On TV there are always cop shows where the chief or some other high ranking officer like a captain will say ‘the mayor (or city hall) is on my ass to solve this case’. Do politicians have the ability to give orders to and make demands of the police, or are the police autonomous?
How does the relationship work if so since there are city, county, state and federal law enforcement officials as well as city, county, state and federal politicians?
Can the mayor go to any officer who works for the city police and tell them to do something, and they have to do it the same as if a higher ranking officer told them? Can the governor make demands of state, county and city police within his state, just state police, or not make demands or give orders to any of them?
I know the president is the commander in chief of the military and governors are the commander in chief of national guard (when they are not being federalized) does the same relationship apply to politicians and law enforcement?
Can Obama go to any cop in America and tell them to do something, or just the FBI (since those are federal cops), or none of them?
OK, so here you’re making a huge mistake. Are you an American? I’m thinking not.
In the US, the states are not subordinate to the Feds except as outlined in the constitution. Obama can’t tell governors what to do, and he can’t tell State employees what to do. His authority is over federal employees. If the states aren’t obeying some federal law or some constitutional provision that applies to the states, then the feds can step in and the states can bring the issue up with the federal court system.
It’s a little more complicated with the FBI in cases where there is a dispute over jurisdiction. The FBI steps in if a federal crime is committed, but sometimes it’s not exactly clear. One might argue that the Boston Marathon bombers should have been tried in Massachusetts court, but since they were engaged in an act of terrorism, it became a federal crime.
As with most things the key is to follow the money.
Which is to say if your job is dependent upon keeping someone happy then you have an incentive to keep them happy.
So, while a mayor does not have direct hiring/firing authority over a given police officer the mayor does hold the police chief’s job in their hands. So, piss off the mayor and the mayor kicks the police chief’s ass who kicks the captain’s ass who kicks the officer’s ass.
There is a give and take here. A good senior officer should shield their subordinates from punitive actions of some politician but in practice…hard to say. Some people are stand-up and some will roll over.
In general it is best not to upset your superiors if you want to keep your job and therein lies room for corruption.
Apart from that the OP seems to be asking about jurisdictional issues and that is harder to assess except to suggest do not piss people off who can make your life miserable.
The federal government can take control of state national guard units, and they can enforce federal laws that states do not recognize (medical marijuana for example) so the lines of demarcation are not always clear. Unsure if the ‘are you an American’ comment was sarcastic or not. I’m as american as obesity and reality TV.
Either way, I am unsure what the relationship between politicians and the police is. Does the chief of police answer to and take orders from the mayor? Does that power extend downwards (can the mayor give orders to the chief, but also to a patrolman on the street?)
The structure and powers of local government vary greatly by state, and in many states each municipality has broad powers to decide on its own structure.
I would like to expand on the comments made above about the National Guard.
The equipment, people and military missions of the National Guard are federal. 90% of the funding for salaries, maintenance and so one comes from the Federal Gov’t. The states have authority to hire personnel and organize a state level headquarters, however, the limitations on the the type of people hired and their training (the ‘billets’) are limited by the feds. You have a Major’s slot open for a pilot, that billet is assigned by the Feds. The Major has to have so many hours of flight time, be type qualified, etc. The squadron interviews people and hires them through the state headquarters. The state headquarters coordinates all this through the National Guard Bureau.
I hear you ask: But what about ‘the governor calls out the Guard?’ Well, remember I said 90% of the funding comes from the Feds. However, when the state needs emergency forces the state can fund personnel from the state’s Guard units. This is coordinated with the Guard Bureau.
There are some interesting twists in state funding vs federal funding. Say the governor calls out military personnel to suppress a riot or support police officers that are spread thin. If the state is paying the bill then the military personnel have the authority to arrest and are defacto police. Once their pay is federalized this authority completely disappears and the military are have a much restricted role. In the LA riots after the Rodney King beating, this is what happened. Once the soldiers were federalized they could do zip because of the Posse Commitatus Act.
What you see in the movies and TV about the military is in no way close to reality.
The relationship between politicians and the police is the same as the relationship between the politicians and any other government agency. Which is to say that if the head of the agency ( for example, the police chief) serves at the pleasure of the mayor, then it behooves the police chief to do what pleases the mayor. If the head of the agency doesn’t serve at the pleasure of some politician, chances are excellent that the head of the agency is independently elected and is in some sense a politician himself. Sheriffs are often independently elected as are district attorneys, attorneys general, comptrollers and school boards. There may be some situation where the head of a government agency neither serves at someones pleasure nor is independently elected - but I don’t know of any.
