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Five years for illegal arms trafficking while pot smokers get the book thrown at them. Sometimes I think the US needs a federalized/nationalized police system—I think there would be fewer instances of reluctant prosecution if the cops were not from the local area.

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A federal layer of oversight could help, which one would expect to already exist considering the continual budget inflation for these departments. Maybe because its local money that pays local police departments it only has local oversight. There needs to be a way to audit the actions and expenditures of these organizations yearly. Local police should be from the local community and held accountable by federal internal investigators in a way that randomizes and anonymizes interactions between investigators and the departments to prevent relationships from forming and corrupting the process.

No… police agencies care about overtime, gas and bullets from a budget perspective. The federal government uses strings tied to money to influence policy.

That approach isn't working in the education system and it's not working in law enforcement

Given the current... circumstances, massively expanding the federal government's policing powers might not be a good idea right now.

Considering that the person nominated for the director of the federal police force claimed he was shutting down the office and putting all 7000 agents in the field, I definitely concur that the last thing they need is more power.

“I’d shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the ‘deep state,’” Patel said in an interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show” that aired in September. “Then, I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops — go be cops.”

The last part is generally--dishonestly--omitted in the headlines from our favorite and most trusted news sources. (edit: which is done to frame Patel as wanting to fire them all--a pathetic stunt that is no longer surprising from these corrupt tools.)

Anyway, what are these "circumstances" to which you refer?

Well, for starters… the circumstances have appointed somebody who believes in the “deep state” stuff as director of the FBI.

Downvote me all you want, but 'deep state' is just shorthand for the administrative state: unelected bureaucrats with the power to set policy, resist oversight, and accumulate unchecked power. Disliking the term doesn't make the reality any less valid.

As for the parent comment, this administration plans to put more agents in the field immediately. Why is that a problem? Perhaps try persuasion instead of vague dogwhistles about 'circumstances.'

Patel is an unelected bureaucrat, just like the current director.

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The current director of the FBI is Christopher Wray. (A Trump appointee, incidentally.)

Every FBI director is an unelected bureaucrat. Patel will be as well.

Upvoting you actually, because what you're saying about the "deep state" is reasonably correct.

And people really, really need to stop triggering themselves over the term (simply because it is often misunderstood and used as conspiracy fodder).

> I think there would be fewer instances of reluctant prosecution if the cops were not from the local area.

A consideration: One form of community policing uses officers that live in the area they patrol. The notion is that police will better know and protect their own community.

To support your larger point, it is my experience that there is little oversight of LEO at the peer level. ex:When meaningful oversight of county/city police happens, it is typically by state or federal LEO authority.

So we have a system that is capable of doing what needs to be done. However, it likely has a tiny fraction of the resources (and will) necessary to broadly keep Americans safe.

Going in the wrong direction: we need more LOCALized police force ao that local community's needs get met FIRSTLY.

We need both, I agree community needs are best served locally. But also small town sheriffs can capture too much power and need oversight.

Don't we already have that? Is it working?

Not anymore, post 9/11, congress will pass the yearly defense budget bill which includes sales of excess military hardware to police forces. To get the hardware your police have to meet specific operating requirements.

Yeah it’s hyper-localized in the cities. There are 1,900 law enforcement agencies in Texas, 87 of them in the Houston area alone.

Here’s a list of the law enforcement agencies in the Houston Area: https://hapca.org/Member%20Agencies/member-agencies

They get as local as a department for just 150-300 acres of Brazosport College / Rice University or the Tiki Island Police Department covering a village of 1,100 people, despite being just a 5-minute drive to Galveston (a city of 53,000 people)

I don’t think the problem is local vs national police. Either way the national culture can be poor overall (as it is now) and each local area can have widely different quality (as they do now)

Do pot smokers get the book thrown at them? My understanding is there’s basically no one in prison merely for smoking pot. Everyone in prison for drugs is there with additional convictions like illegal possession of firearms and possession with intent to sell.

While the numbers have substantially decreased [1] over the years, "basically no one" are still human lives. Is trafficking illegals arms 5x as bad as simple possession of marijuana for personal use?

[1]: https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/weighing-impa...

Just imagine how fun life will be when the cop at the end of your street has to enforce the politics of Washington, and then someone you don't like gets into office.

I don't disagree with your conclusion. But there are plenty of dystopian movies that show exactly how badly this sort of idea can go.

That's a pretty low bar for a dystopia given that many countries have federalized police systems like Spain, Japan, France, Italy, ...

You named 4 countries with land sizes and populations comparable to california or texas.

That would be a serious single point of failure!

Uh, no.

The Federal justice system is capped by Senate confirmed judges with lifetime appointments, US Attorneys who serve at the pleasure of the appointing authority, and various Federal agencies with few levers to influence from a citizen perspective.

You can also get a sneak peak at such a system by looking at Washington, DC. It’s justice system is a federally administered or supervised tip to tail, and it isn’t exactly a bastion of justice.

IIRC that system was widely used in former Communist Bloc countries from the Soviet Union to the GDR, for precisely that reason.

There’s a big gap between smoking weed and manufacturing and distribution.

Obviously more government control will solve the issue. /s

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