A conversation about sheriffs might conjure memories of The Andy Griffith Show’s Sheriff Andy Taylor imparting words of wisdom, along with a bit of a scolding, to his son, Opie. While that might still exist somewhere in the United States, the reality is that these elected members of law enforcement are becoming increasingly far right, connected with election conspiracy groups like True the Vote and January 6 insurrectionists like the Oath Keepers.
Journalist and lawyer Jessica Pishko’s forthcoming book, The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, lays out the threat that far-right sheriffs—including those in the “constitutional sheriffs” movement—pose in the United States. In the years since the Black Lives Matter movement began in 2013, Americans have begun to have serious discussions about policing. But somehow, the one type of cop who is elected hasn’t received the same type of scrutiny—until now.
Excerpts of our conversation, edited for length and clarity, follow.
Q: How are so-called constitutional sheriffs different from, say, a chief of police?
Jessica Pishko: One of the arguments I make in the book is that [the reason] this movement is so attractive to so many sheriffs is because the idea of a “constitutional sheriff” really does not deviate that much from how sheriffs have long seen themselves. All sheriffs see themselves as very different from police chiefs because they are elected.
The biggest differentiation sheriffs like to make is that because they are elected, they are more than what they might call a “code enforcer.” This is the insult they’ll make about police: that chiefs of police are political code enforcers who don’t represent the people. Police chiefs are appointed, usually by city officials. They are hired and fired at will. When people look for a police chief, it’s a wide-ranging search. It’s like looking for a CEO. I’m not arguing that this is good or that the police are somehow better. It’s just a different vision of what law enforcement is.
This idea that sheriffs are better than [those] just enforcing code; they run with it for a variety of reasons. Some of them are justifiable reasons, and some of them are not.
The part that belies this is that the constitutional sheriffs movement will argue that it’s a politically neutral movement. You could see a politically neutral movement back in the day; Richard Mack, for example, supported marijuana legalization. One of its original ideas was that people are overpoliced. You know, too many traffic stops. And those are ideas that I don’t think are mainstream, but a lot of people do. A lot of criminal justice reformers on the left have adopted this idea, along with a lot of libertarian reformers.
I often call it the far-right sheriff movement because their political goals basically align with the right; for example, increased access to firearms, decreased access to abortion rights, and harder crackdowns on immigration. These are all, to me, just basic rightwing political ideas.
Q: Who is Richard Mack, and what is his Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association?
Pishko: Richard Mack was a sheriff in Graham County, Arizona, which is a very rural part of Arizona. He was a two-term sheriff. He became famous because he was recruited by the National Rifle Association to bring a lawsuit against the Brady Bill, which was signed by [President] Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
After the lawsuit was successful, he went on to launch a variety of movements. He’s now best known for starting the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) movement, which is what most people would call the largest consolidated constitutional sheriffs group. Before that, he sort of fumbled around. He tried to take over a county in Arizona. He was on a reality TV show where he ran for President. He ran for multiple offices. He ran for Senate and state legislature.
The real danger from sheriffs is that all the types of people who have always been oppressed by them will continue to be.
While Mack will now say being a sheriff is the most important job [he ever had], it is fair to point out that he attempted to take many other jobs, but none of them took. So he went back to his sheriff idea again, I think because he saw an opportunity. His movement is interesting because it both bridges the gap between what you might call an older, 1990s style of far-right movements—like the ones rooted in Waco, Texas; Ruby Ridge, Idaho; and Timothy McVeigh—and where we are today. One of his unique things has been his ability to revive what is essentially the same movement.
Mostly now, I see Mack and his group as running to catch up with the GOP because the GOP has shifted so far to the right. He’s often in a position where he has to run to the right to catch up to where they are. It’s obviously not neutral, and it’s not a coincidence. All the positions they support happen to be the positions the GOP supports.
Q: Mack has said that the sheriff is above other law enforcement officers and elected leaders because sheriffs swear an oath to the Constitution.
Pishko: That’s just a lie. Everyone swears an oath to the Constitution at every level of government. There’s nothing special about [sheriffs], which is one of the things that could go a long way toward helping to diffuse the movement. There’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution about sheriffs.
Q: The combination of COVID-19 and the George Floyd protests seemed to be a big turning point for the modern sheriffs’ movement.
Pishko: What appears to have happened is that COVID-19 reinvigorated the movement. That was for various reasons. What I generally saw was that it started in Texas. At the time, [Republican] Governor Greg Abbott was actually keeping most businesses shut down.
A lot of sheriffs got recruited into this movement, partially because it was a less urban movement and there was a rural-urban divide, at least in Texas.
You had some people who were just working from home, and then in some places you had people who could not work from home, such as laborers or people who run their own business. It fueled this idea of the quintessential American entrepreneur, and sheriffs felt that they were in this tradition. So this idea that real Americans are not able to work because they can’t run their businesses [during the lockdowns] tied into how a lot of these sheriffs saw themselves.
Then a lot of them started looking to Richard Mack for guidance because they were looking for how to handle it and genuinely felt confused. Many sheriffs had constituents [that were] further to the right, and what was generally happening in many places was that you had [elected] officials who were trying to be far enough [to the right] that they would not get primaried from the right.
Q: All this feels really dangerous. The people who are supposed to protect us are now not only becoming more partisan, but they’re also organizing with militias.
Pishko: The thing that people should keep in mind when they look at the role of sheriffs is not just that it’s easy to get distracted by the visuals of militias. The real danger from sheriffs is that all the types of people who have always been oppressed by them will continue to be: people of color, people [who are] incarcerated in their jails, et al.
These sheriffs are people who [claim to be] out there crusading to help some segment of people when what they have actually been doing is oppressing migrants, brown people, Black people, incarcerated people, poor people who have trouble with drugs—these are the people who have suffered and will continue to suffer the most.
I think it’s easy to be distracted. If the militias go away, we shouldn’t forget that these [oppressed groups] are the real, everyday people who are also being denied access to the ballot and are the people who suffer the most.