“I don’t have to enforce any pretended legislation.” Jeff Christopher’s nuttiness unadorned
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.”
All the other quotes are pure craziness. This one is a lie, plain and simple:
“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.”
The only way he gets a constitutional amendment on the ballot is to first have two consecutive sessions of the General Assembly pass a constitutional amendment to allow the procedure.
Don’t even know where to start, but, is he saying he is a member of the executive branch and the governor is the legislative branch?
I don’t know why he can’t get through his head that the individual states get to choose how they want to do Law Enforcement, and there are nine states that have Sheriff’s who do not do general police work. In some states it is statewide, and some states it is by county and it just happens to be that here in Delaware, we have good checks and balances. If the Supt. of the State Police should be a goof, he can be removed by the Governor, and in fact this has happened in the past. If Sheriff Jeff had all these powers he wants, you are stuck with his crazy for the full tenure of his term, because we do not have any recourse for recall, and the chances of an impeachment in the House of Representatives is never going to happen. I for one am thrilled to have it the way it is. A professionally trained police force, not some goof elected and handed a badge and gun and someone saying, “here kid, go catch crooks.” The recent removal of a State Police Master Sgt. is proof that bad cops can be taken out fast. I lived in a southern state for 14 years where crooked deputies were protected by crooked sheriff’s and you were just stuck with ’em till the next election, and many a bad one got re-elected. As a boy in Mississippi in the 1960’s, I was terrified of sheriffs. My Dad was scared of them too. Please fellow D’s don’t let Sussex go the way of putrified corrupt southern sheriff style law enforcement. I am not saying Jeff Christopher is corrupt, but going his way opens the door for a future corrupt sheriff. I do think Sheriff Christopher is goofy, an an academic lightweight in understanding Delaware and our system, and the law. Go back to Maryland if you wanna be a cop style sheriff, just make sure you pick a county where they do law enforcement, because even in his native Maryland, there are counties where the sheriffs are like the ones here, no police patrol duties…
Look- all that he has left to is mis-lead the nuts jobs in other states that don’t know how the sheriff works in Delaware- and don’t know out laws- he is appealing to the ” black helicopter , conspiracy theory nut jobs”
He isn’t peddling is crap here coz none but the misfits believe it
He has found a golden goose- the mis- informed , low intelligence , low information voter who will write his scamming ass a check.
Don’t think tht this is not how he goes about filling his campaign war chest either. Folks in Sussex won’t give him money, he has already blown over 100k of tax dollars defending against his frivolous lawsuit
This is being done to grow his campaign fund to run for office……but it won’t matter HOW much he raises…….the southern Ds and the southern Rs ( well the ones with any brain, the rest went to the IPoD ) will never vote for him.
http://youtu.be/sNaau2uPFqI
“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,”
He wants to illegally add to his power over regular citizens and talks of freedom. I guess his supporters miss the irony.
If Duck Dynasty teaches us anything, it’s that you can make a lot of money peddling absolute crap as long as you say it with a southern accent.
To quote Bugs Bunny, “What a maroon!”.
If only we could return to the kind of society where gun battles between the police department and the sheriff’s department determined which laws got enforced. That’s the America I remember.