In case you’d never heard of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, it was set up by a former Arizona sheriff more than ten years ago. The group’s core purpose is to promote safety and protect the citizens that sheriff’s departments around the country serve. But they’re not just interested in protecting the law-abiding from criminals. They also believe that it’s their duty to protect citizens from their own government when it gets out of line. They’ve been drawing more attention of late, prompting the Associated Press to highlight the group and describe them as a potentially dangerous “right-wing” organization. And I’ll be the first to admit that some of their tenets are clearly controversial, but they’re also making headlines for all the right reasons.

Against the background hum of the convention center, Dar Leaf settled into a club chair to explain the sacred mission of America’s sheriffs, his bright blue eyes and warm smile belying the intensity of the cause.

“The sheriff is supposed to be protecting the public from evil,” the chief law enforcement officer for Barry County, Michigan, said during a break in the National Sheriffs’ Association 2023 conference in June. “When your government is evil or out of line, that’s what the sheriff is there for, protecting them from that.”

Leaf is on the advisory board of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, founded in 2011 by former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack. The group, known as CSPOA, teaches that elected sheriffs must “protect their citizens from the overreach of an out-of-control federal government” by refusing to enforce any law they deem unconstitutional or “unjust.”

The interview with Dar Leaf lays out the proposal pretty clearly and it seems to be gaining traction around the country. He describes laws deemed unconstitutional by the sheriffs as “not laws at all anyway” and “laws of tyranny.” Examples cited include certain gun control laws, COVID-19 mask mandates, and other restrictions on public freedoms.

What the CSPOA describes as “constitutional curriculum training,” a legal analyst for the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism called something that is part of a “broader insurrectionist ideology,” which they of course blame on Donald Trump. I certainly wouldn’t go that far, but have traditionally agreed with some of the objections now being raised toward the group.

For any true conservative, it should be an article of faith that the United States is a nation of laws. We won’t all agree with every law that is enacted, of course, but that doesn’t give any of us a license to go around breaking those laws without repercussions. If you get to pick and choose which laws you will follow, then others may do the same and you might not care for their choices at all. Traditionally, if you don’t agree with a law, you would need to convince enough other people and their elected representatives to amend or repeal it. Or at least that’s how I used to feel.

Don’t get me wrong here… I still believe all of that. But that belief has been losing some ground in my personal views of late. The primary reason for this is the expanding plague of “prosecutorial discretion” that our weaponized Justice Department and intelligence community have unleashed. There used to be a reasonable basis for the use of prosecutorial discretion, particularly when the accused was rather borderline and the crime was minor. Sometimes a busy prosecutor may simply not bother pursuing them.

But that’s not how things are being handled in the current era. Some people are hounded and persecuted rather than prosecuted on the weakest of accusations. Others can commit grotesque crimes and never feel the bite of a pair of handcuffs. The difference between how Donald Trump has been treated when compared to either Hillary Clinton or the Biden clan is probably the most stark example we could cite. But the same has happened to far too many people out on the streets, some of whom never benefit from any national news exposure.

Let’s never forget how Pastor Paul Vaughn was frog-marched in front of his children by armed FBI agents wearing body armor for praying at an abortion clinic. Then there are the hundreds of J6 defendants who are sitting in prison despite never having damaged or stolen any property at the Capitol nor attacked any law enforcement officers, essentially just committing the crime of trespassing and doing some sightseeing. Contrast those people with the thousands of BLM rioters who wreaked havoc and mayhem but have never been seriously pursued, despite there being hours of video evidence of their crimes.

Perhaps CSPOA could be focused less on which laws are enforced, and more on who is or isn’t having the law enforced against them. Changing bad laws through the normal legislative process is still the ideal option. But when the law isn’t being enforced equally, it makes it more difficult to have the same respect for the system. The executive branch should be taking a sign from the existence of a group like CSPOA that it’s time to do much better. If the government loses the faith of the governed in the integrity of the system, bad things tend to happen.