Can the mayor give orders to a patrolman on the street? I don’t know , but he won’t, for a few reasons. First , mayors and governors give orders in a broader sense than the individual police officer or other government worker can implement on his or her own. They don’t give orders regarding the details - they set the overall priorities ( a lower crime rate, cleaner streets ) and leave it to the subject matter experts to determine how best to achieve them. Second, chains of command run in both directions. And because of the previous two issues, it doesn’t look good if a mayor orders the police to take a particular action - it tends to look like the mayor is giving ( or selling) special privileges to someone.
If working under the direction of the governor to act as a police force (which is allowed under the Posse Commitatus Act) why would the feds change that in this case?
I was an adult when this all happened but I do not recall these details (which is to say I want to be educated on it).
You do not think special privilege is afforded to certain people? If the mayor’s husband is caught driving home drunk he doesn’t get some better deal than you or I would?
Well, the CA National Guard General at the time (Tandy Bozeman) briefed my unit on this. In this case even General Bozeman didn’t know the reason since the decision was made in D.C. There was pressure at the time for the federal government to ‘do something’, and really civilians, even powerful smart men in civilian positions, don’t always listen to their advisors. And sometimes they know the decision isn’t the right one but they make it anyway because it plays well on TV.
The CA ANG was not federalized so it kept doing its mission which was low oblique recce over LA. But those guys were in airplanes, who they gonna arrest?
From a UK perspective, the tension between politicians and the police in US dramas is quite puzzling.
‘Hey the DA is on my back, there is an election coming up, we have to solve this case now!’
Few UK observers would know what that means because the official title does not exist and the political tension is puzzling. I guess because it is a smaller, more centralised country. Politicians in local government are elected, but not officials. Policing priorities in the UK are localised, but there is no real tradition of it being democratically accountable. There has been an attempt to introduce this, but voters seem not to be keen.
As I understand it, the US has very decentralised democracy, whereby not only politicians, but various public officials are elected, right down to ‘Vote for your local sheriff!’. Which must mean some areas of local public life, such as law enforcement are very politicised.
Have I got that right? Are these elected officials members of political parties and follow a party policy or are they independent? Presumably they are quite keen to polish their record if they are up for re-election and get up to all the usual political tricks? What is the hierarchy? Do they all report to the mayor? (Politically powerful mayors are not common in the UK)
My Grandfathers city councillor badge gave him rank in the local police, at least in the sense that he could give direction to ordinary policemen. However, the city was run by the machine (which he was not part of), and the machine gave policy directions to the mayor, council, and police.
Legal authority may have been the OP’s intent (not entirely clear) but I see no reason to exclude reality from the discussion and the reality is corruption exists.
Like so many things in the US, the answer to your questions, filmstar-en, is that it depends on the jurisdiction. However, there are certain generalities that are largely true.
The DA and Sheriff are county officials. They are elected directly, and thus are independent of the county commissioners and other local officials. The DA’s office works closely with local police, but is totally separate.
In some places the Sheriff’s position is highly politicized, but not in other places. In some places a lot of local offices are officially non-partisan (i.e., the candidates don’t run based on their party membership).
There are some places where even the local judges are elected.
They’re partisan in some places and independent in others, but “party policy” isn’t really very powerful in the US because the parties are typically quite decentralized themselves.
My county’s prosecutor is a Republican, but if he angers the party it has no recourse in the next election but to campaign against him in the primary, when all the voters in the county who consider themselves Republicans that day get to vote on who the Republican Party will nominate to be its candidate for prosecutor.
Whether he does or not isn’t the issue. The issue is whether the mayor can or will give the order to let him go directly to the officer who caught him , not whether the mayor will give such an order to the police commissioner or chief and not whether someone in the police department will decide to let the husband go without the mayor’s involvement. And she won’t ,even if she can, because of how it will look. Doesn’t mean that the cop won’t be told to let the husband go, but he won’t be hearing directly from the mayor (at least not in most places)
OK, so here you’re making a huge mistake. Are you an American? I’m thinking not.
In the US, the states are not subordinate to the Feds except as outlined in the constitution. Obama can’t tell governors what to do, and he can’t tell State employees what to do. His authority is over federal employees. If the states aren’t obeying some federal law or some constitutional provision that applies to the states, then the feds can step in and the states can bring the issue up with the federal court system.
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I’m not sure it’s quite so clear cut as that. What if the police department has done something shady? (taken bribes, shot an unarmed black man and failed to investigate, sent racist emails to one another, fudged the evidence on an investigation by dry-labbing it…)
When the FBI shows at the doorstep of that police department and asks for something, sure, they have the right to refuse. And the FBI has a right to seize all their records and go through them looking for the above. I don’t think a major metropolitan police department exists where the FBI couldn’t find something that looks bad.