County sheriffs wield lethal power

County sheriffs wield lethal power, face little accountability: "A
failure of democracy"

County sheriff's officers are three times more lethal than city
police, a CBS News investigation has found.

More people were killed by U.S. law enforcement in 2023 than any other
year in the past decade, outpacing population growth eightfold. But
despite a focus on urban areas, fatal police violence is increasingly
happening in small town America at the hands of sheriffs, the top law
enforcement officials in counties nationwide.

The revelation is part of the findings of a yearlong reporting effort
that documented chronic misconduct in sheriff's offices and oversight
failures that can enable abuses to go unchecked. The consequences can
be fatal. But the majority of those cases go unreported, in violation
of state and federal laws, making patterns of abuse harder to detect
and stop.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/county-sheriffs-deaths-accountability/