Because he is a fascinating crackpot, and because someone might want a handy reference at some point, I’ve taken Christopher’s quotes directly from the WND article linked to previously.
“Right now the threat to individual Americans from al-Qaida and other groups is nowhere near the threat we face from officials in our own country who are working at taking away our liberties,” Delaware Sheriff Jeff Christopher told WND.
“The battle of liberty is never over. We are attempting to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot overturning the law stripping us of our arrest authority.”
“I believe the intent of taking away the authority of the sheriff,” Christopher said, “is to set up a situation where the state police have the power to enforce unconstitutional legislation while preventing the sheriff from being able to stand against them.”
“Whatever mandate comes down from the governor goes down to the colonel, who is appointed by the governor and passes it down to the troops,” Christopher explained. “They are basically subject to any type of order that comes down, and if they are insubordinate and resist it they are going to lose their job, whereas the sheriff can say, ‘I’m sorry, you have no control over me. I am a stand-alone entity; I am autonomous from your mandate because I am an elected member of the executive branch and you are of the legislative branch, and I don’t have to enforce any pretended legislation. All I have to do is serve the people, and if they don’t want it, I’m not forcing it upon them.’”
“What do the people of Connecticut expect (regarding attempts at gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hill Elementary shootings which left twenty children and six adult staff dead). They don’t have sheriffs to stand in their traditional role to nullify the law and refuse to allow gun confiscation,” Christopher said. “If they still had sheriffs, the governor or state police would not even be thinking of confiscation. That is why the sheriff is elected instead of appointed. He owes his allegiance to the people.”
“He is to be the chief member of the executive branch in a county to ensure there are no overreaching governments from the county level, to the state and federal level,” he said.
“If there is no dutiful entity beholden to the idea of protecting and interposing on behalf of the people, then none exists. The county officials will mostly do whatever the state police say because they have contracted with them to be their authority,” he continued. “But if you have a separate authority that is inserted at the county level, then you have a balance of power in the form of an executive leader in the sense he or she is elected to do the will of the people and not the will of the state or the federal government. They can say, ‘Among my powers and among my duties is to protect the liberties and freedoms of the people within my county, and therefore I can nullify or refuse to exercise execution of any kind of unconstitutional law that forces upon the people the will of the corporate.”
“The sheriff’s job is to protect the individual people first and not the people as a corporate group,” Christopher said. “When you do that you have a republic; when you go the other way you have tyranny.”