In Wild West America, Support Your Local Sheriff

The lawlessness of the American regime has become overwhelming these days. We covered Joe Biden’s latest student loan “forgiveness” this week. Last week it was the Biden Administration’s vast and intentional undermining of our border security. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the United States. Blue state and city authorities have turned their own jurisdictions into places where criminals are either not charged at all or charged and released on bail while ordinary citizens are caught in the maw of absurd regulations. If you’re seen as a threat to the system, as Donald Trump is, you’ll be charged for fraud even if there was no intent to defraud, no victim, and you paid back your loans with millions of dollars of interest.

What can we do? One of the most important but perhaps unexpected answers can be remembered by the name of a popular James Garner movie: Support Your Local Sheriff.

Don’t get me wrong. Any real solution to national woes must be exercised at the national level if our country is to turn back toward the rule of law and away from the rule of men. (Note: I use men in the old-fashioned inclusive sense; I know that liberal women are tyrants, too.) We must elect Donald Trump this fall. But if not all politics can be local in a system like ours, so corrupted by executive overreach and the power of our unelected (and unconstitutional) fourth branch of government—the administrative state—there is still a great deal that can be done.

Red states are just starting to learn to push back against the tyrannous impulses of Washington. Governor Greg Abbott and the state of Texas have not stopped the endless importation of illegal immigrants into our country—though California is now the port of choice for those who do not respect our laws. But their refusal to allow our national government to prevent our border from being defended has woken up other red states.

Yet even if you live in a purple or blue state, there is still something to be done. Most people no longer pay attention to local elections. But they are extremely important for the everyday life of Americans. And one of the most important offices is that of the local sheriff. 

Danny Schochler, a businessman in my own Fort Bend County, Texas, puts it eloquently: “My former pastor said, ‘It’s more important to know who your local Sheriff is than who is the President of the United States.’ He said this because what the President does has little to no direct effect on your daily life. A Sheriff on the other hand affects your life in the area you live, work, shop and play. They directly affect your sense of security, peace and livelihood.”

We can disagree with Schochler about the effect of the President on our day-to-day life to an extent. A president who refuses to enforce immigration law and sets the DOJ on ordinary Americans complaining at school board meetings does affect us. But that only reinforces how important the sheriff really is since the sheriff is the one who stands in the way of violence from illegal immigrants as well as native-born criminals.

In an article last fall warning about the possibility of a terrorist attack similar to that of Hamas from among the unvetted foreigners flooding into our country, Kyle Shideler pointed out that Israel’s local law enforcement was quickly overwhelmed, with one report “that over 30 Israeli police were trapped in a police station that came under siege by Hamas gunmen.” Shideler suggests that all Americans should be working to support local law enforcement, especially the sheriff. “Encourage your community to provide the necessary funding to train, recruit, and equip the best possible local law enforcement, without relying upon fickle and restrictive federal grants.”

Indeed, it was Butler County, Ohio, Sheriff Richard Jones who warned the National Sheriffs Association earlier this month about the situation facing Americans from this threat of terrorism from foreigners. Ironically, he had been briefed about this threat from FBI head Christopher Wray. Perhaps Wray could inform the Biden Administration about this threat?

Those are important tasks not just because of the threat of foreign terrorism, but also given the nearby city of Houston’s violent crime. I’m very interested in who is keeping the peace where I live. Though 2023 statistics showed Houston’s rates of violent crime dropping significantly, even local mainstream media have expressed skepticism about whether many crimes are being reported given the revolving door of criminals being released on bond who then go out and victimize again. The local sheriff is standing between you and the city next door.

If sheriffs protect you from criminals foreign and domestic, they also protect you from the encroachments of government itself. During the insanity of COVID lockdowns, Santa Ana Sheriff Chad Bianco said he would not be “used as muscle” to enforce stay-at-home orders in the California county. Last year, eighty Illinois sheriffs said they would refuse to enforce a statewide “assault weapons” ban on their own citizens. Who you have as a sheriff means a great deal when the government starts to infringe on the rights of ordinary citizens.

By all means, let’s support Donald Trump and national figures fighting back against the Democrats’ lawlessness, which has made America a big version of the wild west—but without the romance. But alongside the national figures, we have people in our own communities who can make a big difference.

I don’t often have a lot of political signs in my yard. But one I have right now is for Marshall Slot, who is on the ballot this month in the Republican primary to run for Fort Bend County Sheriff. Slot is an experienced lawman with a couple decades of service on local police departments as well as experience in corporate security. Danny Schochler’s comments cited earlier are part of an endorsement made for Slot, whose main goals are in sync with Shideler’s recommendations: recruiting, training, and retaining the best officers possible.

I want the best candidate possible for my local sheriff. And I’m ready to support him.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. A former Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative