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>It's the eternal "who watches the watchers" problem.

Odd. Plenty of other countries manage watching their watchers just fine...

>Some people propose having a very local, municipal for small towns, or even smaller for large towns, mercenary force with license to use lethal force that answers to direct democracy of the area they are assigned to and nobody else.

... and they don't even need local murder squads answering only to populist rage to do it.

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I described elected sheriffs, but, if you feel that police "local murder squads", I don't know what to tell you.

The core issue is they are paid your tax dollars, but you have very little input or control on what and how they do, and municipalities in general rely on the fact that moving away is high friction to retain citizens.

Unfortunately you cannot easily fire them, if they underperform.

I don't know where you live but "mercenary force with license to use lethal force that answers to direct democracy of the area" doesn't reasonably describe the role of sheriff anywhere I've been.

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