Armed Men, Always White. Sheriffs and Their Posses
Example of sheriff propaganda, courtesy of the Arkansas Sheriff Association Facebook page
Armed Men, Always White: Sheriffs and their Posses
Kenosha County, Wisconsin, Sheriff David Beth told the press that he refused to deputize militia groups (“Oh, hell, no.”) to police protests because these men with guns “are a liability to me and the county and the state of Wisconsin.” As might be expected, Beth, who is a vigorous fan of incarceration as “warehousing,” focuses on the costs to himself and his department when it comes to arming civilian posses.
Sheriffs in most states still have a formal way to deputize civilians, the power of posse comitatus. As sheriff, Joe Arpaio revived the posse in a big way. Armed civilians wearing Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office insignia participated in anti-immigrant raids, pretended to protect local schools, and sheltered a variety of men accused of criminal conspiracies. According to a book by one of Arpaio’s former chiefs, Arpaio regularly summoned the posse when he needed to grandstand for the media, displaying them alongside defunct military equipment that didn’t work. The citizen posse “worked consistently and proven [sic] effective,” making "arrests." The people arrested were trotted before news cameras, making Arpaio happy. There were over 2,000 volunteers at the height of Arpaio’s posse, which meant that sheriff staff spent more time managing the posse than doing patrols. It took 20 sworn officers to control the posse alone.
His armed group of men isn’t much different from the vigilante, far-right militias today. Posse comitatus historically allowed sheriffs to recruit local men into their service, to hunt down and detain suspect individuals; this was known as the “hue and cry,” a shout across the land that a crime had occurred. While urban police departments professionalized and distanced themselves from the rabble of posses, the laws remained on the books for sheriffs. We don’t have particularly good information or data on posses, largely (I think) because they happen in rural counties and without much fanfare.
It’s not tough to draw a line from the posse to armed vigilantes and militias. There’s a cultural component: evangelical support for the Second Amendment and a lot of Christian imagery. And the idea of civilian law enforcement remains in criminal laws like “citizen’s arrest,” stand your ground, self-defense, and the Castle Doctrine.
But, perhaps most important in my mind, vigilante militias, white supremacists, and sheriffs believe that the American Constitution supports their political viewpoints. Arpaio is a member of the “Constitutional Sheriff” movement (the official group is the Constitutional Sheriff and Peace Officer Association or CSPOA), a loosely-knit group of sheriffs, deputies, and wanna-be’s who use the U.S. Constitution as their guiding document and argue that it requires good white men to arm themselves. Their Bible is the Second Amendment, which they support with religious fervor. Their savior is Richard Mack, a one-time sheriff in Arizona who now seems to make a living on the conspiracy-theory speech-giving circuit.
Reading Mack’s political screed and the garbled legalese of sheriffs, it sounds like these men misread history. But, the use of the Constitution to defend racist ideologies has deep roots. The Ku Klux Klan interpreted the U.S. Constitution as a white supremacist document, supported by court decisions like Dred Scott. Hence we have layers upon layers of white supremacy, virulent racism, patriotism, and Christianity forming the story of racist violence in America. Legal scholar Jared Goldstein explains that since post-Reconstruction, the KKK has “described the violence it has perpetrated as patriotic in nature, undertaken not out of racial hatred, but as necessary to defend the nation and the true meaning of the Constitution.”
All this is to say that the Constitutional sheriff movement and vigilantes have historical precedents based on the interpretation of the foundational documents of America. The shooting in Kenosha did not come out of nowhere. Nor did Trump. There’s an understandable move among American pundits and leaders (Democrat and Republican) to distance themselves from these dangerous groups while extolling “law and order.” But, white supremacy is the rule of law. So, perhaps something new is needed.
Other Reading
1) This sheriff seems pretty racist to me.
2) The new issue of Vanity Fair has some great articles, plus the art looks so lovely. It’s a great project by wonderful, talented writers and artists.
3) Police crisis comms teams distort the truth. Can you believe it?