The sheriff is elected, and there's enough communities in the South where shitting on blacks is a way of life. Do you remember the case of the kid who went to prison because he had birdshit on his hood that the drug quicktest identified as cocaine? Dude only got out quickly because he played football (for I think UGA) and the coach intervened. That stuff, friend, is government-approved reality for many.

Police in small towns are staffed by the good ol' boys club that have no problem with Bob selling cocaine because most of the force has been friends with him since 2nd grade, but God help you if you drive down their highways with an out of state plate or the wrong skin color.

This

Here's a good example. Sheriff, under the influence, attempts to interfere with the arrest of a stabbing suspect, buddy of his. https://youtu.be/pKraZkl0-eA

We know about this one sheriff because his staff stood up to him and he got arrested but it tells you a lot about the quality of local law enforcement in small towns.

Historically giving power to local politics in the United States has been (sometimes) used to discriminate against populations. This is effectively what the Jim Crow south was, legal but unequal.

This isn’t to say that federal policies don’t also have issues. If we think something is a right of all citizens (Such as to not be subject to abuse by the police), that only really takes hold if it is applied across the nation, which is federal.

I think the parent is suggesting akin to a Tyranny of the Majority with a locally elected police.

For example, if I live in a small town that where 80% of the people intent their C code with tabs and I use spaces, they could theoretically elect a police chief who espouses tabs-jingoism and treats spaces-programmers less fairly.

The full sentence went

> Leaving it up to local voters makes it sound like it's ok for a police dept to misbehave, eg harass minorities or evade accountability, as long as the majority voters in that city/county are ok with it.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority