OUR AMERICAN SOCIETY – IS THE GLUE DISSOLVING?
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
JULY 29, 2017


A MYSTIFYING TYPE OF DISORDER IS HAPPENING IN THE USA, WHICH I THINK IS DUE TO A LOOSENING OF OUR POPULATION’S BASIC GLUE, THE BILL OF RIGHTS. IT SEEMS THAT MANY OF US DON’T BELIEVE IN FAIRNESS, EGALITARIANISM, MERCY, EDUCATION, OR GENTLENESS ANYMORE. THE RESULT IS A HARSHNESS AND HATRED THAT I DIDN’T EXPERIENCE AS A YOUNG PERSON. IT ISN’T NEW TO THE COUNTRY, BUT IT HAS ARISEN FROM A SHELTER CREATED BY GOOD JOBS, UNIONS, A BELIEF IN EDUCATION AND THE ABILITY OF ALL TO CLIMB THE LADDER OF SUCCESS, CHURCHES THAT WERE NOT POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS AS THEY ARE NOW, AND LENDING A HAND WHEN IT WAS NEEDED. IF A PERSON FELL DOWN INTO THE STREET, THE PASSERSBY WOULD STOP TO HELP RATHER THAN WALKING PAST WITHOUT EVEN SEEMING TO NOTICE. LOVE IS AN ELUSIVE TERM TO ME SOMETIMES, BUT CARING IS VERY REAL TO ME. WE CAN DO THAT, IF WE CHOOSE TO.

THIS COLLAPSE OF THE SYSTEM IN MANY WAYS IS DISTRESSING TO ME AS A HUMAN AND AS A CITIZEN. WHERE IS MY COUNTRY NOW? LOOK AT THESE ARTICLES ABOUT A PHENOMENON THAT IS HAPPENING IN THE WESTERN STATES NOW, AND TO A LESSER DEGREE IN THE SOUTH. RACISM HAS ALWAYS BEEN AROUND; BUT THIS NEW LOSS OF FAITH IN THE IDEALS OF AMERICA, AND IN CIVILIZATION ITSELF IT SOMETIMES SEEMS TO ME, LEAVES ME FEARING THAT WE ARE INDEED RELEASING OUR GRIP ON THE FAIRNESS PRINCIPLE WHICH WAS A VERY BASIC PART OF WHO WE WERE IN THE 1950S. IS IT POSSIBLE THAT WE SIMPLY CANNOT COPE WITH THE DESEGREGATION OF OUR CULTURE, TO MAKE A HEARTY SUCCULENT STEW OF GOOD VALUES FROM OTHER PLACES, UNDER THE RULE OF LAW AND JUSTICE FOR ALL? IS SHARING SO VERY DIFFICULT?

OUR MORE EXTREME RIGHTISTS, HAVING GAINED A LITTLE GROUND, ARE BECOMING AS DESTRUCTIVE SINCE THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND ELECTION AS THEIR ATTITUDES WOULD PREDICT. CLEARLY, THEY ARE EMBOLDENED. WHY ARE THESE PEOPLE ALWAYS MIDDLE-AGED WHITE MEN, AND USUALLY WORKING CLASS? THESE THINGS HAPPEN IN A RELATIVELY UNEDUCATED AND MENTALLY DISTURBED SOCIETY. I TEND TO SAY THAT ABOUT LOTS OF COUNTRIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST, BUT IT’S TRUE OF US HERE IN THE USA ALSO. YES, SETTING FIRE TO A GROUP OF YOUNG PEOPLE’S MEETING CENTER IS INSANE, OR DESPICABLE, WHICHEVER YOU PREFER. I DON’T CARE IF THEY ARE “CONSERVATIVE” HATERS OF GAYS, THIS IS SIMPLY WRONG BY ANY DECENT STANDARDS. NOTE THAT IT IS TAKING PLACE IN MARICOPA COUNTY.

