5 ms·
In the US there are multiple levels of law enforcement that generally have their own jurisdictions. At the national level, there is the Federal Bureau of Invest
by skrbjc 5y ago
In the US there are multiple levels of law enforcement that generally have their own jurisdictions. At the national level, there is the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to handle crimes that occur across state lines or large crime webs, like the Mafia. Then there are state-wide police, some states call them highway patrol, others state police. Probably the most famous are the Texas Rangers. These have the jurisdiction of the entire state.
Next down the line is the county Sheriff, typically for enforcing county-wide laws. In many areas that don't have a local police force, the county sheriff are the most local police force they have.
Finally there are city police like Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) or New York Police Department (NYPD). These departments handle crime and law enforcement within a city's limits. These range from very large like the above examples to small departments like this article.
Generally if a crime occurs within a city it's that city police that will investigate, if it is outside the city within a county it may be the county sheriff or state police, and across state lines, the federal government gets involved. Obviously this can cause some confusion or fighting over jurisdictions. On the flip-side a local police department can help the needs of the community specifically. For example, where I live we have a small police department that responds immediately if there is a problem when you call them. They often help elderly residents that are having trouble, will drive by your house when you're on vacation, etc. Depending on states and cities local laws, sheriffs and police chiefs may be hired or elected.
Culturally, the United States has been oriented towards local control and biased against federal control. The states traditionally have been very independent of the federal government. For example most state constitutions are very long compared to our relatively short national constitution. In the western part of the united states, as communities were developed and grew, the need for local law enforcement grew with those communities, often before they were really a part of a state or the federal government had any control. So the legacies of those localized police and law enforcement entities has lived on.
I'm less familiar with how Europe's or other countries' police came to be, but typically those countries are far smaller than the United States and generally have more centralized federal power, which means having a centralized police force makes more sense.
- gregschlom 5y agoAnd also even more local police departments such as campus police (on university campuses), or stuff like the BART police in the Bay Area (BART being the local commuter rail network). Just blows my mind.
- 01acheru 5y agoThanks a lot for this exposure! Anyway I feel there is something missing and I cannot exactly say what it is. Maybe it is simply something cultural that is not so easily graspable from those living somewhere else, it always feels so strange to me that a small town has so much freedom to shape its law enforcement so freely… for me a shared law across the state is the basis for equality, and to have a shared law you need to enforce it similarly. Thanks again :)
- hollander 5y agoWhat is "missing" is that the police apparently can do whatever they like, because they cannot be held accountable. They're untouchable. If you criticise a police officer, you criticise the police as a whole, and that is not acceptable to them and to society at large. It is un-American to do so. They represent the law, and they themselves are above the law. Accountability, that is missing!
- ars 5y agoWhat you are missing is that Americans a very against centralized anything, they want everything to be local, and then flow upward from there. In general Republicans are more against central control, and Democrats more for it (but not as much as Europeans). So for example that voting rights fight going on right now is not about voting rights, it's about the Federal government setting rules (Republicans are against that) vs. the State setting rules (Democrats are against that). There's arguments both ways for which is better, I don't want to go into that, but this should help explain what you are missing. This same argument shapes things like Health care - which is currently local, not federal, and actually a HUGE amount of political stuff boils down to local vs federal. Another thing is that personal determination is equated with local control (i.e. person decides what's best for themselves), while federal control is equated with social services (since some central authority decides what services to render). Keep in mind the way the country was created was "united states", with the main authority being the state, and the federal government given only limited power. Also keep in mind a US state is similar in size to a European country.
- 01acheru 5y ago