I think the confusion is around the administrative area versus the geographical - e.g. Upton is a village in its own right, within the parish of Upton-by-Cheste

I think the confusion is around the administrative area versus the geographical - e.g. Upton is a village in its own right, within the parish of Upton-by-Chester [4], on the outskirts of the city of Chester, but within the City of Chester UK parliamentary constituency and served by Cheshire Constabulary. You couldn't really argue it's part of the city though (although I'm sure the city council would love the tax revenue from the zoo...). In the same way, the US cities in the article are administrative divisions (i.e. the police forces are different because they're being paid for by different people, the laws are being set by different organisations etc.) rather than geographic ones. Some of the UK cities used to have their own police forces too ([2], [3]), it's just more efficient (and probably resolves some fun legal challenges around jurisdiction) not to do that any more (see sibling comment for the City of London/Met but London's strange anyway). Until 1975, Glasgow had its own police force [2] with the surrounding areas covered by other forces, and relatively recently [1] had a dispute about its administrative boundary (again, likely for the purposes of tax - it moved which council was responsible for a shopping centre). 1: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1973915.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1973915.stm 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Glasgow_Police https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Glasgow_Police 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_City_Police https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_City_Police 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_by_Chester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_by_Chester