On television and in movies, we’ve all seen the small town sheriffs arguing with the FBI agents (or the CIA or the NSA or the MUAFTS (Made Up Acronym For This Show) squad about jurisdiction over investigations. Who gets to claim credit, make arrests and order around the brute squad seems to be a constant pissing match. Is it like that really? And if so, why?
(Question inspired by, but not limited to, The Mentalist, where the lead bitch most often reminds Small Town Sheriff that her outfit is in charge, but not always.)
There usually isn’t an argument. Just coordination. The county prosecutor has the authority to dictate who does what in an investigation. This is already established in a SOP. We know that on certain crimes/incidents a certain department or person must be called immediately. The investigation is then coordinated through the county. Local detectives will do a lot of the leg work but the county has the lead on most serious crimes. Makes sense, they have more investigators and they are going to be prosecuting.
As for federal, the FBI investigates federal crimes. A jurisdictional fight doesn’t come up. If it is a bank robbery, the FBI gets it. If it is counterfitting, the Secret Service… Locals can’t prosecute federal crimes, why would there be a fight? The only problems I have seen is on things like bank robberies when the investigation is ongoing. Sometimes there is information that could be helpful to the local department but the FBI tends to keep info to themselves.
ETA: Never dealt with CIA or the NSA or the MUAFTS.
Contrary to popular belief and many television shows, the CIA and NSA are not law enforcement agencies and therefore such a jurisdictional conflict would never arise.
What makes little sense in these movies is that there might be the worst case imaginable (like Elbonian terrorists threatening to burn small kittens alive) and the local Sheriff will be fighting tooth and nail to keep the FBI out of the way.
If I was a small town Sheriff I would be delighted to have such a hot potato taken out of my hands.
But not if you’re the small town Sheriff bent on becoming the State Police Chief, a political job for which you need fame. Vote for me; I nabbed the Elbonians.
Or if you’re the small town Sheriff with a small mind but a huge ego; nobody has told you what to do for 15 years and no city slicker is gonna start now.
Or …
Bottom line: All drama flows from amplifying character flaws in the players. Having players behaving calmly and rationally is very boring. A far wiser person than me once said that entertainment is real life with all the boring parts editted out. That means esssentially all the calm & rational parts editted out.
I don’t know much about traditional criminal laws, but there certainly can be jurisdictional competition under various regulatory laws (environmental, health and safety, etc.): in many cases, the federal law allows the state to administer it, but with the possibility of a federal agency also taking action. Usually it works out amicably with good coordination…
That’s what I figured. Contrary to popular portrayal, I don’t suppose that investigators get very far in investigatin’ if they’re jerks. I’m sure 99% of them are perfectly professional about it.
My husband asked the question of me last night, and I said I could have an answer for him from someone who actually knows before he woke up this morning. Thanks for making me right!
Yeah, Hollywood thrives on conflict, and IRL there just aren’t that many law-enforcement jurisdictional shoving matches. In 13+ years as a prosecutor and now as a magistrate, I’ve actually never heard of any around here.
I think I read once (probably here) that in an emergent situation requiring that the Fire Department be on scene, the FD runs the show, not the cops. The cops are there basically for crowd control and other ancillary duties. Is this true? It makes sense.
It depends on what the situation is. If it is something big like a large fire, chemical spill etc there is an incident command system in place. Where I work it usually goes like this. The police are usually the first ones on the scene. All initial action will be taken by the police on the scene. Closing roads, assessing the scene, saving babies, the usual. The supervisor on scene will find somewhere for a command post. Command will be turned over to the Fire Department when they get there. If it is a large enough incident the OEM (office of emergency management) will come out and take over. OEM will coordinate all assests and determine if more help is needed from surrounding areas.
So basically if the main problem is something that will burn you, choke you or melt your face off the fire department will be in charge. If the problem is somebody who wants to burn you choke you or melt your face off then the police are in charge. If it is an incident that will need a lot of coordination or last for an extended period of time then OEM comes out and takes over.
I saw it happen only once. Very briefly, a man had drowned in a “swimming hole” that was outside the jurisdiction of any local police department. That put it in the jurisdictions of the County Sheriff and the State Police. The Sheriff and a number of deputies were on site, as was a local VFD (who were doing most of the actual searching for the corpse) and a single State Trooper.
