I was told that the function of the Sherrif was to serve warrants. That he cannot pull you over for speeding or anything like that.
Is this true? If not, what is the difference between the two?
Sherriff departments are for counties. Police departments are for specific municipalities. Really, it’s a matter of terminology.
As with many answers here, it depends! Mostly on where you live and how the law enforcement tasks are divied out.
I live in Warren County Missouri. We have a sheriff. he patrols and performs law enfocement tasks, Speeding tickets, drunk and disorderly, the whole thing.
The City of Warrenton has a police department. They perform the same functions in the city limits as the Sheriff does outside the city. They may have an agreement that allows them to assist one another, and of course they can chase you from one jurisdiction to another, but normaly they stick to their own turf.
The City of St. Louis has a police department and a Sheriff’s Dept. In that case the Sheriff is an arm of the courts and serves papers etc. They also run the city jail/workhouse.
In Los Angeles County, the sheriff’s department runs the jail, and serves court orders, for example, if you sue somebody, the SD will send somebody to the defendant’s house or place of business and and present him written notification, and have the person sign an acknowledgement. Presumably, the court filing fee goes to pay for this work.
The SD also does routine law enforcement in unincorporated areas of county, and also some incorporated areas that elect to use the country sheriffs. West Hollywood is a good example of that. It were unincorporated, and in the 1920s and 1930s, this meant they were out of the jurisdiction of the LAPD vice enforcers, which meant that it operated under a relatively more lax and easygoing environment. This led to the rise of Sunset Strip. Now, however, West Hollywood has been an incorporated city for a number of years, but they have elected to go on using the Sheriff’s Department, who since time immemorial have had a major substation in the area.
Some other cities in L.A. County have their own police departments. L.A. itself, of course, Culver City, and Beverly Hills to name a few.
I don’t know if it’s like this everywhere but around here, along with the jurisdiction difference, the sherrif is an elected official.
Also, St Louis County has their own police department, though I’m not sure if they have a Sheriff’s department or not. (St Louis, you may recall, is one of those twilight-zoney places where the city exists separate from the county, rather than within it.)
Hmm… City Police and County Sherrif have always been the associations in my experience.
Until one day a couple of years ago, I saw a cruiser labeled “Los Angeles County Police” on the freeway.
I’ve seen it again a couple times since, but never have heard of the agency in any other context.
What the heck are the duties of “Los Angeles County Police?”
In my town, if you dial 911 and request police assistance, you will get whoever is available. That includes the State Police, the Sheriffs Dept., the Town Police, or…on one occasion that I recall, an Environmental Conservation cop. Hey, if you need a man with a gun and a badge, be thankfull if Barney Fife shows up. 
Me and two pals got ourselves arrested by sherrifs the summer of my sophomore year in high school. We were in a very rural town outside of the limits of the more metropolitan town (Bloomington) that we lived in.
My understanding is that sherrifs take care of the rural areas, backroads, and county trails where there are no police stations near to dispatch police officers.
A major issue in the sherrif campaign a few years back in our town was the concentration of too many sherrifs on patrol in the city area (rather than on the outskirts and in the backwoods towns where they are really needed because there are no police stations.)
I live right at the borderline between protection via Sheriff and via Police. In Altadena, CA, we’re in unincorporated Los Angeles Country, but a block or two South is Pasadena, which has its own police department. To make things even more confusing, there is a strip of “Pasadena” that is technically part of unincorporated LA County, and the Sheriff and Police Department seem to overlap a bit.
BTW: I can state with reasonable certainty that the Pasadena Police are allowed to give speeding tickets outside of Pasadena proper. I’d say something nasty about them, but the fact is that they’re pretty nice guys.
Why are there State Police but no State Sheriffs? And what exactly is the jurisdiction of the (California) Highway Patrol? They seem to go wherever they damn well please.
In Iowa the sheriff is a country law enforcement officer. When I lived there the counties were merely administrative subdivision of the state and had no separate penal code so the sheriff enforced state laws. The city police enforced all laws, city ordnances and state criminal laws, in the city limits. As has been said, they were also allowed to continue “hot pursuit” into county areas and make arrests there, as was the sheriff into city territory.
In California I have seen sheriff’s give traffic tickets. In the town where I live the city police and the county sheriff have a working agreement that governs who does what and the cooperation between the two departments.
Jeez, Scupper, we’re neigbors. I live just a mile or so north of there.
No tellin’ how far east or west, though…
And I have to agree, PPD is very professional, second only to CHP. And although I haven’t had any problems with LASD yet, I sure detect an attitude every time I deal with them.
I hope they charged you with assault and battery on the English language. 
So what’s the deal with constables?
In Vermont, we have, in addition to the sherrif, an elected officer known as a high baliff. This office is almost a sinucure, as it has one and only one function: Because the sherrif’s office is charged under Vermont law with serving warrants, the high baliff is the ONLY person in the county who is legally entitled to arrest the sheriff, should it be necessary.
A few months ago, a sheriff was arrested following a lengthy investigation by the state police. They had to get the high baliff to actually serve the warrant.
What if the High Bailiff had to be arrested?
That would be the responsibility of the Supreme High Bailiff.
This varies from state-to-state – but the basic difference is that the sheriff is a constitutional officer whereas a policeman is a civil servant.
In states in which municipalities are treated as parts of a county – Generally, the sheriff is elected. He is the highest law enforcement official in the county. In Ohio, the sheriff may be arrested only by the county coroner (who is also elected). The sheriff has jurisdiction everywhere in the county and may patrol or arrest in any place. Because the sheriff is granted authority under the state constitution, the people empowered to act in his name are called deputies. They are deputed on act on behalf of a constitutional officer.
Police departments may be created by municipal government, such as cities and villages, where they exist. A police department is a civil service agency (like the water department or the public works department), not a constitutional authority. It is empowered by the city or village council and its employees are civil servants. The chief of police may be hired by the local commissioner of safety or city council. In many cities, the chief of police is chosen on the basis of the best score on a written civil service exam (This is true in Chillicothe, Ohio).
In general, when a jurisdiction falls under the authority of both a sheriff and a police department, the two agencies may agree to split up what they’ll take charge of. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, where every part of the county is also part of a village or city, the sheriff doesn’t routinely patrol or handle tickets; he just takes care of jail and court duties. This is also the case in Arlington County, Virginia. In Virginia, cities are not part of counties; they are separate jurisdictions. Arlington County has both a police department and a sheriff and they accordingly divide the law enforcement duties of the county.
The result is that in most cases where there are both police departments and sheriffs, the police department patrols within the borders of the municipality that created the department. The sheriff then patrols everywhere else, which usually means the more rural parts of the county. But that doesn’t mean that the sheriff doesn’t have authority within the city (except in states like Virginia). In fact, the sheriff is usually the higher authority within the county.
Ironically, in states such as Ohio, in which county governments are very limited, there is usually scant funding for sheriffs. Thus, sheriff’s departments are often understaffed and what staff they have is of poor quality. City police departments, on the other hand, are usually flush with staff.
Most U.S. jurisdictions don’t have constables. Where they do, it is usually just the lowest rank in the police department.
I believe the Sheriff can arrest him, although I like the Supreme High Baliff idea, with its potential for infinite recursion (the Double-Secret Supreme High Baliff, etc.).
While we’re at it-- does California have a State Police department? If so, is it called the California Highway Patrol, or is that something different? Is there also a State Bureau of Investigation (like Georgia has the GBI) or is that the CHP???