MARICOPA COUNTY – YOU MAY REMEMBER, THE LAIR OF THE INFAMOUS SHERIFF JOE ARPAIO – IS PERHAPS REGRESSING INTO A SOMEWHAT LAWLESS PLACE LIKE THE OLD WEST. THERE’S A LOT OF HOSTILITY POPPING UP THERE. SEE THE FOLLOWING HCN.ORG ARTICLE TO FIND OUT WHAT ARPAIO’S UP TO NOW. THIS ERUPTION OF CRIMINALITY MAY BE A WIDENING MOVEMENT MOVING TOWARD WHAT, I BELIEVE, MUST BE IN THE EYES OF THE REBELS THERE, A NEW CIVIL WAR, ONLY THIS TIME IT’S CONCERNING PARTS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN WEST. THE MIDWEST, CALIFORNIA AND WASHINGTON STATE, STILL SEEM TO BE STABLE. THESE PEOPLE WANT THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT TO CEDE FEDERAL LANDS TO THE STATES. THEIR BEEF IS THAT THEY DON’T WANT IT WASTED ON WILDLIFE AND NATURE.

THEY WANT TO USE IT FOR CATTLE GRAZING, MINING, SPORTS DRIVING, AND OTHER HIGHLY MASCULINE ACTIVITIES. GUNS ARE ALSO A BIG PART OF THEIR MOVEMENT. THEY WANT A DIFFERENT SYSTEM OF LAW AND CITIZENSHIP, TOO, AND THEY HAVE SOME ODD AND PRETTY CREEPY BELIEFS. THEY CONSIDER THEMSELVES TO BE VERY RIGHTEOUS PEOPLE, BUT THEY SEEM TO ME TO BE MERELY MODERN-DAY OUTLAWS. RIGHTEOUS PEOPLE DON’T DO ACTS OF UNNECESSARY VIOLENCE. WHAT THEY ARE BECOMING IS MORE AND MORE HARSH, NOT RIGHTEOUS. IF WE ONLY HAD MARSHALL DILLON TO TAKE CARE OF THEM. YES, I FIND IT HARD TO TAKE THAT SORT OF THING SERIOUSLY AS A GOOD PHILOSOPHY, BUT THESE “SAGEBRUSH” FOLK REALLY DO, WHICH MAKES ME THINK THAT THEY, LIKE SOME OF THE OTHER TRUMP FOLLOWERS, ARE QUITE DANGEROUS. THEY ARE SIMILAR TO A STICK OF DYNAMITE THAT HAS BEEN SITTING IN THE SUN TOO LONG.

RAY BRADFORD, A FRIEND OR GOOD ACQUAINTANCE OF BEACH, PAINTS HIM AS BEING OVERWHELMED AND IN NEED OF PSYCHIATRIC MEDICINE. THAT’S SOMETHING THAT IN MY VIEW COULD BE SAID ABOUT ALL OF THIS NEW “WILD BUNCH,” BUT IT IS STILL A “POLITICAL” MOVEMENT BASICALLY. RECENTLY IT HAS BEEN TINGED WITH HYSTERIA, THOUGH, WHICH IS EXTREMELY OUT OF CONTROL. WE DO NOT IN THIS COUNTRY, DUE TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT OF EVERY CITIZEN TO THINK OUR OWN THOUGHTS AND KEEP OUR OWN OPINIONS, ARREST PEOPLE UNLESS THEY DO BECOME VIOLENT IN ACTION OR NOTICEABLE INTENTION, BUT WE NEED A WAY OF SPOTTING THE INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE ON THE VERY EDGE OF A PSYCHIATRIC BREAK AND MAKE EFFORTS TO INTERVENE.

I BELIEVE THAT IS LEGAL AS A PART OF THE BAKER ACT LAWS, BUT IT DOESN’T HAPPEN OFTEN ENOUGH BEFORE THEY GO ON THEIR SHOOTING SPREE, OR WHATEVER. THIS, TO ME, IS NOT ONLY A THREAT TO OUR SAFETY AS A SOCIETY, BUT IT’S SAD. COULD WE NOT TWEAK THE LAW ENOUGH TO INTERVENE EARLIER? THE BAKER ACT IN FLORIDA ONLY ALLOWS A SHORT PERIOD OF INVOLUNTARY HOSPITALIZATION. THAT ISN’T USUALLY LONG ENOUGH TO BE EFFECTIVE IN A SERIOUS PSYCHOTIC EPISODE. IN MY OPINION, THE RIGHT TO REFUSE TREATMENT SHOULD NOT BE AUTOMATICALLY GRANTED TO ACUTELY INSANE PEOPLE OR DEPENDENT CHILDREN, AS IN THE CASE OF CERTAIN ULTRACONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS THAT DON’T ALLOW MEDICAL TREATMENT. THEY BELIEVE THAT IF ANY MEMBER OF THEIR FAMILY BECOMES ILL, THEY SHOULD DO NOTHING BUT PRAY ABOUT IT AND ASK FOR GOD TO HEAL HIM. STRONG BELIEFS IN THE MIRACULOUS ARE GOOD ONLY IF THEIR RESULTS ARE GOOD. THAT’S JUST COMMON SENSE. OUR LAWS NEED TO BE RATIONAL.


