Ghoul of Law

Law enforcement are the primary enforcers of violence

Sheriff Wayne Ivey at the June 12 presser

On Thursday, June 12, Brevard County, Florida, Sheriff Wayne Ivey held a press conference alongside Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier during which the sheriff threatened violence against protestors:

Just so there’s no confusion…I’m going to break it down for you…If you resist lawful orders, you’re going to jail. Let me be very clear about that. If you block an intersection or a roadway in Brevard County, you are going to jail. If you flee arrest, you are gonna go to jail tired because we are gonna run you down and put you in jail. If you try to mob rule a car…you’re most likely gonna get run over and dragged across the street. If you spit on us, you’re going to the hospital and then jail. If you hit one of us, you’re going to the hospital and jail and most likely get bitten by one of our big, beautiful dogs that we have here. If you throw a brick, a fire bomb, or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains at because we will kill you graveyard dead.

The speech sounds downright ghoulish coming from someone who was elected, at least nominally, to protect his community. But Ivey is someone who has long understood that “law enforcement” is not about selective arrests or pubic safety; it is about wishing death and violence upon an ever-shifting group of people collectively referred to as the “enemy.”

As we see through the ICE raids and arrests of people who have no criminal records, the idea of the “enemy” is infinitely mutable and convenient. It includes protestors and workers; parents and children; journalists and activist; you and me.

Ivey is a man who has spent his time as sheriff promoting a culture of violence and death. He is best known online for his meme-ish segments mocking people unfortunate enough to be arrested, often for drug-related actions. He is a well-known local bully who threatens people running for office and children with beatings. And he was among the first sheriffs to bear-hug Governor Ron DeSantis’s mass deportation agenda through a local program he called SHIELD.

But Ivey is not a lone wolf. He is simply an example of how Trump and his allies have created an incredibly violent national police force lacking respect for human life. Last week, Kristi Noem described Los Angeles – a city of 3.8 million people over 500 square miles – as under an invasion. The federalized National Guard and Marines were, in her telling, in Los Angeles to “liberate” the city from their democratically-elected leaders. Law enforcement in the room tackled and cuffed Senator Alex Padilla of California, as if to show in real-time how this “liberation” would happen.

In New Jersey, a group of people being detained in a GEO Group facility escaped through drywall, motivated by the desire to escape violence. An immigrant man appears to have committed suicide in a Georgia detention facility. “It smells like piss. It smells like poop,” one man described his detention conditions.

The new budget reconciliation bill has allotted unfathomable amounts of money for mass deportation, which is now the unifying ideology of the right. As Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on Bluesky, it will “reshape society, making federal arrests a daily fact of life in every single community.”

Thus far, Democrats have been unwilling to resist what is plainly a police and military takeover of the country. They embraced “fund the police” as a slogan even though Donald Trump said throughout his reelection campaign that he would unleash the police and conduct mass deportations on an alarming scale. 12 Senate Democrats signed the Laken Riley Act, which was obviously a ploy to ramp up mass deportations. 75 House Democrats voted with the Republicans to sign a resolution expressing “gratitude” to ICE.

More is coming. A DHS memo suggests that federal law enforcement will conduct even more warrantless arrests. (Warrantless arrests have always been legal but were limited by a court settlement that set forth particular standards and documentation.) There are ongoing military arrests. Leaders of the military and law enforcement branches have shown no signs of concern about violence, either the violence they are causing by invading Los Angeles and other cities or the violence being visited on individuals with weapons, detention, and terror. Senator Ashley Moody from Florida has proposed a bill that would expand the 287(g) program and give more funding to local law enforcement who cooperate with ICE. The intent is plain – wring out the resources from an already emaciated federal government and put them to violent use.

Saturday, Trump plans to hold himself a military parade for reasons likely both Freudian and political. A parade celebrates; this parade celebrates violence. Alongside the parade in Washington, D.C., law enforcement and their supporters are fanning out across the country to follow Noem’s call to liberate cities from the leaders they elected. Their targets are the vast crowds across the country, the people who have come out to protest Trump’s administration and ICE in the communities. Democratic politicians remain silent.

In Minnesota, a man who worked in private security allegedly posed as a cop and killed one Democratic state legislator and her husband and attempted to kill another. The alleged assassin drove an SUV described as follows: “The license plate reads ‘Police’ and a light bar is mounted on the roof.” Local police warned the public, “If a police officer comes to your door, residents should call 911 to confirm whether an officer is supposed to be there.” He is still at large as of this writing.