Sheriff In Barry Co. Wants To Start A Posse

Normally when I hear the term "posse", its either during an old western movie or a rap video, but a sheriff in Barry County wants to create his own posse.

If what we saw January 6th at the nations capitol is anything like a posse, I'm not sure that a posse would be the best thing for Barry County, Michigan, or any other county.

According to WOOD, Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf has been firing off some Facebook posts about posses and militias being more lawful than the recently arrested members of those type of groups like those involved in the kidnapping plot of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Members of the community are very concerned about his messaging.

Usually when someone is upset with who is in office, next election they vote to have them removed by voting for someone else. I don't think creating your own posse is anyway to accomplish anything positive for the good of the entire community.

What if those is the community who didn't like Sheriff Dar Leaf and his beliefs formed their own posse and took over his office? That is how third world countries handle things, we are supposed to handle them by voting and using our rights to peacefully protest when we disagree with anyone in leadership.

Well apparently Sheriff Leaf is living in the wildest mentality and clinging on to laws that may have made sense when they were created but unlawful in the times we are in now.

Leaf has been rallying people on social media to support local militias. Aren't the police supposed to protect us from this king of thing?

The wild thing is there are actually people who want to become a part of Leaf's posse or militia group...there's not much difference between the two. Again, if you don't like the president, governor, mayor, judge, prosecuting attorney or sheriff, next election, don't vote for them and vote for another candidate. It is a whole lot safer and how a democracy works. Anything else is authoritarian.

The professor of homeland security law at Western Michigan University-Cooley Law School Michael McDaniel said, "it certainly seems to me that if the sheriff was to use untrained, unlicensed, inexperienced members of the public as a law enforcement force, that he is opening up to the county of Barry board of supervisors to all sorts of liability because there is a statue that says the county board of supervisors have to indemnify the sheriff. If they did so, that would be very shortsighted."

Even the director of the Michigan Sheriffs' association does not agree or support the words coming from Leaf's social media posts to the point of condemning his statements all together.

Hopefully the people of Barry County will consider Leaf's comments the next time they vote for sheriff. Then again, maybe they agree with Leaf. I guess we'll see next election.