US law enforcement - jurisdiction issues
Searched: jurisdiction, FBI vs Sheriff, federal jurisdiction disputes, and variations thereof. I also found a previous community post, here, but I'd like to get a bit more detail.
My characters are in present-day Montana. The feds (DEA, FBI, and Border Patrol) are in town to deal with pot being smuggled in from Canada and spread through several states. The Sheriff's Dept is cooperating, but not enthusiastically. Everything is going reasonably smoothly until some information about an upcoming raid is leaked. Everyone blames everyone else, and I want things to get heated. The raid wasn't part of the overall pot investigation, it was on a meth lab that only seems to be distributing locally, but the feds believe there is a link between the pot and the meth.
So my question is -- if the local Sheriff (a bit of a hot head) wanted to stop cooperating with the feds, what could he do? Or at least threaten to do...
First, if a jurisdiction dispute gets really heated, who is the final arbiter? Like, would they go to court? State or Federal, or is there some other body that would decide?
Also, is the Sheriff's department required to actively cooperate? Thus far, they've been giving the feds space in their office, etc. If they refused to do this, or refused to give the feds records, etc., would the feds need to get a court order, or...?
If the Sheriff's dept continued to investigate a crime or situation that the feds had claimed, what would happen?
I don't know, is there other stuff I'm missing? Thanks for any help!
My characters are in present-day Montana. The feds (DEA, FBI, and Border Patrol) are in town to deal with pot being smuggled in from Canada and spread through several states. The Sheriff's Dept is cooperating, but not enthusiastically. Everything is going reasonably smoothly until some information about an upcoming raid is leaked. Everyone blames everyone else, and I want things to get heated. The raid wasn't part of the overall pot investigation, it was on a meth lab that only seems to be distributing locally, but the feds believe there is a link between the pot and the meth.
So my question is -- if the local Sheriff (a bit of a hot head) wanted to stop cooperating with the feds, what could he do? Or at least threaten to do...
First, if a jurisdiction dispute gets really heated, who is the final arbiter? Like, would they go to court? State or Federal, or is there some other body that would decide?
Also, is the Sheriff's department required to actively cooperate? Thus far, they've been giving the feds space in their office, etc. If they refused to do this, or refused to give the feds records, etc., would the feds need to get a court order, or...?
If the Sheriff's dept continued to investigate a crime or situation that the feds had claimed, what would happen?
I don't know, is there other stuff I'm missing? Thanks for any help!