As Chuck said many of those police agencies do very little police work. Most of what they do is closer to being security guards. However their jurisdiction is seen to need someone armed and with arrest powers. For instance in my county the sheriffs office does not do patrolling or investigations. They mostly guard the courthouse and the judges and move prisoners around. Local departments carry out the actual law enforcement. You could combine all the departments under one but that is only replacing many small bureaucracies with one giant one. I don’t see much of an upside. At least within a state.
There are three important factors that many here are missing: control, budget and bureaucratic inertia.
Pretty much all of the specialized police agencies were set up because some governmental or quasi-governmental agency felt that it wasn’t getting the necessary police support from other police agencies, wanted a police agency it could control, and had the budget to create one. Once created, bureaucratic inertia helps keep the agency in existence even if it would make objective sense to merge its function with another agency.
For instance, if you are the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, it is likely that the NYPD won’t allocate the resources you feel you need to catch toll evaders and traffic violators at your toll bridges and tunnels. However, if you set up the TBTA police, you can have your own officers permanently stationed at your facilities at whatever level of strength that you desire and are willing to pay for.
Each state doesn’t have 1 single police force, there’s going to be (in most states) state police, a county sheriff for each county, and then a local police force for each city. Right there you’re looking at a hell of a lot more than 50. You’re probably in the hundreds for most of the larger states.
They each do different things. If someone burglarizes your house, you’re going to call the local police. Highways and freeways are usually patrolled by the state police. The sheriff’s department differs more from state to state, but generally has closer connections to the courts, run the county jail, transport prisoners, etc, and also will handle the stuff local police would normally handle in more rural areas without a local police force.
That’s just some examples, not meant to be exhaustive in any way, and there can be some overlap, but in general they each carry out a different function and have a different jurisdiction.
Each federal law enforcement division does different things as well. If there’s a crime that crosses state lines the FBI’s getting involved, also they tend to handle kidnappings. Marshals work for the court, sort of like a federal sheriff, also they handle witness protection. The Secret Service is part of the treasury and investigates counterfeiting and fraud, while also being tasked with protection of the President. ETC ETC ETC
Basically, there are all these different agencies because each focuses on different things. There are advantages and disadvantages to dividing things up this way, lack of proper communications between agencies is often cited as a problem with this sort of arrangement when “something bad” slips through the cracks. But it’s also a way of keeping things better organized. If there was just one FEDERAL POLICE agency, for a country as large and populated as the US, it would just be too unwieldy to have as much effectiveness.
Yeah on the face of it Australia only has two forces, state and federal but when you scratch under the surface it becomes a bit messier.
We have Military Police for all 3 divisions, transit police, correctional officers, sheriffs, customs officees etc, it seems that they are all policing…
I am not certain that New York is representative of the police departments in other states. For instance, I have never before heard of a ‘mental health’ police, nor, can I imagine the necessity for such a police force (well, maybe as guards in mental health institutions).
I imagine that if you compared New York with each of the other states, many would have many fewer police departments.
Bob
Since 2003, as part of a post-9-11 overhaul of U.S. law enforcement, the Secret Service has been part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Of those 17,000 I’m assuming the vast majority are just varieties of city and county law enforcement agencies. There are about 3,000 counties, I’m assuming the vast majority all have LE agencies. Not to mention all the city law enforcement agencies.
It has to be more than just budget, though? doesn’t it take legislative action at some level (state or municipal) to create a new law enforcement agency and give them powers of a peace officer (or whatever the equivalent term is in the US for the bundle of common law and statutory powers that police officers have).
It really seems to be a different culture, then. Whether they’re called “security forces” or police, from my Canadian perspective, I can’t think of many agencies that have a security force.
Many of those seem like they could be divisions of a larger police force, but I never got “university police”. That and the amount of security there seems to be in American schools would really bother me if I lived there.
To compare to the US system, here (the UK) we don’t have things like the DEA, ATF etc. - those jobs are done by specific departments of larger police forces. We do have the British Transport Police (responsible for railways) and the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (responsible for civilian nuclear power stations etc.) and maybe a few other things (a “National Crime Agency” is in the works) but most policing is done by a police force for the county or other area. I’m not sure exactly how it works for if there is a major drug bust (for example) in a rural area with limited resources, though.
What is so hard to “get”? The university near me has over 40,000 students and staff. Many live there spread between several campuses. As with any city of that size they have their share of domestic violence, thefts, criminal mischief, car accidents and probably a larger percentage of alcohol related incidents. As well as crowd/traffic control for many large events. There is also need for security for some of the nasty stuff they supposedly do research with. They need to have police. I guess you could call them something else but you would need to have police officers working on the campus. I have had to do follow ups on the campus before. I would be lost without a university cop being with me. A force with a knowledge of the campus is a must. That force could be a part of another force but it would amount to the same thing. Just the uniforms would change.
But its not just America. I watched *Inspector Morse *and Inspector Lewis. Blood flows in Oxford every day.
Effectively, many of these agencies in the United States basically are specific departments of larger police forces. The D.E.A. and the A.T.F. are subdivisions of the U.S. Department of Justice. Many of the agencies listed in the OP are just departments of the municipal government of the City of New York.
The answer is it depends. In New York at least, there are a number of general laws that will allow the establishment of various types of law enforcement agencies, but otherwise the establishment of a new agency would require legislative action. It is important to understand that New York recoginzes several different categoriesof law enforcement officers, which may be considered “police officers”, “peace officers” or “special patrolmen”, sometimes with special powers or restrictions depending on agency. In New York City, the variety of law enforcement agencies also reflects that many of the City agencies and public authorities (along with some private entities) operating in the City have their own specialized law enforcement divisions.