There was no such thing as a police force when the United States were formed. The London Metropolitan Police in England, were established in 1829 and major American cities followed suit starting with Boston in 1838, New York City in 1845, and Chicago in 1851.
What most people have forgotten is the amount of resistance the people of London had toward the plague of “blue locusts”, as they were initially called. Sir Robert Peel is credited as the father of modern policing yet, what is often overlooked, is that Peel came from a family of politicians and control over policing “enforcers” was rightly viewed as a power grab.
Over time most people have become conditioned to the presence of these enforcers “just doing their jobs”, even when executing legislation that usurps delegated authority or is destructive of the security and domestic tranquility goals for which governments are supposedly instituted in the first place.
The tax-paying public must understand, once again, that police, sheriffs, constables, and special agents are, first and foremost, the agents of politicians and bureaucrats. Any public services they provide come only after servicing the mandates set forth by the politico-bureaucratic caste whose priorities are wholly different from the average, tax-paying, citizen.
There are groups advocating that Sheriffs should interpose when rogue officials try to enforce unlawful legislation and, while such protection may be crucial while constitutional order is being undermined, these local law enforcement officials are acting through state or local jurisdictional authority, and not on behalf of the entire federation.
As well intentioned as these groups may be, there is no such thing as a Constitutional Sheriff in the sense of the American federal republic. There may be state or local constitutions governing the authorities of these law enforcement agencies, however, the words “police” and “sheriff” do not exist in the United States Constitution. These entities are not part of the federal operating charter and, as such, have no standing in the US Constitution. They are not part of the Supreme Law of the Land.
However, the militia of the several states actually do have Constitutional standing and are specifically tasked with executing the laws of the union. Search the entire text of the Constitution and you will not find any other office, position, or institution deemed necessary to the function of the federal republic other than the militia. The militia are, in fact and deed, necessary to the security of a free state.
This means that in federal matters, on the ground at the local level, all police, sheriffs, constables, and special agents are constitutionally subordinate to the militia. They can carry out delegated functions on behalf of the militia, again so people may enjoy the division of labor, yet their discretionary authority cannot exceed that which is first held, and then granted, by the average citizen militia member.
That should be how equality under the law operates. Yet that is not how things currently are. The key civic institutions, necessary to the security of a free state, have been removed from contemporary political arrangements and the dysfunction in republican government, along with the protection of essential rights, is manifest.
The rights to life, liberty, and property with which to pursue happiness, including and especially arms as the best means to secure these rights, will never be secure so long as any class of people (namely the politico-bureaucratic class) enjoy a monopoly on the use of force. This includes the licensing, regulating, and taxing schemes used in various ways to bring about contemporary gun control.
Sound government and republican federalism cannot function under monopoly auspices. People cannot be secure in their lives, liberties, or possessions when politicians and bureaucrats control the institutionalized use of force in society. This is why direct citizen engagement in executing the laws, and every other conceivable security or justice function, is necessary to the security of a free state.