Loudoun County, Virginia’s far-left Board of Supervisors is pushing to strip the local sheriff’s office of most of its law enforcement duties and transition the county to a police department, which would be beholden to politicians rather than the people and the Constitution.
The plan to transition the county’s law enforcement duties from a constitutionally elected sheriff and the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office to a new, hypothetical county police department actually spun out of the left’s anti-police fervor of 2020. At the time, while other municipalities were looking for ways to defund law enforcement, Loudoun County’s far-left board of supervisors was looking for a way to control law enforcement.
By establishing a police department, the County Administrator and the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, which alongside the school board has become dominated by left-wing Democrats, would gain direct oversight and control of most law enforcement duties. A police chief, who would be chosen by local politicians as opposed to local voters, would report directly to board members and the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office would be largely resigned to the courts and the jails.
Democrat Mike Turner, who introduced the idea to the board two years ago, expressed outrage at the time that county supervisors don’t have control over virtually all aspects of the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, including hiring. Ironically, when Turner first brought the issue to the forefront in 2020, he actually complained about how the people get to elect their own Sheriff to run law enforcement in their own community, claiming it made things too “political” and saying that the only way to save Loudoun County law enforcement from politics would be to hand it over to the highly political board of supervisors.
While left-wing Democrat board members have attempted to frame their desire for control as a desire for “oversight” of the county’s law enforcement, locals have been quick to point out the open disdain for Republican-aligned Sheriff Mike Chapman expressed by many of the board’s supervisors, who have complained that he is too independent of them and their political leanings.
Chapman hasn’t been shy about opposing the board’s plans to subvert the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, telling local media that the move is all about “control.”
“This isn’t about service,” Loudoun County Sheriff Chapman told local media. “It isn’t about citizens. This is just about having power over a police chief rather than having a sheriff that answers directly to the citizens we serve.”
Often referred to as the US Constitution’s “last line of defense,” Sheriffs have played a key role in pushing back against the radical left’s agenda, especially regarding gun control and open borders. In Virginia, where a vast majority of counties rely on elected sheriffs to enforce the law, many of them helped spearhead the 2nd Amendment and constitutional “sanctuary” movement that grew in response to Democrat efforts in Richmond to enact gun control and outright gun confiscation legislation backed by Michael Bloomberg.
Speaking to the significance of American sheriffs, Virginia Congressional candidate Jarome Bell, himself an ardent backer of the aforementioned 2nd Amendment sanctuary movement, warned that transitioning from a constitutionally elected sheriff to a politically appointed police chief will put the sacred rights of Loudoun County citizens in jeopardy.
“The sheriffs are the lawful upholders of the Constitution,” Bell told National File.
If Loudoun County is to establish a police department in place of the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office, the county’s voters would have to approve of it in a referendum, something that hasn’t happened in Virginia since the 1990s. If that happens, Bell warns that “Loudoun County will become a cesspool of law breakers and will truly have no one left to protect the constitutional rights of the people.”
