re: “Maybe these articles might help clear it up.”
So, this is a “punt” down field then?
Recall this adage:
Remember.... If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well.
Well, _Jim ..... once again, another Free Republic person who’ll throw darts without explaining anything themselves.
I’ve been on the street, at crime scenes, etc with various law enforcement agencies, city-state-federal, and the Fed’s never bossed anyone around. Yes, there are times when they can claim jurisdiction over things, if it’s one of their operations, and departments will defer to that, most of the time. However, if the Fed’s shoot one and the locals want to investigate it, they can and there’s nothing the feds can do about it, except to lawyer up like any civilian.
If the locals want to give up their authority, they can. But from seeing it firsthand, that is becoming less common.
Notice when you see photographs of raids and large scale operations done by the Feds. Interesting that so many where vests that have, POLICE, emblazoned on there, when they’re not cops. When the complaints start rolling in, it takes a while to calm folks down and explain to them that it wasn’t any of the local officers doing what was done.
And the Feds, generally, have a policy where they just ignore people, hoping they’ll go away. The Feds play by a completely different set of rules than the locals. Because of that, the locals are, more and more, tired of having to clean up their mess.
When you see the FBI come in, on it’s white horse to ‘help’, many times that the local agency turning things over to them because they have more pressing needs, less equipment and the responsibility can be transferred over to someone else. Notice how so many events, that should be a local issue, are amazingly turned over to the FBI?