GEORGETOWN ---- Over the last few months, Sussex County Sheriff Jeff Christopher has assailed his fellow county officials for overstepping their authority, proclaimed that God has brought him to his post to "fight for what is right" and declared that his job is a bulwark against tyranny.
His rhetoric places him in the company of a small but growing number of conservative county sheriffs who see themselves as the ultimate enforcers of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, The News Journal has found.
Christopher is involved in a political standoff with county and state officials over the authority of sheriffs in Delaware.
"I dare someone to turn the news on in the morning and not feel infringed upon somewhere, by some of the policies that are coming out of Washington, D.C., insofar as your own freedom. ... The sheriff was built into the process to protect (against) this kind of tyranny," Christopher told a local talk-radio audience last month. "If we tolerate this, we'll deserve what we get, we'll deserve everything that we get. It's called tyranny."
The so-called constitutional sheriffs' movement will reach a key point this week at its inaugural conference in Las Vegas, which Christopher plans to attend. About 115 sheriffs have registered for the event, headlined "No Sheriff Left Behind."
The project is spearheaded by former Arizona sheriff and tea party proponent Richard Mack, who gained national attention from a 1997 Supreme Court case he brought over enforcement of part of the Brady Bill gun control law.
Mack said Christopher is not alone, pointing to examples in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania where the role of the sheriff has decreased.
"I'm really concerned that the Eastern Seaboard, it appears, is diminishing and trying to diminish, and if not remove, the sheriff from public service altogether," he told The News Journal.
"No one supercedes the sheriff; he is the law of the county," Mack wrote in a 2009 booklet titled "The County Sheriff: America's Last Hope."
"There is a man who can stop the abuse, end the tyranny, and restore the Constitution, once again, as the supreme law of the land," Mack wrote. "You are the supreme keeper of the peace, you are the people's protector, you are the last line in the sand."
Mack's general views on limited government and the protection of constitutional rights by elected officials are in sync with most legal thinkers, said Michael R. Dimino Sr., an associate professor at Widener University School of Law who teaches constitutional law and criminal procedure.
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