But anyway, you know, the sheriff’s one of the most powerful and least scrutinized figures in American law enforcement. Least scrutinized. And that was the argument at the center of an evening with journalists. Where did she get that? We’re not scrutinized? She’s right about scrutinizing us. Yep, she’s scrutinizing him. And she was having an evening with journalist lawyer and author, Jessica Pisco, the author of this, co-hosted by Duke Justice Project and the Wilson Science Center and Justice and the Duke Decarceration Project and the Duke Law Chappers. I don’t know what a decarceration is. I guess you get somebody out of jail.

I don’t know. ACLU, of course, is in the National Lawyers Guild. Her book, The Highest Law on the Land, How the Unchecked Power of the Sheriff Threatens Democracy. We’ve said it before, but we hope it does. I mean, because this is not a democracy, and I think that that’s their point. A decade of investigative reporting, I don’t think it took a decade to come up with these opinions. But anyway, my point was to you that this was being presented to a bunch of young people. You see them over here with nobody really probably in the audience that is qualified or has the experience to even refute it.

You just take it in and I guess believe it’s true. Because she says the American sheriff is involved into something with no real equivalent anywhere else. No, I think the sheriff was far more powerful individual as you go back linearly in history. So as a direct function of your direction going backwards, the sheriff’s power went up all the way back into the 1800s and so forth when he was the only opportunity he had. I mean, it wasn’t until after the Civil War that they even were able to create a way in which they could get around the idea of the way the Constitution works and implement police officers and put them in place of the county sheriff, who was the actual law enforcement officer of the county.

But anyway, I don’t know if you want me to read any of this stuff. They have some stuff in here about North Carolina’s small matter. North Carolina state population concentrated in roughly five counties yet. Nearly 100 elective sheriffs hold offices. If 95 of them show up at the state legislature to back a bill, the optics of that number could carry weight that misrepresent the underlying population. This is a new argument that she’s putting into this one that I haven’t seen or heard or made. Of course, I’m not going to buy her book, but this distortion, Pisco explained, is not incidental to the problem she documents, but it’s the source of them.

So there’s too many sheriffs. Sheriff Mac. Yeah, you don’t want one sheriff per county. Make it a half a sheriff per county. Right. Or one guy with around four or five of them. And then she claims that there’s a lot of counties that need to be divided and add sheriffs. I think Maricopa County has about four and a half, five million people in it, and that should be divided up. It’s way too powerful. It’s way too big. And there should be about five more counties in Maricopa County, maybe even 10, because it’s just too big and too powerful.

It runs the state. And so Mesa should be its own county and several others. But I’m talking about Mesa, the city of Mesa, which is in Maricopa County, which is the second largest city in Maricopa County. I think Tucson is the second largest city in Mesa, but both of those should be divided up. Pima County, which is Tucson. But that’s all over the country. Los Angeles County, that should be divided up. Oh, my gosh. Absolutely. She mentions Washington State here, and she’s saying that the sheriff will concentrate on the first 10 amendments, and the big one will be on the second amendment while sidelining the later amendments that protect civil rights.

Anyway, the idea of the sheriff simply did not have to follow the laws they disagree with has become broadly mainstream. She noted pointing to examples of recent fights in Washington State over standards of revoking a law enforcement officer’s license and in Maryland over the ICE cooperation. It’s interesting that she picked up that little ICE squabble there in Maryland. Maybe she’s listening to the show. But let’s examine this, what she said at the beginning, that we, the sheriff, let’s see, put that in blue again, highlight that again, because I can’t see where it is. The one that I just had? Yeah, the idea that sheriff simply do not have to follow laws they disagree with.

First of all, I’ve actually talked to her about this, and this is a good point for everyone to raise wherever you are, whoever you are, that’s part of this show right now, this webinar right now. We do not say that sheriffs, and we’ve never said that, that sheriffs can simply ignore laws or statutes or acts or even mandates that they disagree with, because disagreements can be a dime a dozen. Every sheriff would have his own personal opinions. We’ve never said that, nor would we, and that what we are saying is we have to obey the oath of office that we took.

And so we don’t get to pick and choose. We have to follow the Constitution. We are the guards of the Constitution. We swore an allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and of the state wherein we work. Why is that so hard to understand for you? You really want us to violate the rights of the people until the courts finally decide? Jessica Pisco and everyone else in this country, you really want sheriffs and all police, and what if the courts never pick up that issue of tyranny and abuse from government? So Rosa Parks should have been arrested, according to you.

Harriet Tubman should have been arrested because she was violating the Fugitive Slave Act. And did so often. Thirteen times she went back to Maryland from Philadelphia to take slaves to freedom. So she should have been lynched, like the slaveholders wanted to do. They probably would have tortured her for a few days first, and then lynched her. Jessica, you’re all in favor of that? That the laws have to be enforced? Look at the stupid laws, and I told you this one, Jessica. I told you that the United States Supreme Court endorsed segregation for about 55 years, and the country went along with it.

