an minimumm age requirement for municipal or state office. There are a set of petition and/or filing-fee requirements.
Alabama is a state in which I might expect more stringent requirements to be in place. Those are: 18+ years of age, 1 day+ state residency, 1 day+ US citizen, and registered voter. Terms are 4 years, with no limit on terms served.
https://www.sos.alabama.gov/alabama-votes/candidates/qualifi...
Who made these inane rules? At the end of the day, if a county goes bankrupt for enacting stupid measures, it's on its citizens. Especially if they didn't even bother voting.
Even for those obsessed with the primacy of market forces to solve all things, counting on them to solve bad police sounds...well, I can't really say how that sounds on HN, because the moderation is too good here. :)
They have one requirement besides a GED, and it BDS (big, dumb, stupid).
They are known for doing stupid stuff around the country.
I grew up with the guy who runs the Coroner's a office, and literally thought he was developmentally disabled.
(CA decided to nix voted in Coroners a few years ago, and replaced all with cops to save money. A Coroner is an executive position. Needs no training. In Marin County, we had a great Coroner, who was a medical doctor, for years.)