With the militarization of the police, it is comforting to know that their are Constitutionally-minded sheriffs out there and Second Amendment organizations like the Gun Owners of America that stand with them.
With the politicizing of many county sheriff’s jobs in counties with large urban areas, it would be nice to see a nationwide database of those who are constitutionally minded.
There is a significant structural and conditional difference between a police man and the traditional sheriff, although this vary widely from state to state.
In general Sheriff is a law enforcement position created at a time and in such a way as to be predisposes to remain loyal to the people s/he has been hired to protect. In contrast the modern police force was created by political actors in large cities as a mean’s of better controlling their populations. This is why for a very long time many people saw the police officer as an element of urban corruption and control, and found it difficult to respect them as law officers.
The Police man after all was hired by politicians for politicians as a tool to more directly enforce their will upon the people. The Sheriff on the other hand at least in the west was elected by the people, and not empired to make law but to enforce only that law already made in a way respectful of the people’s rights.
This fundamental difference in constitutional origin and structure of theses kinds of law enforcement systems & officers also extended in no small part to the way they structured their force.
Where as the traditional sheriff in the west was directly elected and had at most a few men full time deputies relativity speaking. When necessary, instead of disciplined armies the Western sheriff could and would called upon his people to help him. A formation classically known as a posse, but informally it is very much the law enforcement equivalent of a militia.
Just like the militia of the military context, a Sheriff is unlikely to find sufficient volunteers in his community as to be able to enforce a tyranny upon that same population. A Sheriff is thus by the same mesure thus reliant upon a far greater level of consent among the community he helps protect. This was one more basic institutional check upon Government inehirt to the Western Sheriff’s office and deliberately avoided with the creation of professional police forces.
Indeed it is no accident that the first police forces were invented in urban envorment by politicans otherwise frustrated with their lack of control over their own population. Indeed for many decades the first police forces were offen shunned as potentaly corrupt political actors. This is probably because they were an army, the Mayor’s own army of occupation.