Comment by jMyles

Like the illusion of diversity at a shopping mall, with many 'competing' stores being mostly or entirely owned by the same parent corporations, I think we need to question the degree of independent decision-making at local police departments, from state troopers all the way to the college campus level.

I think some localities do a better job than others of ensuring a transparent process, either through the municipal legislative body or a police commission, of decision-making.

But it's telling that, at the end of the day, when we have an actual group of armed people in our cities, acting as though they are beholden to no laws (and even declaring as much at some times and places), our police forces are largely standing down rather than defending the populace and enforcing the laws.

I can understand a few days of wrangling with municipal legal departments over the particularities of the supremacy clause, but once it became clear that ICE was acting wildly out of scope of their duties, and violating state and local laws in the process, it became the obvious duty of local police officers to effect arrests and refer charges to local district attorneys.

What is the underlying reason that's not happening? I'm mostly an abolitionist - I believe that the economics of slavery persist through the prison system and that we can't really craft a new slavery-free system until we dispense with the notion that some people have greater law-enforcement authority than others, or the right to be more armed than others.

But it is just simply a matter that police will always fall in line with federal (or perhaps even global?) say-so, regardless of the laws? Is it a follow-the-money thing?

We've now had ICE agents kidnap US citizens, recklessly discharge firearms, invade every unit of an apartment building with no warrant (not that any warrant providing for such an invasion would be constitutional anyhow), etc. etc. - things that, if anyone else did, they'd be charged without a doubt.

How far does it go? If ICE sexually assaults someone in broad daylight, can they simply tell their employer they'd prefer not to be charged with a crime?

I'm not even sure that'd be an escalation at this point; they've already done things that are just as damaging to society.