Living in the Atlanta area, I constantly see or hear about both. Is there a difference between their positions or is it just a local naming standard (like parishes vs. counties)?
At least in Louisiana, the Chief of Police is in charge of the city or town’s police force. It is a hired position. The Sheriff runs the parish (county) police department. Sheriff is an elected official. I think that this is somewhat consistent throughout the country.
Here in New Jersey a sherrif is an officer of the court. He’ll serve warrants and such, but not do any active policing like writing speeding tickets.
That’s the historic role too. The sherrif as a police officer is a more recent (U.S. only?) role.
Here in central Kansas the sheriff is an elected official. In my small county he does standard police work and is in charge of administration. He also oversees the county jail even though there is a person whose sole job is that. He has a say in the hiring of deputys but the county commision has the final word there. In bigger counties in the area the sheriff is still elected but his duties tend to be more policy and administration.
The chief of police is a hired position. He is hired by the city through an interview process. Chief of police have duties like the sheriff but only have power within the city limits, unless requested by the sheriff for assistance.
My father was a Sheriff in Iowa. A sheriff is a agent of the court (serves court documents), with responsibiliy for “police” functions in towns and areas that don’t otherwise have police. It’s an elected position, and also comes with a jail to run. Investigations of some crimes are handled by the sheriff, also, even when there’s police jurisdiction.
Transporting prisioners to/from courts and prisions, and interstate extraditions are also part of the job.
When I was a youngster, I earned an allowance by cooking and feeding prisoners breakfast.
Here in DeKalb County, Georgia, where our sheriff-elect was just gunned down by several assailants outside his home, the sheriff is an elected official whose main job is to run the jail. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution just ran an editorial by Cynthia Tucker calling for the abolition of the position, which makes sense to me.
Sheriff is typically a county official elected within the county. A Chief of Police is typically an appointed position within a given city police force.
Marc
In Wisconsin the Sheriff is also an elected position, though there are folk who would like to change that for one reason or another.
Here the Sheriff is the CLEO (Chief Law Enforcement Officer)
which means, at least on paper, he is the head cheese of the county he is sheriff in. What this means is, if there was a situation which included both city cops and the Sheriff department, the Sheriff would have more say over the police chief, even in regards to orders given to the city cops. I don’t believe such a dick waving contest has ever occured, at least in recent years. The sheriffs here have more power than they use, usually allowing county commissions to make decisions about hiring, etc. The sheriff can deputize anyone he wants, withing the constraints of the law (no felons, loonies, etc.) Having made a sizable contribution to ones campaign, I was a special deputy for awhile. This was good for being able to ccw and nothing else. It was not a job, just a legal status.
I like the idea of an elected (not appointed) sheriff, though I hate how former deputies become the sheriff and act more like a politician than a cop. Give me the good 'ol red neck, ass kicking sheriff like that guy in Arizona.
What about constables? Here in Texas the sherrif’s department handles the county outside of city limits, while the police handles the city proper. The only time I have seen constables to anything is when they are forcing an eviction.
I read that editorial, too, but it shows a lack of understanding of the law. Ms. McKinney seemed to think that the office could be abolished by the county government, but it cannot. It is a creature of state law. To abolish the office would require an act of the legislature, and fine-tuning on countless statutes which make reference to the office of County Sheriff and the duties of that office.
To answer the OP, the Sheriff is a county law enforcement officer, while the Chief of Police is a city law enforcement officer.
While there is some overlap in responsibilities, the two offices are not entirely redundant. As kellymccauley noted, the Sheriff is also an officer of the court system. Therefore, in addition to law enforcement, the sheriff’s office has responsibility for serving lawsuits and subpoenas, enforcing bench warrants, seizing and selling property to enforce judgments, evictions, overseeing and maintaining the county jail system, etc., etc.
Plus, the sheriff provides law enforcement services to portions of a county which are not within the city limits of a municipality. (Does the city of Decatur encompass all of DeKalb County, MEBuckner? If not, then by eliminating the office of sheriff, you would leave those outside the city limits with no law enforcement options.)
I meant “Ms. Tucker seemed to think…”
In DuPage County west of Chicago, it is a jurisdictional thing. Police for the municipalities, Sheriff for the county.
