Sheriffs Already Have Too Much Power. Who Will Stop Them Now?

Despite the fact that these abuses were well-documented and widely reported, Arpaio was reelected five times, before losing a bid for reelection in 2016.

Virtually unchecked power threatens democracy, the rule of law and the human beings under sheriffs’ control. As Arizona reporter Tom Zoellner, who covered Arpaio for months, wrote in 2017, the former sheriff ​“couldn’t have cared less about what the data was showing about how his famously cruel jail policies were not making any difference in public safety” or about ​“the pointless suffering that he caused in his jails.” In 2017, Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt for defying a judge’s order to stop detaining immigrants because they lacked legal status; his deputies continued the practice for 18 months. Arpaio was also one of the first public officials to endorse Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and Trump reciprocated with a pardon, sparing Arpaio a sentence for criminal contempt of court that could have meant up to six months in prison.

The Highest Law in the Land suggests that sheriffs like Arpaio and their supporters — to transform themselves from glorified modern-day slave catchers to guardians of public safety, at least in their own and the public’s imagination — must willfully misinterpret and misrepresent the history of law enforcement in the United States. They reject the notion that their far-right politics stem from racial animus, and some even imagine themselves as heroic defenders of civil rights.

Richard Mack, another former Arizona sheriff and a major character in Pishko’s book, often tells made-up stories about the civil rights organizer Rosa Parks in which he and other sheriffs are, as Pishko writes, the ​“noble embodiment of a chivalrous code.” In Mack’s imagination, sheriffs could have helped Parks by refusing to arrest her when she wouldn’t move to the back of the bus, because, as he has often implied, they have a duty to defend people like Parks from tyrannical government. ​“What does the constitutional officer do today?” Mack asked in 2009. ​“He protects Rosa Parks, the gun owner. He protects Rosa Parks, the victim of the IRS. He protects Rosa Parks, the tax protester. He protects and defends Rosa Parks, the medical marijuana person. And he protects people who simply want to be left alone.” It’s clear from Pishko’s, and other progressive journalists’ reporting, that many sheriffs are deluded about why and how they have wielded their power, both today and in the past.

“It is a job shaped by myth,” Pishko writes, ​“not by the realities of what communities need and want.”

Sheriffs who are, like Arpaio and Mack, affiliated with the right-wing Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) believe their law enforcement powers ​“supersede those of any agent, officer, elected official or employee from any level of government when in the jurisdiction of the county,” up to and including the president. Because of efforts from the CSPOA and other far-right groups to promote and popularize these ideas, they are no longer considered fringe. Even sheriffs who consider themselves moderate or reform-minded believe that having been elected enhances their authority and legitimacy.

Yet it’s the sheriffs who most strongly identify with the constitutional sheriffs movement and their far-right champions who pose the greatest threat to democracy. According to Pishko, Trump hosted more White House meetings with sheriffs than any other president in American history and held more than a dozen televised roundtables with them on issues like immigration and border security. (The Highest Law in the Land points out that many sheriffs, and not just those in border states, are champing at the bit to enforce hardline immigration policies.)

It’s not just their authoritarian politics that make these sheriffs a danger to democracy. As Pishko explains, there are places throughout the country where ​“no one has the power to arrest or remove a sheriff, even if he is accused of plotting a murder (Brindell Wilkins, North Carolina), or using money intended to feed inmates to purchase a beach house (Todd Entrekin, Alabama).” Even when sheriffs are ousted for official misconduct, Pishko writes, voters can return them to office — as they did in the case of J.B. Smith, a Texas sheriff who was removed and criminally charged for attempted arson in 1981.

This impunity has far-reaching consequences. Communities are often saddled for decades with sheriffs whose power and political activities are essentially unlimited, who face few consequences beyond bad press and threats of legal action no matter what they do — break the law, defy court orders, threaten Democrats on social media, support violent deputies at trial and allow them to resign rather than fire them, stonewall committees, and undercount, misreport or otherwise mislead the public about how often and under what circumstances people are dying in their jails. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — the largest in the United States — has been rife with violent police gangs since at least 1973. Sheriffs and deputies have been known to rape and sexually abuse people in jails, and many are not charged with crimes for years, if ever.

Lawsuits are of limited use. A lawsuit against Tim Howard, former sheriff of Erie County, N.Y., briefly forced Howard to accurately report serious jail incidents, but the case was overturned on appeal. (My aunt, Nan Haynes, was one of the plaintiffs.) After the Ohio ACLU threatened to sue, Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski, from Portage County, Ohio, deleted a post in which he urged residents to record the addresses of homes with Kamala Harris yard signs so ​“when the illegal human ​‘Locust’ [sic]” need places to live, ​“We’ll already have the addresses of their new families.”

Sheriffs behave this way partly because they believe they have a mandate: They were, after all, put in office by ​“the people.” But the same anti-democratic forces that shape most U.S. elections affect elections for sheriff, too — gerrymandering, low turnout and an electorate that reflects the preferences of white property owners rather than those of the American people as a whole. Howard, Erie County’s former sheriff, was essentially handed the role by his predecessor. Around 90% of sheriffs are white men, and conservative-leaning rural and suburban voters are crucial bases of support for sheriffs throughout the country, including in predominantly Democratic areas with sizable Black and Hispanic populations.

Efforts to remove sheriffs at the ballot box are arduous. Latino organizers finally succeeded in getting Maricopa County to vote Arpaio out in 2016, but, as Pishko notes, the process ​“took over a decade and involved protests, public outcry, and, ultimately, a lawsuit by the federal government against Arpaio.”

Americans’ respect for law enforcement and disdain for incarcerated people contribute to this dynamic. Questioned about inhumane conditions in the facilities they oversee, sheriffs like Howard respond with vicious indifference: “[Jail’s] not a country club and we don’t want it to be a country club.” Or, as Arpaio once put it: ​“Too many jails in this country are just shy of being like hotels… People shouldn’t live better in jail than they do on the outside.” But U.S. jails are not known for their luxuries; in 2019, Howard acknowledged that around half of the people who died in his jails died by suicide.

“We’re not a hospital,” Howard offered. ​“The person most responsible for a suicide is the person that commits the suicide.”

No human being, including those convicted of crimes, should be held in facilities where people regularly kill themselves, are sometimes fatally beaten or left to die of medical neglect. But many jail detainees have not even had their day in court. About nine out of 10 people on Rikers Island, New York City’s largest jail, have not been convicted of a crime. Most are awaiting trial and can’t afford bail. Sheriffs like Howard appear to believe in ​“innocent until proven guilty” only when it applies to their colleagues. As Howard told an Erie County legislator in 2021, referring to a deputy who had been charged with a DUI: ​“That’s a matter…for the court to determine.”

Having spent years reporting on law enforcement officers, Pishko believes that ​“policing in this country ought to be reevaluated” and ​“reduced as much as practical.” She considers herself an abolitionist, although she sees ​“many steps along the route.” Eliminating the sheriff’s office entirely may not be, as she puts it, a ​“difficult call” — but as her book makes clear, doing so is far from simple.

The Highest Law in the Land is well worth reading for its insights about the history of law enforcement in the United States and the power that sheriffs wield today, but it offers no easy answers. It has taken nearly two centuries for all-powerful sheriffs to become so deeply entrenched in American life and culture, and it will take decades of sustained effort to dislodge them, especially given Trump’s return. Pishko’s assertion that constitutional sheriffs have in Trump ​“a friend and protector at the highest level of government” is a chilling reminder of how much more vicious and emboldened law enforcement officers are about to get — and a compelling reason to arm oneself with the knowledge contained in this book.