![John Furlong appeared before the Palm Coast City Council. He identified himself as the “director of Flagler County for CSPOA, which is the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.](https://i0.wp.com/flaglerlive.com/wp-content/uploads/furlong.jpg?resize=1000%2C523&ssl=1)
On July 23 John Furlong appeared before the Palm Coast City Council. He identified himself as the “director of Flagler County for CSPOA, which is the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association.” He told the council that “we’re working in Flagler County, in all 67 counties in the state of Florida, to make every county in the state of Florida a constitutional county.”
He did not say how Flagler County was not a constitutional county, or how its government organisms like the City Council could legally function if they were not constitutional. He did not say who that “we” are. His association has no state registration, so you can’t check. The chamber was empty, so Furlong did not seem to be representing anyone local, at least not anyone who’d be bothered to show up. These “we” of dubious organizations tend to be more of an “I” pretending behind plural pronouns and social media masks to be, like gangs, more phalanx than clique.
There is a national organization. Several investigations of the group give us an idea of its origin and purpose. It is not the sort of organization the Palm Coast City Council or any local government–or anyone, really–should be associated with, at least not if local governments don’t want to be associated with extremists, bigots, and vigilantes who see federal authority in particular and government in general as the enemy.
The Anti-Defamation League reports: “The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) is a large anti-government extremist group whose primary purpose it is to spread anti-government propaganda to, and recruit from, law enforcement personnel, especially county sheriffs and sheriff’s deputies.”
The association believes, illegally, that a sheriff’s powers preempt federal and state laws and local ordinances, and that the sheriff has the authority not to enforce any law the sheriff, and the sheriff alone, considers unconstitutional. In other words, Sheriff Staly would outrank the FBI, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and all state and federal courts. We’ve heard this before: it’s sovereign citizen extremism behind a police shield. It’s what perverted the states’ rights movement during Jim Crow, when the likes of George Wallace and Theodore Bilbo and Ross Barnett liked to claim that federal law had no authority in their state.
Last year, after a Texas Tribune investigation reported that “Some 50 Texas sheriffs and numerous elected officials have attended trainings on the unsupported notion that sheriffs can single-handedly overrule state and federal law,” the state’s law enforcement commission investigated, then prohibited granting state education credits to those attending. When even Texas takes a stand against constitutional
wackos, it’s time to stop being solicitous or pretend to merely be lending an ear and to take a similar stand.
The record of the organization’s leadership is more sinister than its theoretical crack-smoking. The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association’s founder is Richard Mack, a former sheriff in Arizona, a former Oath Keeper–another anti-government extremist organization that recruits from police and military ranks–and a gun-supremacist. After his sheriff days he adopted militia tactics. He was willing to use women and children as human shields against federal agents during the Bundy Ranch standoff in Nevada 10 years ago. In 2009 he took part in a Second Amendment march synchronized to the anniversary of Tim McVeigh’s terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, the bombing that murdered 168 people, 19 of them children.
Mack then founded the CSPOA posse scelestus to oppose gun legislation. He expanded the mission to constitutional vigilantism by glomming onto Covid’s masking and vaccine hysterics before taking to the John Birch lecture circuit to spread the gospel of McVeigh, Alex Jones–owner of the disinformation site Infowars–and supremely white conspiracies.
The organization’s current leader, Sam Bushman, owns an online radio station called Liberty News Radio. Top story as I write this: “BOYCOTT THE SATANIC ANTI-GOD OLYMPICS.” It features James Edwards’s “Political Cesspool” radio show, whose mission statement “is pro-White.” The Cesspool has “featured a wide roster of white supremacists, anti-Semites and other extremists, such as the longtime Klan leader David Duke and Holocaust denier Willis Carto,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The CSPOA national conference Bushman organized in Las Vegas last April “drew a parade of felons, disgraced politicians, election deniers, conspiracy theorists and, in the end, a few sheriffs,” according to NBC.
This is the organization whose local ordinance John Furlong on July 23 told the Palm Coast City Council it should adopt. This is the organization whose creed Furlong espoused to claim that “we need the constitution to be the steadfast of our nation, of every citizen of every group.” He urged the council to enact an ordinance “to give more teeth to help the sheriff and his deputies and his CER team, which is community emergency response teams, to enact if anything they need help to keep peace and order in the county.”
