Birdwatcher (me) wrote....
I share Muleskinner's skepticism of the inherent superiority of locally elected law enforcement officials, one only has to look at the past history of MANY areas
To which Hawkeye replied...
If being subject to election on a regular basis is the cause of corruption, perhaps we should get rid of representative government on all levels. Is this what you are advocating? According to you, local elections result in corrupt politics, so let's get rid of all local elections. If it works locally, perhaps it will work nationally too. Let's get rid of elections on all levels to eliminate government corruption altogether. What you are talking about, if we follow your argument to its logical end, is a return to despotism. Personally, I am not for it...
Umm... I dunno where I advocated "an end to representative government and a return to despotism" (I'm sorta reminded of the scene in "Animal House" where the frat members start humming the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" or some such and file out of Dean Wormers office <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> ).
I thought I was seconding Muleskinner's observation that, just because LEO's are locally elected, doesn't mean a sort of civil Shangri-La necessarily results.
To the contrary, various County Sherriff's Department personnel around the nation have historically been responsible for a multitude of offenses, from notorious cases like the lynching of civil rights workers in 1960's Mississippi to recent local (S.Texas) incidences of misappropriating siezed funds, shaking down travelling motorists, and providing drugs to and having sexual relations with jail inmates (all of these S. Texas incidents within the last five years).
A common theme (including that notorious Mississippi case) to all of these is that is was NOT outraged locals who eventually brought justice, but rather Federal agencies like the FBI, and all of these offenders are all still members of their local community today, if not put on a pedestal, at least not ostracised by their longtime friends and neighbors.
The most egregious case I am aware of happened to an aquaintance of mine, a landowner close to the Border, who after many veiled threats was shot in the arm with a .22 out in an open field one day while putting on his hat. The shot had to be from at least 200-300 yards away and under the circumstances was possibly an attempted head shot.
My friend did not hear any gunshots nor suspect he had been shot until a little while later. It was not hunting season. Initially he was wondering what had hit his arm hard enough to cause bleeding, the wound was shallow and the bullet recovered. (might sound like I'm BS-ing here but I am NOT making this up).
He believes to this day that it was a local Deputy that did it, that man a known marksman and firearms enthusiast and since arrested (by the Feds) and serving a long prison term for involvement in drug trafficking. The point of this being that the Deputy's children went to high school with my friend's kids, and everybody knows everybody but STILL these things can happen.
The flip side is of course all the good incidents that never make the news, and all the good local LEO's doing what they do every day. Perhaps our present system is the best we can hope for, local law enforcement agencies subject to scrutiny by Federal ones. Certainly the FBI and the Justice Department (whatever their own checkered history) have been a Godsend in South Texas, setting up stings and corruption investigations that have nabbed a number of crooked LEO's and even a couple of DA's.
Birdwatcher
