In August, as uprisings continued to sweep the United States in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, Virginia state senator Louise Lucas found herself charged with a felony, in connection with damage to a Confederate monument in the city of Portsmouth. The police cited a rarely used law against damaging war memorials, and they went so far as to name the city’s elected commonwealth attorney, Stephanie Morales, as a potential witness, in an apparent attempt to force her to recuse herself from the case.

The audacity of this story, featuring the targeting of two black elected officials by mostly white cops, made national headlines. But it highlighted a much more widespread problem: the willingness of police departments to interfere in local politics, sometimes with apparent indifference to the elected officials who are, in theory, their bosses. In a period of democratic-socialist success at the ballot box, as well as growing criticism of the carceral state, these dynamics present the Left with some difficult questions.

The problem is not new, and it’s not even just progressives who face this threat. Journalist Jake Blumgart spoke to elected officials around the country who described acts of intimidation against those who would challenge police power. In the city of Costa Mesa, California, for example, conservative Republican council member Jim Righeimer described being followed home and intimidated by a private investigator working for a police union.