Not for nothing, but emergency management is Jonathan Lord’s domain, not the sheriff’s, and it’s a safe bet to say that neither Lord nor the sheriff have had trouble keeping “peace and order,” or would want to be part of an ordinance that would violate at least half the original articles of the Bill of Rights. Did I mention that what John Furlong is proposing, even in the hands of our esteemed sheriff, is illegal? Sheriffs “have no authority, not under their state constitutions or implementing statutes to decide what’s constitutional and what’s not constitutional. That’s what courts have the authority to do, not sheriffs,” says Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University.
Furlong is urging the County Commission to pass the same ordinance and claiming, correctly, that one Florida county passed something like it last year. Collier County calls itself, with a straight face one must assume, a “sanctuary county for the Bill of Rights” (sic). So have a few other counties around the country.
From Pandoras about Agenda 21 to fluoride alarmists to anti-vaxxers to birthers and white replacement theorists, it’s not unusual for the well of local governments to ooze kooks and crackpots at public comment time. That’s what public comment time is for. It’s a good pressure valve, and it can be a gauge of society’s more typhoidal tendencies.
John Furlong’s Wilford Brimley demeanor makes him look every bit the nice guy, like everyone’s favorite uncle, as involved as the next guy in what he must think, probably with little research, is a terrific idea, though he’s not alien to credibility gaps. Last August he was among a few fevered voices trying to bully the council into conducting a forensic audit of all city accounts, claiming, without evidence of course, that he hears “too much going on” that’s “concerning.”
So why make an issue of John Furlong’s proposal to the council? Because of the shocking response he got from Mayor David Alfin, a man who lost a son in the line of duty, a federal agent killed with his partner with the same murderous disregard for law enforcement that CSPOA’s history is soaked in.
This is what Alfin told Furlong: “Your initiative is very near and dear to my heart, my family’s heart as well. So I would ask if you would reach out to me so that we can have a one on one conversation so that I can understand it better and more thoroughly. And obviously I would ask that you might contact each city council member individually so that they can better understand some of the details underlying what you’re trying to do. And if you have the time, I’m sure that we would be able to find time to do that.”
Alfin never says as much to most residents who bring serious, legitimate everyday concerns to the council. I’m sure we can all agree that, say, Royal Palms Parkway’s third-world memory lanes or a decent vacation-rental ordinance or this year’s debate on whether to plunder the city’s treasury with another harebrained rollback are more important issues by astronomical units of magnitude than entertaining anti-government propaganda.
Yet to this representative of an organization hardly distinguishable from a hate group, Alfin–one of whose opponents again in this year’s mayoral election is the former sovereign citizen Alan Lowe–is willing to extend the red carpet and start turning council and administration upside down to help with the “details” of what Furlong is trying to do.
It is inexplicable. Alfin is not an uninformed man. He is absolutely not uninformed about the history of domestic defiance and terrorism against federal authority, though he appears to be uninformed about enablers like CSPOA. I’m going to choose to think that Alfin, whose heart can sometimes trick him into forbearance for all the wrong reasons, committed a well-intentioned but catastrophic misjudgment, as often happens when the fetish for law enforcement is brandished in front of candidates running for their lives. Otherwise, his response would be unforgivable.
We–by which I mean we, 70,062 Palm Coast voters–should hope Alfin and the council did have some meetings to better understand where this poisoned proposal is coming from, but not with John Furlong. They could start with their attorney. They could start with five seconds on Google. They could start with their common sense and, failing that, their conscience. Palm Coast and Flagler County governments have better things to do than give aid and succor to hate and dog whistles hiding behind the Constitution.
Just a thought says
Surely Alfin was able to step back after the meeting and realize that invited a wolf in sheep’s clothing into his inner sanctum?