Why would one sheriff in this country go along with the stupid Supreme Court that guaranteed the perpetuity of segregation? We disagree with that. You’re actually telling us now that we all had to go along until the courts finally changed their mind 55 years of segregation because of people, ignorant people like you. And your sheriff swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution and not wait for him to be told what to do by the judicial branch. And that’s another question. Does the sheriff take orders from the other two branches? And must he follow everything that they order him to do? Sheriff McMahill in Las Vegas just taught all of us that he does not, and that he won’t put prisoners and convicts back out on the road where they’re going to hurt more people, law-abiding citizens, and you want that to happen, and we don’t.

And Sheriff McMahill told the judges he would not do that. Good for you, Sheriff McMahill, doing his job against a criminal and stupid and woke judge. Which one would you want, Jessica? And I asked you this too, Jessica, when you were trying to interview me one time. I asked you if they make a law against reporters lying, and that you could go to jail for lying. You would be in jail right now if that law existed. And indeed, some of that happened under John Adams while he was president of the United States. It was called the Alien Sedition Act.

And he put people, some reporters, in jail for bad-mouthing him. And then when Thomas Jefferson came in and he beat him, Adams only got one term. And he undid that, and he released people from prison, and he returned their money and fines with an apology from the federal government. Which president did you want, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson? So, none of what you say makes any sense, Jessica, and it doesn’t follow American history at all. So, no, anyway. Defending democracy, yeah, you keep doing that. She seems to be also supporting the position of the far left, because one of her primary concerns mentioned in the next paragraph is that she’s upset because sheriffs can grant ICE access to their jails without any force.

And that’s a very formal agreement. The same thing we were hearing from the sheriff from Maryland. Creating what Pisco described as a reliable funnel that is intentionally invisible to the public because jail-based arrests happen behind closed doors, not on the streets. And, of course, we learned that the idea there was that it was much safer to the community if you’ve got an individual that’s a non-citizen and also a 35-time arrestee. Somebody who’s probably raped or harmed people many times, it’s much safer to take him straight from there to wherever ICE is going to deport him. So, this idea sounds more like lawlessness, more like the ideas that created the Bolsheviks, the let’s destroy a civilization by opening up all the jails.

Yeah, like any sheriff or peace officer in this country has a responsibility to enforce all gun control laws that have been passed in this country. We do? Really? Then what happens to the supreme law of the land called the Second Amendment? And when you say we get to pick and choose which laws to obey, okay, which ones? Which law are we supposed to enforce? The one we swore an oath to obey, to uphold, defend? Or the statutes passed by the state legislature or even the county commissioners or the city councils that are totally sub— what is it? They do not supersede.

What is it, the word I want? Sub— not subversive, but subservient. Subservient, too, the Constitution. And so, there’s all sorts of laws. There’s over a million laws in America. Which ones come first? And first, Jessica, I’m sure you don’t agree with this either, but God’s law comes first. That’s the pecking order that starts. The Constitution was designed to protect our God-given rights, but it’s man-made, and it’s obviously not totally perfect. But the Constitution of the United States is second. The Constitution of the states would be third. And then laws passed by the state legislature and by United States Congress, those laws might need some parallel analysis.

So, because which ones of those? I would submit that, outside the U.S. Constitution, that the states have much more leeway and regulatory authority than does the federal government. The federal government almost has none. So, the only regulatory authority the federal government has is the Commerce Clause. That’s it. That’s the only one. How many have they stolen, Jessica? And you think we’re supposed to follow all of that? No. Very, very, very ignorant. And I guess before you should read this dadgum decision, you probably ought to read the Constitution of the United States first. You can do it pretty quickly.

Anyway, I’m going to close this article, but she’s thinking that the sheriffs should be broken up and not do what they currently do. Separating jails from patrol, reducing sheriffs, political concentration, redirecting resources towards community services that can perform those functions more effectively and with greater accountability. That sounds like more of a bureaucracy. Maybe she should testify in Washington state for them there. Yeah. I mean, that’s a greater amount of bureaucracy. That’s just more layers and layers of places where money can be spent and nothing gets done. Anyway, that’s just our friend, Jessica. And what really concerns me, I don’t think people are buying her book very much, but it really concerns me that she’s a guest speaker at colleges and university campuses across the country.

Because she is so mistaken and so off the constitutional path, which seems to be a real problem in pandemic, if you want to talk about pandemics again, or epidemic with the left in America. And so it just seems to be more democratic or Democrat, demagoguery and dogma and propaganda that, of course, she’s adhering to. Yep. I think she’s a student of the left and also a paid operative. It’d be interesting to find out how she makes her income. Obviously, she’s going to make a little bit of money from her book. And did it say that she’s an attorney? No, it didn’t say that.

It said that they were at an attorney group. They were attorneys there. Okay. I think let me read this real quick. So I’m not lying to you. It said that that was an argument at the center of an evening with journalists, lawyer and author. No, you’re right. Co-hosted by. So she’s a lawyer. That’s not surprising either. I never knew that she was, but I really am surprised that she was because she’s so constitutionally ignorant. I’m trying to be nice. [tr:trw].

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