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/darren-beach-jr-arrested-phoenix-lgbtq-youth-center-fire/
CBS NEWS July 29, 2017, 1:00 PM
Man arrested after setting fire to LGBTQ youth center, police say

VIDEO -- Surveillance video shows a man setting an LGBT youth center on fire in Phoenix. KPHO/PHOENIX FIRE DEPARTMENT

PHOENIX -- A 26-year-old man was arrested after he allegedly set fire to an LGBTQ center in Phoenix, police announced Friday.

Darren Beach Jr. was taken into custody without incident, and he was charged with one count of arson of an occupied structure, CBS affiliate KPHO-TV in Phoenix reports.

Earlier this week, The Phoenix Fire Department released surveillance footage of a man dousing the one.n.ten building with gasoline before setting it on fire on July 12.

Police said Beach received services at the nonprofit, which helps homeless and LGBTQ youth, from 2013 until 2016.

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Jared Dillingham ✔ @JaredDillingham
Video of arson suspect Darren Beach igniting the OneNTen youth center, home to many at-risk/struggling kids. Police are looking for him...
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"We were shocked and dismayed and hurt," said Linda Elliott, the center's executive director.

Ray Bradford, a former volunteer, said he has known Beach for several years.

"It was always clear to me that Darren had a good heart. He had a sense of right and wrong. He wanted people to be right with each other," Bradford said.

df34b7vuqaedcgb.jpg
Darren Beach Jr. MARICOPA COUNTY SHERIFF'S OFFICE

He said things took a turn for the worse when Beach became ineligible for services when he turned 25.

"If he could get the counseling, the medications and food, the shelter -- just get the basic things he needs, it would have changed him radically and this incident never would have happened," Bradford said.

Nate Rhoton, the center's director of finance and operations, said the center lost everything in the fire, but she's been overwhelmed by the amount of support.

"It's really been incredible," Rhoton said. "To experience that sort of love and acceptance from the community makes it just a little bit easier to swallow what's happened to us -- to this safe space for our youth and make it a little bit easier for them to move on."


SO, WHAT’S GOING ON WITH SHERIFF ARPAIO NOW?

http://www.hcn.org/articles/justice-arpaio-sheriff-arizona-trial-court-immigration-jail
Former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio goes on trial
What the embattled lawman represents in today’s American West.
Tay Wiles
June 27, 2017

The former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio, known nationally for anti-immigrant rhetoric and his “Tent City Jail” that forces inmates to live in tents in blistering heat, is going on trial this week. After being voted out of office last fall after six terms, Arpaio is now being hauled into federal court in Phoenix for conducting traffic patrols that targeted immigrants. In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union and others sued him for racial profiling; in 2011, a judge ordered Arpaio to cease detaining people specifically under the suspicion they were in the country illegally. But the Department of Justice says he continued with his tactics, in spite of that order.

Inmates at the Maricopa County Tent City jail walk to new housing to open up new beds for maximum security inmates while Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio oversees, on April 17, 2009 in Phoenix, Arizona. Joshua Lott/Getty Images

If convicted, the 85-year-old former lawman faces up to six months in jail. It’s unclear whether such a conviction could tarnish his celebrity status among some conservatives and anti-immigration advocates. The son of an Italian immigrant and raised in Massachusetts, Arpaio has become a fixture in Arizona culture wars and a symbol of several hot-button issues in today’s American West.

