As of last Sunday, officers have to establish probable cause rather than reasonable suspicion before arresting a suspect. That means if a suspect matches some but not all of the description in an APB, then the officers have to let him or her go.
Sheriff Jim Johnson of Lee County, Mississippi says amateurs are in charge of law enforcement in Washington state.
"You have this legislation that is mainly written by individuals that are sitting down at a desk for months on end and deciding what you should do in a split second," Johnson laments.
The new laws cover virtually every aspect of policing, including removing protections that keep officers from being held personally liable for their official duties and limiting the tools police can use in the discharge of their duties. All of it, according to Johnson, is based on a lie.
"The statistics, from the local level all the way up to the federal level, do not in any shape, form, or fashion show the justification for any of this to be done," he asserts. "To have this overall thought that law enforcement are out here as vigilantes just taking advantage of people is a false narrative."
He says the result for Washington and any other state that models its laws in such a way will be chaos.
"You're going to have a community where there are more criminals than there are law-abiding citizens," Johnson warns. "This is the agenda that's being pushed -- that law-abiding citizens, law and order, rules and regulations are something of the past."