Skibum says
Oh hell no! Those who prescribe to the so-called “constitutional” sheriffs group are extremist MAGA supporting wackos themselves who have blatantly look the other way instead of enforcing state criminal laws when the violators are extremist idiots who these unethical sheriffs agree with and do not want to see held accountable for law violations these sheriffs see as somehow in conflict with their wacko version of the U.S. Constitution. And I am not the only career law enforcement officer, present or retired, who would immediately disavow and refuse to support for ANY law enforcement leadership or elected position if our sheriff or others here gives this wacko group even a little support or foothold. I have seen firsthand the despicable and unethical positions this group has taken in other jurisdictions, and believe me, we do NOT want to have any of that nonsense because it just makes it easier for right-wing extremists to get away with criminal activity while a sheriff directs his deputies to look the other way and not make arrests. It is like what Trump has been saying about the Jan. 6 convicted felons who are in prison. He calls them “hostages” and has vowed to pardon them, even though hundreds of lawbreakers who were hauled into court for various felonies, including I might add, assaulting and seriously injuring many law enforcement officers, had their days in court and were convicted by juries of their peers. None of them are hostages, they are criminals, thugs. I associate this sheriffs group with the same types of individuals who think that regardless of what state laws say, they can pick and choose which laws to enforce and who to hold accountable, which violates the oaths of office that they took when they were elected. I say to them: GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE, GO BACK TO THE HOLES YOU CAME OUT OF!
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
Let us not forget that two Sheriffs Deputies sent off the bus from Flagler County with “insurrectionists” to the January 6th “Rally”.
Ben Hogarth says
If you have to say it in your organizations name…….
Kind of like how the “Holy Roman Empire” (Middle Ages Germany) was neither Holy nor “Roman”… and it was far from being an organized empire as it was largely a collection of fiefdoms with no unifying nation.
So when I hear “Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association” – what I’m hearing is that they are neither Constitutional nor Peaceful. And after reading this article – yep, sure checks out. The loony toons have badges too.
If they weren’t such a clear and present danger to American Democracy, I’d say “laugh them out of every room.” But what they are suggesting is no laughing matter.
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
This is what Alfin told Furlong: “Your initiative is very near and dear to my heart, my family’s heart as well. So I would ask if you would reach out to me so that we can have a one on one conversation so that I can understand it better and more thoroughly. And obviously I would ask that you might contact each city council member individually so that they can better understand some of the details underlying what you’re trying to do. And if you have the time, I’m sure that we would be able to find time to do that.”
If Alfin can’t figure out this clown’s proposal then he just needs to drop out of the race.
Sheriff Staly needs to get ahead of this ‘constitutional sheriff” BS and denounce it along with making sure no in his office joins the likes of these kind of groups. If he can’t then he should step aside as well.
CPFL says
Being registered as Constitution Party of Florida for my political standing, I am all about the Constitution and it being upheld. I would never agree with sovereign state lunatics, this actually might be even crazier than them. Not shocked that some of our council would listen to this propaganda and eat it up.
Laurel says
I think I told this story once before, but if so, I’ll do it again. When I was a teenybopper, my folks and I took refuge at the Governor’s Club Hotel in Ft. Lauderdale during a hurricane. I was listening to my little transistor radio to WQAM (Tiger Radio) and the DJ was following the storm. He said that the winds knocked down a large portion of a billboard featuring the John Birch Society. All that the storm left was “Help Save the John.” As a kid, I thought that was pretty funny. As I got older, the full meaning became apparent, and it became even funnier.
It has been several decades since I was a teenybopper, yet, the same nasty, bigoted bullshit survives. How sad. What the hell happened to all the hippies? What happened to “Peace, Love and Rock and Roll?” Why does hatred still live in the hearts of people, who need to suppress those with simple differences like melanin or gender? Why is it so damned important to bully those they fear into submission?
Bullies are the most gutless of all people.
Barbara Maloney says
Your research in to the organization appears to be biased either by sources you used or your own views. The organization and teachings are totally aligned with the constitution and protections it affords to we the people. The Corporate governances along with statuary codes are what is out of balance. Most, including the writer of this article, have no idea that your constitutional rights have been stripped away as you have become a corporate commodity.(your name in all caps)
That group of Sheriffs are truly trying to protect we the people and preserve our rights. If there is a conflict then it’s because those in government have lost sight of what they are supposed to be doing and whom they are serving.
