The state governors already have a personal army in the national guard ;) But yes, I didn't flesh out some of the details on how to add civilian oversight. I t

The state governors already have a personal army in the national guard ;) But yes, I didn't flesh out some of the details on how to add civilian oversight. I think you could model it roughly around the federal Justice Department. You would have a head law enforcement official, appointed by the governor and approved by the state legislature, perhaps serving a longer term than the governor so that the position isn't nearly as tied to the administration. And then a head of a state "Justice department" of sorts (a broader agency covering the state law enforcement agency, the department of corrections, and some additional sub-organizations like state capitol security, a state-wide internal affairs office, etc.) which is also appointed by the governor and approved by the state legislature. This justice department head would then act as a buffer between the governor and day-to-day law enforcement activities. The idea would be to limit state-level control of law enforcement to regulatory changes (either advanced by the governor in a limited capacity, and the state legislature more broadly) and not individual investigations. But, as we saw in the Trump administration, this separation isn't exactly ironclad, and depends a lot on politicians and officials obeying certain cultural norms and standards. When you're creating a brand new organization and system from scratch at the state level, you won't have those ingrained cultural norms. Another options would be making law enforcement an independent agency headed up by a council. This would work in a similar way to the FEC, the FTC, the FCC, or the Federal Reserve. Leadership is made up by a group of board members who serve either for life or some long time period. Vacancies are filled by governor appointment, but subject to state legislature approval. Because the governor can't fire council members (excluding perhaps special circumstances, but that's beyond the scope of this post), and can only appoint new ones with the cooperation of the state legislature, this provides a significant degree of insulation from governor and legislative control. The accrediting body also provides a significant degree of oversight in a different manner. This body would function like the state bar associations, meaning they would be completely independent from the government. This means the people have essentially no democratic control over them, except for the extreme step of repealing the law requiring state funds go only to departments accredited by that association. So you would have to be very careful going about setting up such an organization, and make sure it is organized internally to continue to function well. And of course, by definition this wouldn't really count as "civilian oversight", since the association would be completely independent and made up at least partially of law enforcement professionals, but would very much protect against the "governor using the police as a personal army" scenario.