A controversial sheriffs’ group that plays by its own set of rules and has members linked to a plot to overthrow the government has been quietly expanding its reach, branching out in at least 30 states, some of it on the taxpayer’s dime, according to a new months-long investigative report.
The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, which was founded in 2011 by former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack, preaches 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.” It also believes the country needs to make “a strong turn around to get back on the freedom track laid for us by our Founders” and that the county sheriff is “the last hope of making this happen.”
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Mack’s comments have made some people nervous about his group’s intent but he told the Washington Examiner he is being unfairly portrayed and that CSPOA isn’t advocating for a lawless society but instead one that gives sheriffs the power to use discretion.
“In 20 years of law enforcement, I never committed an act of violence towards another human being,” he said. “I never slugged anybody. I never beat anybody up or shot anybody and yet now, they are portraying me as dangerous and violent.”
Mack began his career in Utah as a police officer before moving to Arizona where he was twice elected as sheriff of Graham County. He gained national attention in 1994 when he sued the federal government over the Brady Bill, which at that time imposed a five-day waiting period before purchasing a handgun. He admitted to being an early board member of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing conspiracy group accused of playing a role in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, but told the Washington Examiner he left the group and had nothing to do with the attack.
Over the past decade, Mack’s group, which he said has 10,000 people on its mailing list, has gained traction, hosting training sessions, rallies, speeches, and meetings in nearly three dozen states for law enforcement officers. The group has a wide range of supporters in high places, including three who sit on state boards and are in charge of law enforcement training standards, the report from the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting said.
CSPOA advisory board member Sheriff Dar Leaf, who is also the current chief law enforcement officer for Barry County, Michigan, has said officials like himself are “supposed to be protecting the public from evil.
“When your government is evil or out of line, that’s what the sheriff is there for, protecting them from that,” he said, adding, “The safest way to actually achieve that is to have local law enforcement understand that they have no obligation to enforce such laws. They’re not laws at all anyway. If they’re unjust laws, they are laws of tyranny.”
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Leaf was recently investigated, but not charged, in connection to a voting machine scheme that involved coaxing election officials to hand over their machines so skeptics of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over former President Donald Trump could examine them.
Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University, called CSPOA part of a “broader insurrectionist ideology” that has spread across the United States since the 2020 presidential election. She also said the group, regardless of what it teaches, has “no authority, not under their state constitutions or implementing statutes to decide what’s constitutional and what’s not constitutional.
“That’s what courts have the authority to do, not sheriffs,” McCord added.
Mack fundamentally disagrees and says federal authorities routinely disrespect and ignore local jurisdictions and that sheriffs are standing up for what they believe is right.
“We have a problem in Washington, D.C., and I am just hoping that we will all start following and enforcing the Bill of Rights, and that should create a danger to no one,” he said. “That should scare no one. It’s the supreme law of the land … We have our own government violating the supreme law of the land, specifically the Bill of Rights, and then they ostracize and condemn a few sheriffs of saying, ‘We should get back to the Constitution.'”
The group, which also rallies against gun control and mask mandates, has gone from being a small number of fringe activists to mainstream players by “securing state approval for taxpayer-funded law enforcement training,” the investigative report found.
CSPOA has held formal training classes in at least 13 of the 30 states it is active in, and in six conducted training that was approved for officers’ continuing education credits. Legal experts argue that training by the group is dangerous, especially when it’s approved for state credit and paid by taxpayers.
Other watchdogs have also kept tabs on CSPOA, denouncing their ideas and lumping them in with hate groups.
In Klickitat County, Washington, some residents filed a formal complaint in 2022 that Sheriff Bob Songer, a board member of the constitutional sheriffs’ group, abused his authority and routinely engaged in “fearmongering and intimidation,” though the complaint was tossed out by the state’s law enforcement standards agency for lack of jurisdiction.
The Anti-Defamation League described CSPOA as “an anti-government extremist group whose primary purpose is to recruit sheriffs into the anti-government ‘patriot’ movement” and accused Mack of using the organization “as a vehicle to gain stature and influence within both the far right and the mainstream right.”
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Mack has pushed back on the allegations and said the pile-on is rooted in fiction.
