> I'm curious -- if a county sheriff's office demands bribes, what is the correct legal course of action in the US? Do you bring it to county court? To the governor's office? To state police? To state court?

I imagine anything other than "pay the bribe" would suffice.

Except not paying the bribe then opens you up to all sorts of incidental interactions with the sheriff's department.

I have stacks of anecdotal interactions with local level police (both sheriff and police) that nothing surprises me anymore.

Yes, and if Apple were a regular private citizen, I'd feel very sympathetic towards them here, but in this case Apple is basically the most powerful possible other party in a blackmail attempt imaginable. They're a $2 trillion company whose employees make up a significant section of the population of that area, including something like 500 full time lawyers.

I'm glad you brought it up as extortion.

You could record it yourself.

I would go to the FBI since this is happening under the color of law, which is considered a civil rights violation. The ACLU should be interested too.

The ACLU probably would be involved already, but they don't care about the 2nd amendment for some reason. It's a "lesser" constitutional right it seems...

They have taken a few 2A cases in more recent years. But true, it gets less attention.

The article says that the iPads never changed hands because the Attorney General's office started investigating during all this. It is likely that what happened is another applicant was also asked for a bribe at around the same time and reported it to the Attorney General of California. You can report a myriad of crimes directly to the AG's office: https://oag.ca.gov/contact

It takes two to tango and those giving bribes are not exempt from anti-bribery laws (as you can tell since the giver also got indicted). I’ll also note that things like this are explicitly called out in the anti-corruption training every single employee of a large US corporation undergoes (or at least the US-based employees).

Sure but there's still a world of difference depending on who initiates the corruption. Apple's not trying to actively corrupt the police department, the police department is acting corruptly.

It's a serious offense on both sides, but far more serious on the part of the sheriff's department.

If the local police try to do something like this you call the FBI. Or if you have enough money to pay a high paid lawyer who knows DAs or Feds. I doubt you would want to go to the county.

In my state and county the local Sheriffs office handles CCW permits. A lot of times they are elected officials and play political games, even denying CCW permits. Glad these guys were held accountable.