Agents from the Department of Homeland Security (dhs) were deployed across the nation over the past week to monitor tea party activists peacefully protesting the Obama administration’s alleged abuse of Internal Revenue Service powers to target conservative political groups. Local news stations covering these protests showed both photographs and videos of large dhs trucks, along with armed dhs personnel dressed in police uniforms. At one Los Angeles rally, a dhs helicopter was even spotted flying overhead.

Among the most serious concerns raised by critics of this monitoring is why the federally controlled dhs was called in to perform the lawful function of a local police agency.

Outside of a few well-defined federal crimes such as counterfeiting, treason and piracy, U.S. constitutional law mandates that law enforcement be a function of state and local government. The Constitution does not grant the government any power to establish a pan-national police force, and the 10th Amendment states that the powers prohibited from or not delegated to the federal government are reserved for the states respectively, or to the people.

This is the reason there are approximately 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies in the United States. When law enforcement responsibilities are divided among 18,000 agencies accountable to directly elected local officials, it becomes extremely difficult for any one person to set themselves up as a tyrant. If a county sheriff abuses his or her office, that sheriff is held directly accountable to the people of the county.

There are no directly elected sheriffs in the Department of Homeland Security, however, as each officer reports up a chain of command that does not include any directly elected officials until it reaches the president of the United States. As such, the dhs was founded with a limited jurisdiction designed to protect American citizens from terrorist attacks.

So, unless there was evidence that someone at one of last week’s tea party protests was planning a terrorist attack, the dhs officials present were usurping the constitutional role of local law enforcement.

These facts should not come as a surprise, however, as the dhs published its intention to move away from its ostensible purpose of fighting terrorism in a report released early last year. In a white paper presented to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security is encouraged to evolve into a federalized police force that can monitor Americans in any town and prevent threats from fellow citizens.

In order to accomplish this aim, the report lays out a detailed plan in which the dhs (and some other federal agencies) take control of the personnel decisions currently made by local police chiefs and county sheriffs. A key component of this proposal is the establishment of “fusion centers” to promote collaboration between federal and local law enforcement. In other words: Unelected federal officials would run (or at least strongly influence) America’s local police departments.

In another white paper, sponsored by the rand Corporation, the military is urged to blend military support with civilian law enforcement structures. Under this model, the military would cooperate with the dhs, share assets with the National Guard and prepare rapid reaction units for national emergencies. Perhaps this is the reason why the government recently overturned a 200-year-old law that strictly limits the military from becoming involved in civilian law enforcement.

While such plans to replace local law enforcement agencies with a federalized force are still mostly in the planning stage, the use of the dhs to monitor civilian protests shows that the government is taking such plans seriously.

As world threats increase and economic conditions worsen, the government is considering a federalized police force as a way to increase national security. It may be true that a national police agency would operate more efficiently than 18,000 local police agencies. The primary question, however, should be: What will such an agency be more effective at doing?

While the intentions of those postulating such security strategies may be good, America’s founders understood human nature’s tendency toward tyranny and so established a system to keep power out of the hands of any one individual. This is why constitutional law vests most law enforcement responsibilities in the hands of directly elected local officials.

The American Constitution is being attacked and the rule of law is quickly disintegrating into a moral morass where everyone does what is right in their own eyes. Bible prophecy foretells of a time of economic collapse and civil pandemonium to beset the end-time nations of Israel in the near future. To learn more about this time of crisis and the time of great hope that lies beyond it, read Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry’s new booklet, America Under Attack.