DBWI: The FBI didn't replace state police?

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I know it was quite daring when LBJ used the race riots in Alabama to issue an executive order expanding the powers of the FBI to directly supersede all local and state police law enforcment authority across the Union.

Especially since it massively expanded the scope and power of the federal government while simultaneously wiping out all local and state police power.

But what if he didn't? How would the current crime rate and incarceration rate we see in the US be different?
 
OOC: Could the FBI become a national police force in fact? Yes. But why, oh why, would anyone ever want to replace the state forces? A situation like Canada's RCMP where local jurisdictions contract with the national force to avoid having to support their own provincial/state forces might make some sense. But to replace ALL of them?
 
OOC: I do not believe this is Constitutionally legal. State and Federal law are distinct entities, prosecuted by different forces, overseen by different court systems.
 
Some American state police forces were corrupt, racially-biased, brutal to prisoners, etc. In the worst states, the only short-term fix was to import federal police (e.g. FBI) with no connections to local gangsters.
The only other option was federalising (state) National Guard or bringing in soldiers. When Governor George McGovern got too uppity, Feds threatened to send in regular army paratroopers, but eventually pulled a legal slight-of-hand by federalising state NG. Federalising NG removed them from the individual state's chain of command and forced them to take orders from the Pentagon.
NG are not trained to walk a beat, but could provide disaster relief or riot squads. One role of riot squads is telling local police when to back down.

As for the RCMP: not all provinces can afford police academies, forensic labs, SWAT Teams, airplane's, helicopters, tracking dogs and the long-term costs of personnel-management.

It is only the wealthier provinces (Quebec and Ontario) that can afford provincial police forces.
New Brunswick raised a provincial highway patrol during the 1980s, but it did not last very long.
The RCMP struggles to train young constables for all the different jurisdictions. Traditionally, young RCMP constables were posted to isolated detachments in the Arctic or thinly-settled farmlands on the prairies.
OTOH now a young RCMP constable is equally likely to be dropped into Newton (Surrey, B.C.) a distinctly urban environment with more drug addicts, sex-workers, petty criminals and poverty than anyone can count.
 
I imagine that somewhere down the road, the local law enforcement agencies (possibly not the state troopers, and not the PDs of larger cities like NYC or LA) would have seen their job outsourced to private contractors, and I don't even want to think about the results.
 
Well, the Dixiecrats would have not become the major player they later did in their National American Party. They did left a nasty mark in national politics even though the winner-takes-all system murdered them politically in less than fifteen years.

OOC: I do not believe this is Constitutionally legal. State and Federal law are distinct entities, prosecuted by different forces, overseen by different court systems.

OCC: true, though the line is somewhat blurred when you can appeal to federal courts, though not always. Oberfell v. Hodges is an example of letigation against state laws being appealed to federal courts.
 
OOC:

I hate to pour cold water on DBWIs, which is my favorite format on the blog, but I just can't come up with any way how this could happen.

For start, this is the federal police force, not the FBI: https://www.usmarshals.gov/

Then you have this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

So a country capable of passing, repeatedly, something like the Posse Comitatus Act is supposed to abolish state and local police forces.

The Department of Homeland Security could only be created in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.

Even the POD only really affects the Southern states. Increased Justice Department oversight of what had been state government functions happened, but only where there was an obvious history of local racial discrimination, not across the entire US.

The one POD I can come up with for something like this is a fascist takeover in the 1930s, since Hitler (but no other fascist regime) did abolish state governments in Germany.
 
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