The Sheriff himself, as it happens, was the one who spotted the body. The VFD retrieved it and brought it to shore. The Trooper, who up to this point hadn’t done anything but stand around and drink coffee, now started loudly ordering everyone off “his” crime scene. He was pretty obnoxious about it, too.
The Sheriff_who had about 1.5 million years experience in LE_didn’t take it very well. He told the deputies, of whom I was one, that we could stand down. The VFD guys looked at him for guidance, so he told them the best thing to do was pack their stuff up and go home too.
The Sheriff later had a chat with the State Police Captain for that area. Considerable apologizing was done.
In actuality, the State Police were the investigating agency; the problem was that the Trooper in question apparently had absolutely no idea whatsoever on how to courteously handle cooperating agencies. I doubt he’ll rise too far in the ranks with that egregious a lack of diplomatic skills.
In my experience such a situation would more likely cause a lot of shuffling of feet and attempts to blend into the background rather than get stuck with the paperwork. Most of the time when something happens at the town border, the one that doesn’t get stuck with it is relieved. I didn’t think of it because it is the oppposite of the OP but most of the jurisdictional problems I have run into is from others trying to push their work off on us.
When it comes to car accidents, sometimes the map has to come out to figure out who gets the accident. The rule is that the point where the first action of the accident occurred is where the accident is. If the accident started when a car clipped a curb in town A, crossed the road and hit a tree in town B and the head stopped rolling in town C, the accident occurred in town A. Sometimes it takes a while to convince the town A cops. Thats why Sergeants get paid more.
When it comes to domestic violence, the state guidelines are that where the victim reports the crime is where the paperwork is done even if it happened in another town. This is so a victim doesn’t have to travel another town just to make a complaint. Even though they would have to do just that if it wasn’t domestic violence. The DV laws in NJ are some of the strongest in the country. I have had the work pushed off onto me from other departments more than once.
Is real life dispute more frequently generated when there is jurisdictional conflicts not over the same crime but over multiple crimes from the same person? I know on Law & Order (that bastion of legal realism) this is more often the form it takes. The NYPD is investigating a murder and Jimmy Doe is their chief suspect but ICE is also following him as part of a large scale human smuggling investigation. Conflict arises over which case is more important.
Things like that would happen at what we call in the army “echelons above reality”. Like at the state Attorney General level. Or at least the county prosecutor. Not something that most law enforcement would get involved in. And even then it would be more of a coordination than anything. All involved would like to see the suspect convicted of all the crimes, regardless of jurisdiction.
ETA: The only way I could see it happening is if someone has a confidential source that can’t be exposed. I have never seen it happen but I can imagine the possibility. Even then I still think there would mostly be coordination rather than competition.
Yes, multiple crimes can complicate the issue. Sometimes whoever has the better evidence or more serious case(s) will take the lead by consensus. If there’s a Federal issue, the Federal law-enforcement agency involved may insist on taking the case, and the locals will defer to them (sometimes with a sigh of relief). For a murderer who’s committed his crimes in several states, sometimes whichever state has capital punishment will take first crack at him.
One famous jurisdictional dispute I just remembered: when JFK was assassinated, the Secret Service and Dallas police quarreled briefly over whether the late President’s corpse would be autopsied in Texas or Washington. According to William Manchester’s The Death of a President, the USSS was skeptical of the Dallas cops’ professionalism, to say the least, and finally just said, in essence, “We’re leaving for Air Force One with the President’s body now, and try to stop us.”
I was actually thinking about this the other day. In the pres is visiting ‘unfriendly’ territory (i.e. a left-wing Democrat in a small-town in the bible belt, a right-wing republican in Berkeley*) how much does the Secret Service trust the local police force. Is Sgt. Joe Cracker, from Asscrack KY allowed to carry a handgun withing shooting distance (even remote shooting distance) of Obama ?
Not that the Berkeley cops are a bunch of raving lefty extremists from what I’ve heard
Even in these politically-divided times, I’ve never heard of local cops being so distrusted by the USSS that they were disarmed or kept at a distance. There’d be a huge controversy if they were.
That surprises me. Given the extraordinary length that they go to protect the president, to allow a regular beat cop to stand armed, within shooting distance, seems a massive security hole.
Funny, but the incident I was going to mention also involved a drowning. A few years back my kids and I found a dead body in the middle of a river. The question of jurisdiction arose because - as I understood it - my town had jurisdiction over both banks of the river, but the river bed itself belonged to the county. I headed home long before they straightened that out.