Anecdote, last year my kids and I were hiking through some woods and we found a dead body in the middle of a river. There was quite a debate between the various law enforcement agencies as to who had jurisdiction over the scene. They gave it to the sheriff because the corpse was stuck in the mud in mid stream, even tho both banks were village property.
The Sheriff is historically responsible for keeping “the King’s peace” in any given county, and as such has certain major responsibilities to the court system (service of warrants and summonses, etc., execution of judgments) and to assure that the peace is kept. What his non-common law powers are depends on state law, but it seems to be unanimous that he is the chief law enforcement officer, so far as jurisdiction is concerned, in his county or parish. (What Connecticut, with no legal county government any more, and Alaska with no counties do is a good question.)
More thickly settled counties, such as suburban areas, often have a county police force, as do virtually all cities and larger (and some smaller) towns and villages. The head of such a force is, of course, the Chief of Police for that municipality. But he has no statutory rights, just the power to direct the work of the locally employed police. And while it virtually never happens, he would be under the orders of the Sheriff in an emergency where it became necessary for the latter to head up a coordinated effort – normally there are agreements on how they will cooperate, but that’s a “reserve power” of the Sheriff.
Most states have a state-level police (State Police, Troopers, Rangers, or whatever) under the auspices of some top law official, often the State Attorney General, but again the local detachment of them is in theory subject to the Sheriff, though normally, given the level of training, it usually works the other way around – the more highly trained top state cop directs an investigation or manhunt and the sheriff and his deputies provide additional manpower.
It’s noot quite that simple in most Georgia counties. A city police force has responsibility for enforcement, investigations, arrests, and (in most cases) temporary detainment for crimes committed within the city limits. The chief is usually hired by the city council. Most counties in GA also have, in addition to the county sheriff, a county police force. They are resposible for enforcement, investigations, arrests, and (in some cases)temporary detainment for crimes committed within the county, but outside any city. A city without it’s own police force may contract with the county for those services. The county police chief is usually hired by the county commission. The county sheriff runs and staffs the main county jail, serves warrants and subpeonas, and provides security for the county courthouse. The sherrif is an elected position. We won’t even get into how the state police, GBI, and federal authorities fit into the equation.
With this many law enforcement personnel, it’s a wonder there are enough people left to be criminals.
Well, there might be some overlap there. 
Anyway, good thing have so many seizures and sales thanks to the “War on Drugs.” Otherwise we might not be able to finance all these layers of law enforcement. :rolleyes:
Oh yeah, and Doctor Jackson you also wrote that most counties in Georgia have a county police force. I think that’s only true of the major metropolitan counties. In the rural counties which make up a majority of the counties in the state, I don’t believe there is a separate county police force. Police work in unincorporated areas of such counties is handled by the sheriff and his deputies.
In California, the sheriffs work for the county and the police work for cities as explained earlier.
However, San Francisco is a combined city and county. Nevertheless, it has both a sheriff and a chief of police. The former runs the courts and does stuff like evict people who haven’t paid their rent. The latter gets to arrest you for breaking laws.
A sheriff anecdote: My father (an Iowa Sheriff) worked on a murder case in which all of the activities of the people involved took place in his county, except for the murder itself. The body was found on the “other” side of the county-line road. This meant that the neighboring sheriff had jurisdiction.
For years later, that other sheriff always joked that my Dad was first on the scene, and dragged the body across the road to avoid involvement.
spoke-
There’s already a DeKalb County Police Department to provide law enforcement in unincorporated areas of the county. Most if not all of the cities in DeKalb also have their own police departments; there’s also a piece of the city of Atlanta in DeKalb (Atlanta is mostly in Fulton County).
You are no doubt correct that it would require an act of the Georgia Legislature to abolish or seriously alter the office of Sheriff of DeKalb County. When she referred to “DeKalb legislators” perhaps Ms. Tucker meant “the Georgia state legislators who represent DeKalb County”; I would think that if the DeKalb delegation introduced and supported such legislation in the General Assembly their colleagues would approve it as a matter of course (but that may just show how politically naive I am). Then again, knowing Georgia we’d probably have to have a statewide vote to amend the Constitution.