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Joe Arpaio @RealSheriffJoe
Proud of @realDonaldTrump stance on illegal immigration. I stand behind him 100%.
6:48 PM - Feb 22, 2017
88 88 Replies 373 373 Retweets 1,160 1,160 likes

“Tough on crime” policies targeting immigrants may be what Arpaio is most well known for. As sheriff, he raided businesses in the metro Phoenix area, arresting people who did not have proper documentation. The lawsuit against Arpaio has become even more relevant in the era of President Donald Trump, a staunch critic of illegal immigration. Throughout the presidential campaigns last year, the former sheriff stumped for Trump and supported the candidate’s push to crack down on undocumented immigrants and finish the U.S.-Mexico border wall. Now, as Trump’s anti-immigration stance has moved from mere campaign rhetoric to action with travel bans and budget proposals to fund the wall, Arpaio’s extremism is no longer an aberration, but an echo of the highest federal office.

Arpaio may be the West’s most famous rogue sheriff — an emblem of the Sagebrush Rebellion. For years, Arpaio has resisted federal authorities he didn’t agree with and refused to enforce policies he personally viewed as unconstitutional. For example, he has suggested he would not to enforce certain federal gun laws. And in 2012, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, an organization that pushes the idea that sheriffs are the supreme law of the land, above federal officers. (CSPOA has been a rallying tool in recent years to purge federal control of natural resources in the West. The constitutional sheriffs group supported a bill from Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, to defund law enforcement within the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.) While the former Arizona sheriff wasn’t known to show up to ranching and mining disputes, he has been part of the constitutional sheriff movement, an archetype of the anti-federal lawman.

The rise of the Sagebrush Sheriffs
The rise of the Sagebrush Sheriffs

Earlier this month, Arpaio spoke at a pro-gun rights event in Massachusetts alongside other figures from recent Sagebrush Rebellion incidents: Stewart Rhodes, founder of the self-styled militia group Oath Keepers, and Jeanette Finicum, widow of the Arizona rancher killed in a confrontation with Oregon state police during the 41-day armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last year.

The former sheriff’s trial is expected to conclude by the end of next week. Some experts speculate that Arpaio’s age will preclude him from being put in jail. Phoenix legal expert Roy Herrera said in a media interview this week that if Arpaio is convicted, it’s possible Trump would pardon him — “Which wouldn’t surprise me at all,” he said.

Tay Wiles is an associate editor for High Country News and writes from Oakland, California. She can be reached at taywiles@hcn.org


ARPAIO AND THE SAGEBRUSH REBELLION

http://www.hcn.org/issues/48.2/the-rise-of-the-sagebrush-sheriffs
Sagebrush Rebellion
The rise of the Sagebrush Sheriffs
How rural ‘constitutional’ peace officers are joining the war against the feds.

On the morning of May 10, 2014, San Juan County Sheriff Rick Eldredge waited on horseback in the sagebrush of Recapture Canyon in southeastern Utah. In his faded jeans, boots and white cowboy hat, he looked as if he were out for a casual ride in the cool spring air. But what appeared to be a bulletproof vest underneath his shirt and the 30-odd deputies scattered amid the canyon’s scrub oak and sandstone hinted at a different story.

Eldredge and his deputies were braced for a mass act of motorized civil disobedience. Frustrated by “unconscionable acts by the Bureau of Land Management,” including the 2007 closure to motorized vehicles of the trail down Recapture Canyon, San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman and 40 to 50 followers were driving their ATVs toward the closed section of the canyon. They were there to defy federal regulations to protest what they consider the BLM’s heavy-handed management of the public lands that comprise so much of their county.

In promoting the ride, Lyman, soft-spoken with a boyish face and salt-and-pepper hair, invoked one of America’s favorite civil disobeyers, Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau, however, seemed an unlikely role model: Several of the protesters carried firearms, including a clean-cut guy with a “Regulator” neck tattoo and a semi-automatic Glock on his hip. A young man wearing an “American Venom” T-shirt had an assault rifle in one hand, his finger never leaving the trigger, while he piloted his four-wheeler with the other. Others carried signs: “Tranfer (sic) Federal Lands to Western States” and “Stop BLM Agenda 21 Road Closings.” Ryan Bundy, the son of scofflaw rancher Cliven Bundy, rode a four-wheeler down the canyon, as did a handful of self-professed militiamen who, just weeks earlier, had supported Bundy in his heavily armed standoff with BLM agents in Clark County, Nevada.

