Throwing Shade at the Sheriff Christopher
This is, I think, the best headline ever from the NJ: Legal brief throws shade at sheriff. Noting that the Sheriff is appealing to the Supreme Court to give him a job that no longer exists, the Sussex County brief definitely gets to the original intent of the Founders on Sheriffs:
It helps Sussex County’s case in the Christopher litigation to argue the state legislature is free to define and refine a modern sheriff’s duties. So the county’s brief argues delegates to a Delaware constitutional convention in 1897 wanted the General Assembly to do that kind of tinkering, and didn’t use the state constitution to set a sheriff’s duties in stone.
Then the county brings this burn: “It was clear sheriffs were not held in high regard by the delegates who commented on the ‘extraordinary methods’ and means by which people attempted to be elected due to the perceived bloat and graft coupled with the position.“
Funny how close the original thinking of the Delaware convention delegates is to pretty much everyone else in Delaware about these Sherrifs. All the more reason to make them appointed, really. Also interesting that the Sheriff’s brief wants to invoke British tradition regarding Sheriffs (because the modern, Delawarean tradition and law is simply not suitable, one would guess) cites British law to help make his case. The Sheriff of Nuttingham indeed.
Tags: constitutional sheriffs, Featured, Sheriff Jeff Christopher
Christie asked God to strike him with a lightning bolt if his olde English interperatation of the job was wrong. God has spoken by not striking him down and that will be entered into evidence.
Sheriff Christopher along with WGMD radio continue to spin the whole scenario of powers of the sheriff, so that it seems like the sheriff only recently lost his powers, and that he is the victim of some sort of siege. It’s ridiculous.
Of course the transplanted retirees believe it because the sheriffs where they came from are basically police officers and they just don’t get that they moved to a place where our sheriffs don’t have those powers.
What’s telling is that Jeff Christopher answered questions for the Examiner, and no where does he mention the Sheriff’s powers:
http://www.examiner.com/article/more-on-jeff-christopher-republican-for-sussex-county-sheriff
He did not run on changing the Sheriff’s Office and getting arrest powers. I can’t find his campaign page anywhere, did he scrub it?
Wow. Invoking European law. I thought that’s why we had to strop contributing the U.N. and such?
As a one of those transplants, I can assure you that I in no way believe or support this or any future sheriff having powers of arrest (especially the current sheriff). The State of Delaware is smaller than than the Virginia county I came from, which has over a million residents. The DSP provides satisfactory law enforcement services, especially in Sussex County.
This sheriff wants to be like Joe, his hero and as far as I am concerned he can move to Arizona and wear his Joe Jr badge there.
So wait…
This guy basically parrots the same stance used to justify the war on drugs which is an ENORMOUS waste of money. Then he follows it up by saying don’t throw money at things proven not work.
I see Barney Fife of Sussex County is at it again
The question has always been, what do the people expect from the office of the sheriff? That will be answered in the next election in 2014, that is if Christopher runs. After all Sheriff Christopher has always portrayed himself as the people’s last line of defense, so I have to presume that if the people speak out against expanding powers by voting for a candidate other than himself, that he would honor that and drop his court case. Of course you will have certain carny hucksters on WGMD who will attempt to sell the conspiracy theory that the elections were rigged by the upstate liberals within both parties, the us against the world line. As for the whole European law line of thought, well I have asked the sheriff and his supporters, if we are going to play the way back game, why stop when there were sheriffs? What if someone else perceives the times before there were sheriffs as being the better option? No answer.
Dave made an excellent point on one of my threads at DR, when he pointed out that these people are operating on pure belief, and facts and laws mean little if anything to them, and when they lose they simply fall back on the belief that the shadow powers were against them and thus fulfills their belief that there is a grand conspiracy.
To invoke England and the “olden days of yore” is silly. There are 56 Sheriff’s in England and Wales today, NONE of them have police powers. All police powers were moved to the Police in 1861 with the development of professionally trained police, not elected political hacks. All sheriffs in England today are appointed and basically are nothing but ceremonial notary publics. Times change, office change.
There are nine states today in the United States that have sheriffs who DO NOT have police powers. In some of those states, it is decided County by County, and some states it is statewide. The office of Sheriff does not exist in Connecticut.
I challenge Sheriff Christopher to come up with the arrest records of anyone arrested, prosecuted and successfully convicted of crime in the last 100 years by a Sheriff here in Sussex County. When I studied Delaware history in school, we had a textbook and I still have a copy of it. Note this quote: “The office of sheriff is usually filled by a party politician who has received the approbation of the party hierarchy within his county. Usually the candidate is a member of this hierarchy and one of the powerful politicians. The average sheriff is not a competent police officer, He has little training (although there have been notable exceptions) in either the art or science of police work… There is little need to retain the office of sheriff. Its duties, which are not mostly in the field of civil jurisdiction, could be handled by court appointed officials.” Date of this quote? 1956 from THE GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF DELAWARE BY Paul Dolan — a textbook we used in school.
It has been a long, long, long time since Sheriffs did law enforcement here. Times change, things change.
I can do without a bunch of wannabe police like George Zimmerman running around the state.
Who is paying Christopher’s legal bills in this thing — anyone know? I assume it isn’t the County…..
“Who is paying Christopher’s legal bills in this thing — anyone know? I assume it isn’t the County…..”
I heard him the other day on the radio saying that people from out of state send donations because they think that if the powers of the sheriff were stripped in Delaware, it could happen in their sheriffs too.
Yet another con artist playing the conservative suckers for every last dime. Good. Keeps them from doing real mischief with the money. If they didn’t have Christopher, they’d be sending it to bible-thumpers.
Christopher is a huckster who has a cadre of followers, mostly in Maryland….the few freaks here that are left are not even republicans but known whackos…
They mostly consist of, Don Ayotte, Von Baumgartfrankenstien, accused child molester, Eric Bodenweiser ( the other two also support Eric) open carry crazy ( and just plain crazy) William Christy, heathen Pat Fish,,,,and the usual cast of fringe whackos
The money comes from like wise whackos out of state and Christopher is always begging thru his FB page etc.
Check out the Delaware Volunteer Guard on FB…..
THEY are so off the ledge I’m not sure if DHS should watch them or we should just all laugh at them. They talk of safe houses with nurses all over the Delmarva?…and shooting in the woods and camping etc…..
The only thing they are shooting off in the woods besides their mouth and their guns are their rocks…
Militias, we don’t need no stinking militias………
Just for the heck of it, I figured I’d check out what Hube had to say about Jeff Christopher. As far as I can tell, he has never mentioned the Sheriff, not even once. Curious.
Crazy is easily defined as people who want to infringe upon the constitutional rights of others with their inflammatory rhetoric. The right to bear and keep arms is an inalienable right granted under the United States Constitution and Delaware State Constitution
ARTICLE 1 § 20. Right to keep and bear arms.
Section 20. A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and State, and for hunting and recreational use.