Congratulations to whomever supports this movement. I agree we need a Sheriff’s department that will serve and protect under the constitution.
The dude says
Tyranny always starts with a group who knows the real truth… always
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
Wow “Barbara”. I’ll give you a special reward, It’s called the Special Bus Award. For with all the naysayers to Pierre over the years, about what he has written, you can pat yourself on the back as being the biggest one. So celebrate tonight in your Sheep PJ’s, with your sippy cup of that special Kool-Aid and munch down on red snowflake cookies. You earned it.
Duncan says
Barbara, I certainly don’t understand your perspective.
I had never heard of CSPOA, but it took me all of 30 minutes to research and come to the conclusion that this is a dangerous group of tyrants that are a threat to democracy and not interested in law and order, as it is typically defined (by our laws).
They appear to simply be interested in furthering their own agenda while mascaraing as a group of constitutional scholars – constitution misfits is more like it.
What we have is not perfect, but I believe it close to what was intended by our founders.
CSPOA seems no different than any other dangerous extremist group.
We can agree to disagree.
tulip says
Is this the same “sovereign” type of thing that Alan Lowe believes in since he used to declare himself a sovereign citizen? Be very careful of who you vote for. There are a lot ofnew people here that have no idea who some of these candidates are. I’m voting no for Lowe, as I have all the other times he has run. Interesting how this subject appears right around primary time.
PAULETTE HATFIELD says
I think the Mayor was more concerned for the safety of our community. To insult Furlough in front of the City Council and all of us residents watching it live on YouTube, I did see the mayor write something down and pass it along and I imagine it was something like “keep calm and let’s get this guy off of the microphone”. Th speaker is out of the Chamber and forgotten. Done.
Jackson says
Constitutional Sheriffs? (excuse me while I throw up)
We need better education…
The word sheriff is not mentioned in the US Constitution.
Sheriffs have nothing to do with the Constitution of 1787. In fact, it would be an insult to sheriffs to call them ‘Constitutional’.
Sheriffs deal with the man, not the legal ‘person’ created at your birth, the all caps NAME that appears on all the bills you get in the mail. That all caps entity is a corpse…a corporation, a dead entity, a fiction created on paper. Police deal with the legal person. Police are policy enforcers (Codes and Statutes).
Sheriffs deal with the man under Common Law. And they act on a sworn claim of loss, injury or harm by another man. Sheriffs are elected by men and women, and are not suppose to be concerned with the private legal society (Codes and Statutes). They are suppose to operate in the real world, not the fictional world created on paper.
So why not Constitutional? Because The Constitution of 1787 created the tiny federal zone, whose jurisdiction is the 10 square miles (Washington DC) and any territory temporarily granted to them by the states (upon good behavior) for forts, dockyards, etc. The Constitution is ‘The Law of the Land’ (within federal territory only). See Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 which spells it out.
Jim says
I’d bet some decent money that Alfin will very shortly disavow this group CSPOA stating that he didn’t realize exactly what this group represents. Or, maybe, he truly thinks we need to be a “constitutional county”. Either way, this just fires me up more to make sure he is not the mayor of this city after the election. I expect the mayor to be cautious when responding to people like this and if he didn’t know who or what they are, even more cautious. To say this is disappointing is putting it mildly. Seems to me someone is asleep at the wheel.
I hope the rest of the council (except Danko) recognize this group for what they are and decline to even meet with any of them.
I fail to understand why it has become more “mainstream” to deny anything legal that some group just doesn’t like. From picking “fake electors’ when an election is lost to somehow concluding that local sheriffs are the supreme law of the land. Local police have plenty of power already and I definitely want to be assured there are other police agencies with the power and authority to look over their shoulder and intervene if that becomes necessary. We seem to have a good Sheriff in Staly but, even so, he and his department need to be aware they can be called to justice by higher law agencies. And Staly won’t be the Sheriff forever and who knows what the next one might believe?
With all the issues facing this city, it is a real shame that Alfin wants to give this garbage some of council’s time and energy. Another reason why he is not the person for the job.