# Small Police Depts in the U.S. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 20, 2010, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-police-depts-in-the-u-s/533179 "2010-03-20T22:52:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![snowmaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e99b99/32.png) [@snowmaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowmaster)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-police-depts-in-the-u-s/533179/21 "2010-03-22T13:55:13Z")
The small resort town of Bethel, ME is doing this right now. I get the impression ceeding policing to the county sheriff is much more common in rural areas where much of the county is not incorporated into towns, so the sheriff’s dep’t is already hevily involved in rural law enforcement there. In Maine, there’s a huge amount of area divided into theoretical towns, bun unincorporates and unnamed where the shreriff is the only law enforcement. Something like T10 R5 WELS or WKR + township ten (on the east-west axis), Range five (on the north-south axis) west of the easterly line of the state or west of the Kennebec River. ---
**Author:** ![D18](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@D18](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D18)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-police-depts-in-the-u-s/533179/22 "2010-03-22T14:38:24Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > What we don’t seem to have, at least in Ontario, is the equivalent of county police forces. Sort of. Some areas are organized into Regional Municipalities instead of counties. Can’t speak for them all, but Peel Region in suburban Toronto has a region-wide police force. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-police-depts-in-the-u-s/533179/23 "2010-03-22T15:20:12Z")
It can take awhile to get official police status. I work at a university and their public safety department petitioned the state several times over a 20 year period. They always had a lot of retired cops and were very professional. They finally got full police status a few years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-police-depts-in-the-u-s/533179/24 "2010-03-22T15:24:22Z")
> [@D18](#): > > Sort of. Some areas are organized into Regional Municipalities instead of counties. Can’t speak for them all, but Peel Region in suburban Toronto has a region-wide police force. :smack: Duh! Having lived in both Peel and Durham Regions, I should have remembered. _But_, if there’s a regional police force, there isn’t also a city or town police force in the same region… I think. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-police-depts-in-the-u-s/533179/25 "2010-03-22T16:19:25Z")
The town that I live closest to used to put a dummy/mannequin in a cop car to slow speeders. That’s a small police force. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-police-depts-in-the-u-s/533179/26 "2010-03-22T18:39:34Z")
England used to have these very small police forces as well, and some, such as Folkestone Borough Police and Brighton Borough Police, had notorious corruption cases. Some were forcibly amalgamated with the county police by the government, using emergency wartime powers to do it, with a promise (never fulfilled) that the _status quo ante_ would be reverted to after the war. The Police Act 1964 mopped up most of the rest. Only the City of London Police, with powerful friends, bucked the trend. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-police-depts-in-the-u-s/533179/27 "2010-03-22T18:59:33Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > The town that I live closest to used to put a dummy/mannequin in a cop car to slow speeders. > > That’s a small police force. Ours once just parked a cop car and left it. Due to construction, they had had to put a stop sign on the main road (unusual, especially since this was outside the business district and was a wide road where you didn’t expect one). To make sure people stopped, they parked the car. People slowed when the saw it, and ended up seeing the stop sign. Since there were a lot of out-of-town drivers, it worked very nicely. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-police-depts-in-the-u-s/533179/28 "2010-03-22T19:47:53Z")
> [@Lust4Life](#): > > …and I’m curious as to how much training the officers must have before they’re judged competent to go out and deal with the public. > > I believe that a good part of the training of British L.E.O.s is about the law itself ie.what is a crime and what is not. > As in “Excuse me sir but you can’t sell goods from a tray on the pavement”(U.S. sidewalk) > “Why not?” > “Er Er Er” > And obviously our version of Miranda. > > There must be some sort of standard for a small town L.E.O.s evidence to be treated as an expert witness(not sure if thats the right term)as opposed to giving evidence as an ordinary civilian. > > I’ve gleaned from the thread that they get on the job training from experienced officers,do the E.O.s have to take some sort of proffessional qualification or attend a recognised academy or maybe have been previously employed by a big city police force? I didn’t see this question addressed yet, but the answer to your question is “yes,” all police officers have to go though a training course. Here in Connecticut, all police officers in the state must attend and maintain certification from the Connecticut Police Academy, as detailed [here](http://www.ct.gov/post/cwp/view.asp?a=2058&q=291942). ---
**Author:** ![MsRobyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/90ced4/32.png) [@MsRobyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsRobyn)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2010, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-police-depts-in-the-u-s/533179/29 "2010-03-22T20:09:50Z")
Here in my neck of Penn’s Woods, municipalities (which includes townships and boroughs/cities) can either have their own police forces or they can be covered by the state police. For example, North Middleton and Middlesex townships each have their own police departments, as does Carlisle borough, but South Middleton township is covered by the state police. Other areas have merged their departments into a regional force to take advantage of cost-saving measures such as fleet prices for police cars that a smaller department can’t get. In addition to that, there is also the fire police, which is generally responsible for traffic control. Some colleges and universities have their own departments, as well, but they’ll kick anything more complicated than a parking ticket over to the real police. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/small-police-depts-in-the-u-s/533179.md?page=1)