I was told by the Sheriff of Josephine County, Oregon, that each Sheriff is the head LE monkey within his/her jurisdiction, and - if he/she packs the cojones - they can tell the Staties and Feds to go pack sand.
It's a mixed bag, actually. When it comes to basic law enforcement of county and state law, the Sheriff has jurisdiction and can send the Feds packing. The Feds do have jurisdiction in some instances, however, including kidnapping, counterfeiting, and counterterrorism. The check/balance in this is two-fold. First, cases can be appealed to state and higher levels, which can override county-level decisions. Second, part of the FBI's charter is to investigate corruption in law enforcement at state, county, and municipal levels, so Sheriff's do not reign supreme in their territory. They can sure put a world of hurt on you, though.
I did my due diligence and found this: "This page (
http://www.criminalgovernment.com/docs/sheriff/index.html) contains information that conclusively shows there are sheriffs who are aware of the unlawful activity of Federal agents and will work to prevent it. It is true that most county sheriffs are either unaware of their ultimate authority or are afraid to exercise it. However, it is only necessary to clearly show that one educated sheriff has successfully restricted the access of federal agents to his county." That's just a small part of the page, and it is an interesting read. It seems to boil down to, the Feds must request access unless they are on
authorized federal business... which is
quite limited.
I concur (mostly) on both accounts, but it's best to keep in mind that the issue is actually very complicated, as a simple review of
this multi-page outline on jurisdictional law should demonstrate.
P.S. Apparently the DOJ doesn't understand the function of the 10th Amendment. They should hire some non-left-wing lawyers that specialize in - and understand- the U.S. Constitution!
I see this more as being a problem with Holder's failure as a leader than a failure of the DOJ. Any good leader of a governmental organization will open the door to and welcome a solid, well-accepted understanding of our Constitution, its amendments, and all the rules of law and governing regulations derived therefrom. It's power-grabbing dictators like Obama and Holder who want to morph interpretations to the extreme. Regardless, it's the leader who sets the tone.
I've seen military squadrons and even entire wings go sideways when the leadership comes on too strong with a few cock-eyed ideas. When that happens, strong leadership from within the ranks can sometimes right the ship, but without it, or if the leader is too strong, brown-nosers rise through the cracks. The leader will then often mistake such support for approval that his cock-eyed ideas are actually right.
Remember the B-52 crash at Fairchild back in June of 1994? That wasn't the result of one pilot getting a little slow and stalling the aircraft. It was the result of several key failures in leadership which happened over several years leading up to the accident. The study in that failure of leadership is required reading at several key leadership schools in the Air Force.
I just wish our Federal Government had a better training programs! We have almost zero read-in programs to bring leaders and appointed officials up to speed on what does and what doesn't work in government. As a result, it's a massive waste of reinventing the wheel and partisan politics instead of smoothly running institution.
Still, we do try. The government often hires entities such as the Rand Corporation who do know how to get things right to advise them. Such contracts are often significantly longer time span than any of the leaders. Their lessons learned are usually incorporated into the various playbooks for use by those smart enough to refer to that "corporate knowledge." Still, such systems are largely ad-hoc. The lives of our founders were indeed much simpler than things are today. We can fine-tune economic systems with great precision, yet those who hold the purse strings muck things up with gross hacks of the legislative axe based more on earmarks and pork-barrelling than on proper management techniques. Result: GROSS waste of your taxpayer dollars.
