The reason that recruitment of law-enforcement officers into far-right extremist organizations has always been a source of concern is the likelihood that the officers—whose understanding of the law is wildly distorted by the belief systems underlying these groups—will not just enforce the law badly and selectively, but actively enable fellow (and often violent) right-wing extremists from the positions of power they hold.
That appears to be precisely the scenario unfolding in Michigan, where a number of sheriffs and other police authorities are telling reporters that they will not enforce the state’s ban on open carry of firearms at public polling places, announced last Friday. To counter their defiance, the state’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, has ordered state police to patrol polling places in the areas most likely to see a local refusal to enforce the law.
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"The most important thing is this, we don't want people to harass voters when they are in the process of exercising what is a fundamental right, which is their right to vote," Nessel said last week when the policy was announced. "And I feel like it's my job to do everything I can to ensure there is a safe and secure vote, and I'm hopeful law enforcement will agree."
As Tess Owen at Vice reports, however, a number of sheriffs have already gone on the record saying they will not enforce the policy. One of them, Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy, posted a Facebook video indicating he would not enforce the directive.
“I’m a law-enforcement officer, not a directive enforcement officer,” he said, and then explained that he would not arrest people for carrying guns to the polling places, but he would arrest people engaged in active “voter intimidation.”
The head of the state’s police-chiefs association made similar assertions this week, claiming that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson lacks the authority to issue such a directive. Robert Stevenson, director of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police told the Detroit News that “the feedback I’ve been getting from our police agencies is that they’re uncomfortable trying to enforce something they clearly don’t have the authority to enforce. Our hope is that this will get resolved and there’ll be some clear guidance.
"... But as it stands now, there’s nothing in the law that gives police the authority to enforce the Secretary of State’s edict."
A spokesperson for the secretary of state's office said Benson consulted with Nessel before issuing the order in an email response: "The directive was the result of the attorney general, the state’s top law enforcement official, reviewing relevant laws and legal precedent and ruling, in her capacity as that law enforcement official, that the secretary has the authority. It is within the scope of authority for executives to interpret relevant and applicable law and apply it appropriately, and is indeed based in law."
The ban comes amid an increasing flood of threatening far-right rhetoric agitating against state officials that culminated in the October 7 arrests of 14 men—all members of militia groups which claim an allegiance to “constitutionalist” beliefs about gun rights—on charges they plotted to kidnap and murder Whitmer and other state officials.
Benson has explained that, while every election season brings rumors that menacing people will show up at the polls which rarely amount to anything, “this year is different” because the calls to observe people at polling places “have been much more specific and much more targeted than in years past.”
The leading figure encouraging such behavior has been Donald Trump, who at a Michigan rally on Saturday attacked Whitmer as a “partisan” who is “like a judge of the ballot stuff.”
“So you got to watch it, watch those ballots, watch what’s going on,” he told the crowd.
The president’s comments, Benson said, increased state officials’ concerns about potential disturbances on election day from gun-toting “patriots.”
“As a result we are preparing accordingly,” Benson said. “But at the same time, my priorities on making sure that voters know they will be completely safe if they choose to vote in person, because we’ve got protections in place, and that even if they still feel unsafe they have the option to vote early, or vote from home.”
As Owens notes, several of the sheriffs who have indicated defiance are members of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), an extremist organization which claims, among other things, that county sheriffs, not the Supreme Court, are the arbiters of what’s constitutional, and which has been associated with armed standoffs and defiance of legal authorities, usually under the guise of the “Patriot”/militia movement.
Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf, another member of the CSPOA, had multiple associations with at least two of the kidnap plotters, including an appearance and speech at an anti-Whitmer rally in May. He has not indicated whether he will enforce the directive.
Several CSPOA-affiliated sheriffs in Michigan last week told Bridge Michigan that they would work to ensure voter safety during the election. If individuals showed up outside polling places with guns, they would permit it—unless they began brandishing them in a menacing way.
“We would follow the law. As long as they are peaceful and not violent and trying to intimidate people, we would make sure they respect that limit,”said Benzie County Sheriff Ted Schendel. “Everyone has the right to peaceable assembly.”
“I don’t like hypotheticals,” Leelanau County Sheriff Mike Borkovich said. “But if a guy with a Trump sign showed up with a butcher knife and started swinging it at people, would we enforce that? Yes.”
Nessel said she intended to use Michigan State Police officers to ensure that the directive is followed. "If you have a county sheriff that seems to be sympathetic to any of these organizations and we think they're not going to enforce the laws, then we'll get somebody else who will, the Michigan State Police," Nessel said. "Every place in the state of Michigan, there will be law enforcement that believe that voters need to be protected."
The spread of the CSPOA’s influence among law-enforcement officers, particularly county sheriffs, has become an increasing source of concern in recent years. The organization—primarily overseen by a former Arizona sheriff named Richard Mack, who made a similar name for himself in the 1990s by defying federal gun control laws—has a long history of promoting the theory that county sheriffs, not federal law enforcement, represent the supreme law of the land.
This radically decentralized vision of government was first promoted by the old far-right Posse Comitatus movement, which proffered governance in which federal authorities had little to no role (and which also was profoundly racist and anti-Semitic). Indeed, the sovereign citizens movement that preaches the same beliefs vis-a-vis the role of government has, over the past 20 years, also posed the most lethal threat to law enforcement officers in the country. The FBI in 2010 designated the movement a significant source of domestic terrorism.
“It’s terrifying to me,” Justin Nix, a University of Louisville criminology professor who specializes in police fairness and legitimacy, told The Washington Post. “It’s not up to the police to decide what the law is going to be. They’re sworn to uphold the law. It’s not up to them to pick and choose.”
A 2016 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that the CSPOA’s reach was fairly widespread nationally, though hard numbers are difficult to come by. The CSPOA claims to have “about 5,000 members,” and in 2014 issued a letter condemning the Obama administration’s gun rights policies cosigned by 485 sheriffs. It also claims to have “trained” about 400 sheriffs.
The report noted the damage caused by the CSPOA is both direct and indirect: The spread of this ideology has consequences. The number of threats and assaults against the [Bureau of Land Management] rose from 15 incidents in 2014 to 28 in 2015, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The number of incidents targeting the U.S. Forest Service rose from 97 in 2014 to 155 last year.
The CSPOA and its law enforcement philosophy have played major roles in the two armed confrontations over public land led by the Bundy family—in 2014 at Bunkerville, Nevada, where Cliven Bundy and an army of “Patriots” forced federal agents to back away from enforcing environmental laws on his ranch, and in 2016 at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Bundy and his son Ammon tout a version of “constitutionalist” ideas identical to Mack’s.
An Oregon CSPOA sheriff who played a role in the Malheur standoff, Grant County’s Glenn Palmer, essentially turned his jurisdiction into a personal fiefdom. While being investigated by the Department of Justice for his role in the standoff, it emerged that Palmer had been using the power of deputization to create a private armed force comprised of his political supporters—and he gave them tremendous powers, including the ability to harass his enemies.