In response to soaring crime rates and chaos at the municipal and state levels, the Federal government swoops in with the answer:
One does not have to endorse Kirk's wheels-within-wheels theory--in fact, one should not.
But the reality is that human beings abhor chaos and the fear that comes with it. And history shows us that fearful people will do all sorts of things to make the fear go away.
See, e.g., the Patriot Act, Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Safety Administration.
A national police force would sound comparatively mild to people horrified by soaring homicide rates.
But it would be politicized right out of the gate, with historically-predictable results. By the way, the previous link omits the salient act of the politicized Asaltos: their participation in the assassination of parliamentarian Calvo Sotelo. Which, in the self-reinforcing spiral of Spanish politics, made the officers' coup viable.
Likewise, the arrival of a national police force, accountable only to the party in power, would invariably aggravate division, with foreseeable results.
Which, in our times, makes it a virtual cinch to occur.
You and I are in agreement on this. There's already a national supply house for military gear for local cops. That's bad enough. Arms dealers, though, are rolling in the cash like Mr Obama is going to take away all the guns.
ReplyDeleteDHS was an is an assemblage of agencies which already existed or which were successors to extant agencies. The notable addition was TSA, whose function were formerly performed by local airports.
ReplyDeleteIt might have been better had the Congress at the time busted up the Department of Justice, which mixes functions which are kept separate at the local level. Note, at the state and local level, civil defense, corrections, police patrols, and miscellaneous law enforcement are commonly in separate departments (and, again, never mixed with representation of the government in court).
We might benefit from the following: (1) scarifying the federal criminal code, limiting it to a more restricted remit and removing much of the discretion federal prosecutors have to stack charges and invent bogus offenses; (2) Leave technical assistance to local law enforcement to state police, providing only odd and rarefied consultations; and (3) make counties and multi-county authorities the default locus for local law enforcement, limiting municipal police to discrete small towns which would like to supplement sheriff's patrols.