Submitted by mauricechammah t3_ydyhg4 in IAmA
Update 12pm EST 10/26/2022: We are stepping away to do some other work, but will be keeping an eye on questions here and try to answer as many as we can throughout the day. Thank you for joining us!
Original message: Hey, everyone! We’re Maurice Chammah (u/mauricechammah), a staff writer for The Marshall Project (u/marshall_project), and Mirya Holman (u/mirya_holman), a political science professor at Tulane University.
If Chuck Jenkins, Joe Arpaio or David Clarke are familiar names to you, you already know the extreme impact on culture and law enforcement sheriffs can have. In some communities, the sheriff can be larger than life — and it can feel like their power is, too. A few years ago, I was interviewing a sheriff in rural Missouri about abuses in his jail, when he said, rather ominously, that if I wrote something “not particularly true” — which I took to mean that he didn’t like — then “I wouldn’t advise you to come back.” The hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
I wondered: Why did this sheriff perceive himself to be so powerful?
Hundreds of sheriffs are on ballots across the country this November, and in an increasingly partisan America, these officials are lobbying lawmakers, running jails and carrying out evictions, and deciding how aggressively to enforce laws. What do you know about the candidates in your area?
Holman and Farris are the undeniable leading scholarly experts on sheriffs. We recently teamed up on a survey to understand the blend of policing and politics, hearing from about 1 in 6 sheriffs nationwide, or 500+ sheriffs.
- Many subscribe to a notion popular on the right that, in their counties, their power supersedes that of the governor or the president. (Former Oath Keepers board member Richard Mack's "Constitutional sheriff" movement is an influential reason why.)
- A small, but still significant number, of sheriffs also support far-right anti-government group the Oath Keepers, some of whose members are on trial for invading the U.S. Capitol.
- Most believe mass protests like those against the 2020 police murder of George Floyd are motivated by bias against law enforcement.
Ask us anything!