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Let’s start with American Government one oh one.
Y’all know the dealio. Separation of powers in three branches of guvmint. Legislative makes the laws. Executive administers the laws. Judicial adjudicates breach of the laws.
Take Toodelydoo. Toledo City Council is the legislative branch, passing ordinances to amend Toledo Municipal Code and authorizing the actions of the executive branch.
The Mayor’s office is the executive, with departments executing the ordinances enacted and actions authorized by Council. Departments include Toledo police,streets, utilities, and so on. Each operates under ultimate control of the Mayor, with department heads appointed by the Mayor.
Toledo Muni Court is the judicial branch.
Easy peasy. That’s how American guvmint is supposed to be structured. For another example, take Lucas County governance. The… Oopsie, well see, county guv isn’t structured like that at all.
Row offices
Instead of a unitary executive branch, each county department is headed by a different elected official, ultimately answerable to voters. There is no ultimate executive for the entire county. The au-
diting department, engineering, prosecutor’s and other so-called row offices are overseen by their own politicos, essentially independent of the County Commissioners.
The commissioners have one ultimate power, though, the power of the purse. They determine county budgets, including those for the several row offices.
Which brings us to the county Sherriff’s Department, charged with law enforcement, headed by elected Sheriff Mike Navarre. As an elected official, he administers the Sheriff’s Office independently from the commissioners.
Except for his budget. The commissioners control the budget.
Fast forward to the ICE-involved killings of Renee Good, and subsequently Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis. ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is a branch of the federal Department of Homeland Security. The County had originally accepted a DHS grant for the Sheriff’s Department to assist in paying for overtime in eastern Lucas County. After the tragedies in Minneapolis, the commissioners voted to rescind the grant in protest and, further, moved to pass a resolution recommending standards for any law enforcement cooperation with ICE operations in the county.
Navarre immediately pushed back, in his independent role as chief county law enforcer. He’s ticked about the loss of funding, which the commissioners control, and sez he already has standards, which commissioners can only recommend.
All politics is local
Ah, yes. Standards. Local law enforcement includes extensive training in de-escalation. They have rules of engagement and strict regulations on use of deadly force, especially around vehicles in motion. Officers are clearly identifiable and unmasked. They are required to utilize body cameras.
Officer-involved shootings are extensively investigated. There are rules surrounding officer discharge of weapons in any case. Bullets are issued and retrieved to account for any weapons that have been discharged.
There are strict rules about use of crowd dispersal weapons, such as rubber bullets and chemical gas, to minimize the risk of injury.
Potentially lethal holds are verboten.
Officers are bound by oath to observe Fourth Amendment restraints on entering homes or breaking into occupied vehicles without a warrant or other probable cause.
Extensive bystander videos from Minneapolis make it appear that exactly none of these standards apply to the massively funded ICE activities. The rush to judgment of federal mouthpieces notwithstanding.
Wethinks getting out ahead of any potential surge of similar ICE tactics running amok here in the Swamp isn’t politics.
It’s to protect and to serve.
That’s what we have every right to expect. Right, Sheriff Navarre?