As the roar of the ATVs echoed up the canyon, Eldredge and his men stood ready. With a herd of determined lawbreakers heading toward them, another standoff seemed imminent. But as the caravan of protesters rode past the closure line, kicking up a billow of exhaust and red dust, the deputies did nothing, and Eldredge merely nodded a stoic greeting from atop his steed. That’s because he wasn’t actually there to police the protest, but to “keep the peace.” For the protesters, at least, that meant he was there to protect them from the plainclothes BLM officers roaming the canyon and collecting evidence — officers that Eldredge kicked out of the canyon before the ride was finished.

“There’s a big difference (between the Bundys and me),” Lyman told reporters prior to the ride. “I’ve got a sheriff standing next to me.”

Colorado sheriffs flank Weld County, Colorado, Sheriff John Cooke in 2013 as he announces that 54 Colorado sheriffs had filed a federal lawsuit challenging two gun control bills passed by the Colorado Legislature.

Brennan Linsley/AP

The Recapture ride was just another skirmish in the Sagebrush Rebellion, an anti-federal land-management movement with roots here in San Juan County. The first uprising, led in part by then-County Commissioner Calvin Black in the 1970s, was a reaction to what some saw as the federal occupation of the West by way of new environmental laws that impacted federal lands. It was also part of a region-wide effort to transfer federal lands in the West to the states.

The second iteration unfolded in the mid-1990s, provoked by former President Bill Clinton’s conservationist approach to federal land. While that rebellion became violent and coincided with a nationwide surge in anti-federal extremism, the land-use folks rarely crossed paths with the so-called “Patriot” groups. Today, though, the barriers are down. Now, a single event like Recapture, the 2014 Bundy Ranch standoff or the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation, broadcast globally and instantly via social media, draws supporters from across the extreme right, from other Sagebrush Rebels to pro-gun militiamen to local politicians who have no qualms about standing cheek-by-jowl with people aiming rifles at federal agents.

Among those officials are a growing cadre of county sheriffs, many of them from the rural West, who believe themselves above the reach of federal government, constitutionally empowered as the supreme law of the land. Some have chosen to become part of this movement, while others have joined unwittingly, by taking strong political stances or acting on the behalf of local anti-government movements. Eldredge, who refused to be interviewed for this story, openly allied himself with Lyman and company. These self-proclaimed “constitutional sheriffs” use their assumed position as the ultimate law enforcement authority to fight environmental regulation, run federal officials out of their counties, and, in some cases, break the law themselves.

Richard Mack as Graham County, Arizona, sheriff in 1994, sued the federal government over the background check provision of the Brady Act. Today, Mack (shown here at a 2010 anti-gun control rally in Washington, D.C.) pushes for local control and tries to get candidates with “constitutional” leanings elected.

Jim West/Alamy

The constitutional sheriffs’ seminal moment was in 1994, when Richard Mack, then-sheriff of Graham County, Arizona, and a handful of other sheriffs sued the federal government over a provision in the 1993 Brady Act that required local law enforcement to handle background checks on gun sales. In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 for the sheriffs, deeming it unconstitutional for the feds to force the state or its officers to execute the regulation.

Mack’s defiance made him a folk hero to the then-burgeoning Patriot movement, which is centered around the belief that the federal government is taking away individual liberties. Mack became a speaker at Patriot gatherings, railing at Clinton and his attorney general, Janet Reno. In 1996, Mack lost his bid for re-election, but he still spoke for libertarian causes, and he co-wrote a book with Randy Weaver, the man at the center of the 1992 Ruby Ridge shootout with federal agents, the event that catalyzed the militia movement.

But it was Mack’s “complete discouragement and feelings of hopelessness” at the 2008 election of Barack Obama that propelled him back into the political spotlight. In reaction, Mack wrote a 50-page screed denouncing the federal government and its intrusion into individual and state rights. The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope, published in 2009, argues that the sheriff is the ultimate law enforcement authority and thus the “last line of defense” shielding individual liberties from out-of-control federal bureaucrats. The manifesto cemented his cause and made him one of the prime movers of the ad hoc reactionary movement that would come to be known as the Tea Party.

