The town I live in had about 1500 people and contracts with the county for 40 hours per week of enforcement (meaning the deputy is actually in town those hours). Any major (heh) crime is handled apart from that.
Like ** Sudden Kestrel** said, many smaller towns, like mine, don’t have their own police department, but contract with the county Sheriff’s department for coverage. I bet this isn’t uncommon.
You would need at least 2 people before you could have an internal affairs department though, right?
In fact, because they do traffic control too, the motto of the mounties is “matiens le droit” or roughly “Keep right”. 
Some provinces, like Ontario, have their own police force. In others, like the prairies and BC, the mounties are the police for the province too. The mounties will contract to provide police services to municipality; IIRC, at one time 15,000 population was the cut-off. above that, it got somewhat too expensive to to pay the contract rate. In much smaller locales, they would have a small detachment.
There was a notorious case in the prairies about 2 or 3 years ago where the chief of police managed to “mess up” the case so a fellow police officer was not able to be convicted of drunk driving causing death. The provincial justice department, as a consequence, decided the town could not handle its own policing and disbanded the department (about a dozen officers) and imposed policing by the mounties instead.
It’s a good system - the small towns get a regular infusion of new blood, national standards for hiring and training, they are less likely to get too cozy with the city administration, and the heirachy extends all the way up to Ottawa, so the local council cannot bully or intimidate the officers on the job.
A peace office is a peace officer anywhere in Canada (AFAIK) so there are no restrictions about being out of their jurisdiction, etc.
Not if you were fairly introspective.
Yes, being unfairly introspective just wouldn’t do, now would it?
That’s profiling, that is!
A related question is, who decides the insignia for police chiefs?
I’ve always been amused when I see the police chief of some medium-sized city wearing a uniform with the stars of a vice admiral on his collar, but on tonight’s news there was a story about Middleborough, Mass., enacting a new law that fined citizens for using bad language. It featured a very brief interview with the Middleborough chief of police.
And I shit you not, he sported the five-star pentagons I last saw when I looked up something about Douglas MacArthur. Too funny.
Heh. Yes, quite impressive, here’s a pic:
But Andy Griffith was the sheriff, so he worked for Mayberry County, not for the town of Mayberry. I suspect that the town had no police department of its own.
To be blunt and honest, as many as the local government decides it needs to have for policing.
Because, LEGALLY, there are ZERO qualifiers for numbers of police in national law or any state law I’ve found.
Peace officers appointed under federal law, such as the RCMP, are peace officers throughout Canada, but peace officers appointed under provincial law are not pace officers throughout Canada, since provincial legislative power is limited to within each province.
The outgoing chief of the Sanford, Fla. (pop. 53,000+) department wears four stars: http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/20/justice/florida-martin-case-police-chief/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
As does the chief of the Aurora, Colo. (pop. 325,000+) police department: James Holmes, Aurora Shooting Suspect, Purchased 6,000 Rounds Of Ammunition Online | HuffPost Denver
Yep, we’ve got some of those in Ohio, too. I’m looking at YOU, North Hampton!