With his clear blue eyes, sweeping black hair and easy smile, Mack looks like central casting’s idea of the perfect sheriff. He shared his philosophy at dozens of Tea Party rallies as well as gatherings of the Oath Keepers, a quasi-militia organization founded in 2009. Had there been a true constitutional sheriff in Montgomery, Alabama, back in 1955, Mack told his audiences, that sheriff would have defied the segregation laws and protected Rosa Parks. “Today, that constitutional sheriff does the same for Rosa Parks the gun owner,” Mack says, “or Rosa Parks the rancher, or Rosa Parks the landowner, or Rosa Parks the homeschooler, or Rosa Parks the tax protester.” Help fund stories like this

By refusing to enforce federal and state laws that they deem unconstitutional, whether they involve BLM road closures, gun control, drug laws or bans against selling unpasteurized milk, Mack says sheriffs can lead the fight to rescue America from the “cesspool of corruption” that Washington, D.C., has become. If need be, he says, sheriffs even have the power to prevent federal and state agents from enforcing those laws, thereby nullifying federal authority. If a particular sheriff doesn’t rally to the cause, then the voters should kick him out of office. And Mack and his organization have been quietly fielding opposition candidates in many counties. In fact, he is one of the forces behind the Constitutional County Project, which aims, this year, to elect a whole slate of “constitutional” candidates to office in Navajo County, Arizona, in what amounts to a nonviolent coup d’état. “There is no solution in Washington, D.C.,” Mack told me. “If we’re going to take America back it’s going to be at the local level.”

Some Western sheriffs didn’t need Mack’s encouragement. Back in 2000, Eldredge’s predecessor, Mike Lacy, forcibly opened a road in Utah’s Canyonlands that the National Park Service had closed to protect cultural resources. A few years later, his Kane County counterpart, Sheriff Lamont Smith, went on a countywide escapade, removing more than two dozen BLM signs that indicated road closures and other restrictions on motorized travel. Mack’s movement gave these lone-wolf sheriffs a collective sense of empowerment and a rallying point.

By 2011, when Mack formally created the Constitutional Sheriffs and Police Officers Association, or CSPOA, his creed was already infiltrating Western sheriffs’ offices. That year, Josephine County, Oregon, Sheriff Gil Gilbertson started making headlines for defying (and allegedly harassing) federal land managers. Montezuma County, Colorado, Sheriff Dennis Spruell appeared on the right-wing radio show, The Political Cesspool, where he threatened to arrest federal officials who closed roads, citing his duty to defend his county “against enemies, foreign and domestic,” part of an oath undertaken by members of the U.S. armed services and now a favorite catchphrase of constitutional sheriffs.

Then-Montezuma County, Colorado, Sheriff Dennis Spruell, left, sits with constitutionalists Bob Sanders and Mike Gaddy in 2011. The sheriff had threatened to arrest any Forest Service workers he deemed to be breaking laws by closing certain roads. Spruell lost his bid for re-election in 2014.

Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images

In October 2011, seven sheriffs from Northern California and one from southern Oregon gathered for an event in Yreka, California, called “Sheriffs Stand TALL for the Constitution.” If any of the predominantly white, older audience believed that sheriffs are, or ought to be, apolitical, objective enforcers of the law, they were quickly disabused of the notion. One sheriff after another stood up and spoke proudly about his involvement in the Tea Party and the “assault being perpetrated against our community by our own government” by way of travel management plans and dam removals. Tellingly, Karen Budd-Falen, a Wyoming-based property rights attorney who is well-known for representing Sagebrush Rebels against the federal government, was also on the panel.

“We’re challenging the status quo, and we are challenging some federal and state agencies and some special interest groups who are using money, influence, politics, regulations and lies to literally destroy rural America and our way of life,” the event’s host, Siskiyou County Sheriff Jon Lopey, said, summing up the sentiments of his colleagues. “Some of your federal and state agencies care more about fish, frogs, trees and birds than (they) do about the human race. And one more thing: We’re broke. Why don’t you let the people work?” His message was clear: Environmental regulations wreck the economy, and a bad economy leads to crime, so the interests of sheriffs everywhere are best served by fighting environmental regulations.

Four months later, in January 2012, the CSPOA held its first gathering in Las Vegas, followed by a second event that September. By then, Obama was on his way to being re-elected and Tea Partiers had triumphed in a number of Republican primaries. Mack’s attendance rosters read like a Who’s Who of Tea Party politics. They included Oath Keepers’ founder Stewart Rhodes and Sagebrush Sheriffs such as Spruell and Lopey. Also speaking was Tom DeWeese, president of the American Policy Center, known for spreading fears that the United Nations, under Agenda 21, is taking over the world via bike paths and public transit, and Joe Arpaio, the notorious sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, whom Mack praised for launching an investigation into the validity of Obama’s birth certificate. Ken Ivory, president of the American Lands Council and champion of the federal land-transfer movement, gave a rousing speech at the September gathering about the “revolution of ideologies” he and the sheriffs were engaged in.

The larger movement really gelled, though, after the December 2012 shooting massacre of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut, when it seemed as if Congress might pass modest gun control measures. Hundreds of the 3,000-odd county sheriffs nationwide revolted against the specter of such regulations, vowing not to enforce any new gun laws and to prevent federal officials from doing so. The West led the charge, with a majority of the region’s 300 rural sheriffs, Republicans and Democrats alike, signing on to oppose new state or federal gun laws. Sheriffs who did not join the charge were added to a list of “red coats” on the CSPOA website, and risked the wrath of their gun-loving constituents.

Mack told me he is especially proud of the letter to Obama from 28 of Utah’s 29 county sheriffs, Eldredge included, which read, in part: “No federal official will be permitted to descend upon our constituents and take from them what the Bill of Rights — in particular Amendment II — has given them. We, like you, swore a solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and we are prepared to trade our lives for the preservation of its traditional interpretation.”

Then-Josephine County, Oregon, Sheriff Gil Gilbertson, who questioned the federal government’s authority on federal land, lost his bid for re-election in 2014.

Bob Pennell/Mail Tribune via AP

Mack’s organization is not unique in believing in sheriff supremacy. The notion was critical to the ideology of the ultraconservative John Birch Society, founded in 1958, as well as the racist, anti-tax Posse Comitatus group of the 1970s. Now, organizations like the Oath Keepers have embraced it as well. The idea acts as a kind of glue that binds many of these libertarian and right-wing movements together; Sagebrush Rebels, Second Amendment advocates, county- and states’-rights groups and border security activists have increasingly looked to sheriffs to use their clout on their behalf.

This power, says Mack, derives mostly from the fact that the sheriff is the only elected law enforcement official, elevating him above his bureaucratic counterparts. Added to that is the 1997 Supreme Court decision on the Brady Bill’s proposed background checks. The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, is in Mack’s favor: “The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.” That interpretation could be used to justify Eldredge’s refusal to stop the illegal Recapture Canyon ride, as well as the sheriffs who threaten to ignore federal gun laws.

Yet the court decision does not empower those sheriffs to stop or impede federal officers from enforcing federal laws or regulations. Nor does it require federal officers to get the local sheriff’s permission before doing their jobs. Mack’s rhetoric, says Casey LaFrance, an associate professor of political science at Western Illinois University and author of Targeting Discretion, a police-training manual, is driven more by historical context than legal precedent. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, for example, prohibited the U.S. military from enforcing laws or invoking “posse comitatus” — that is, enlisting citizens to fight crime or repel outside invaders, a right sheriffs possessed in colonial America. According to some, this puts sheriffs at the top of the law enforcement food chain.

State legislatures, including those in Montana, Arizona and Washington, have tried to pass legislation giving sheriffs more power, usually by undercutting federal law enforcement. They’re rarely successful, but in 2013, Eldredge attended the Utah Legislature’s session to help Rep. Mike Noel, a well-known Sagebrush Rebel from Kane County, introduce a bill to limit the ability of federal officials to enforce state and local laws on public lands in the state. The “sheriff’s bill” passed, but was later repealed after the courts stopped it from taking effect.

Which isn’t to say sheriffs aren’t already extremely powerful, says LaFrance. As elected officials, sheriffs are accountable only to the voters. County commissioners have no control over them and can’t remove a sheriff, even if he or she is convicted of a crime. Though commissioners typically control the budget, they are usually prohibited from cutting off the sheriff altogether. In most states, only the governor can remove a sheriff from office, and that is only in cases of extreme malfeasance.

It’s often tough even for the voters to boot a sitting sheriff. In rural counties, among the only people qualified to replace a sheriff are the deputies, who risk losing their job by taking on their boss. “Honestly, the sheriff is rarely challenged,” says LaFrance; in fact, the average sheriff’s term is about 24 years. This apparent invulnerability makes some sheriffs feel free of the necessity of enforcing laws to which they are ideologically opposed, and that, say critics, can have dangerous consequences.

“When law enforcement refuses to enforce the laws, it sends a dangerous signal to extremists,” says Jessica Goad of the Center for Western Priorities. “It serves to embolden those who tend towards violence. This rhetoric and stance has an extremely chilling effect on the people who are doing their jobs — from park rangers to environmental activists. The thought that the sheriff doesn’t enforce the law is scary.”

It goes even further. U.S. Attorney S. Amanda Marshall chastised then-Josephine County Sheriff Gilbertson after he riled up a meeting of miners in 2012 and even promised to arrest federal law enforcement officers for “impersonating” police. “You do the miners a disservice by promoting, under color of the office of Josephine County Sheriff, a clearly erroneous interpretation of federal law,” she wrote him in a letter. “As a result, miners are becoming increasingly confrontational with federal officers. … Your continued misguided crusade will only increase the safety risks to our federal officers and members of the public.”

Rose Chilcoat, executive director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness, the longtime bête noir of Lyman and other San Juan County conservatives, says when elected officials side with lawbreakers, “it hugely undermines a civil society. It makes it that much harder for the feds to make a case. They can say: ‘Yeah, I rode my ATV on that closed trail because the sheriff said it’s OK.’ ” The feds made a strong case against Lyman, however, and ultimately succeeded in getting him convicted of two federal misdemeanors for organizing and participating in the ride. Lyman was sentenced to 10 days in jail, and he and a collaborator were ordered to pay $96,000 in restitution for damage done. (He is appealing the verdict.)

Sheriffs have used their authority to weigh in on all manner of issues. Mack was a leading figure at the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014, excoriating the local sheriff for not running the BLM out of there, and last year, he urged constitutional sheriffs to refuse to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision to permit gay marriage. In Idaho, Bonner County Sheriff Daryl Wheeler wrote to the state’s governor, Butch Otter, exhorting him not to resettle Syrian refugees. Mack was on hand in Burns, Oregon, in early January to demonstrate in support of ranchers Dwight and Steven Hammond, who were sentenced to five years in prison for arson on federal land. Even though he is close to the Bundys, however, Mack questioned their subsequent occupation of the nearby wildlife refuge. While the local Harney County Sheriff, David Ward, has taken a strong stance against the occupation, Sheriff Glenn Palmer, from Grant County, Oregon expressed limited support for Bundy and friends, saying the federal government should give in to some of their demands. Palmer was the 2011 CSPOA Sheriff of the Year, and made his name by pushing back against federal land agency travel-management plans.

Mack says the CSPOA has about 4,500 dues-paying members, some 200 of whom are sheriffs, and he says his group has “trained” (taught their principles to) hundreds more. But the tentacles of the constitutional sheriff philosophy clearly reach far beyond the group’s membership rolls. Shortly after the Recapture ride, the conservative media outlet Breitbart Texas interviewed Eldredge, who in 2010 had run as a Democrat against then-incumbent Mike Lacy, promising to open more doors to federal agencies. Four years later, he was a Republican, running on a record of standing against federal overreach. In the interview, the sheriff blamed environmental regulations for transforming San Juan County from one of the richest counties to one of the poorest in the state, and he said he’d love to see federal land transferred to the state. When asked if he considered himself a constitutional sheriff, Eldredge replied, “I do.

“I thought every sheriff was supposed to be a constitutional sheriff,” he added. “That’s our job.

Senior editor Jonathan Thompson writes from Durango, Colorado. @jonnypeace

Coverage in this special report is supported by contributors to the High Country News Enterprise Journalism Fund.