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First off, great question and this will crack you the fuck up, but I literally just talked about this exact issue in class this morning. We talked about the differences between city/municipal police, county sheriff’s departments, state police, Feds, and private police.
First off, I will cover private police. To be really brief, I am against them. Why? Because just like private prisons-they are a fucking business that exists solely to make money. That’s it. They make more money by cutting corners. It is true that as a business model, they are beholden to their customers like any business, but in my opinion-they are typically rejects from real police departments and overall-I have little respect for them.
Private prisons are worse though. They exist to make money and make billions/year. They thrive off of packing as many criminals into their prisons as they possibly can and cut corners on food quality, medical treatment, educational and vocational training for inmates-which are substandard if they exist at all. They have a reputation for being substandard treatment of inmates and are rife with complaints of maltreatment. They basically make money anywhere they can from their commissary to renting the privilege of owning televisions in their rooms. They also thrive on recidivism, which is the reoffending of criminals and the rate hovers between 40-50% on any given years. And finally and most egregious imo, is that they take some of those billions they make per year on govt contracts and they give that money back to politicians and legislators in order to 1. Keep those contracts coming by promising jobs, cutting costs, and enriching the politicians themselves. Some towns only still exist because of a private prison located there. They also stuff their prisons full by giving money to campaigns of politicians in order to persuade them to keep as many draconian laws as possible and to keep up the pressure on police departments and state agencies to keep making those arrests. And by politicians, I mean senators, congress, and judges as well-which is a huge issue all around. And again, since they offer no education or vocation training like state prisons do-they hope their inmates end right back in their prisons. In one documentary I show my corrections class-just a few weeks ago, a city councilwoman refused to play ball and sign the new agreement with a private prison and the ceo of the company flew to her small town and met with her and demanded she sign the contract. She refused and the company sunk money into her political opponent to get her voted out. And since Feds quite using private prisons under biden, they have secured other contracts using their prisons to hold illegal immigrants.
Sorry for rant.
County sheriff’s are elected by public and they serve as law enforcement in both rural and urban areas. They have additional responsibilities than municipal police including running the county jails, serving subpoenas for court, transportation of criminals to and from court, serving mental hygiene commitments-though I have served those as well, or at least detained individuals until county got there, and they collect taxes, and issue gun permits. There are very large sheriff’s departments such as la county, but my county’s department handle the rural areas rather than our city. They are far less busy than we were and they typically stayed out of the “scary areas” in our hoods. In fact, I remember my very first riot. We were outnumbered 50-8. And were taking a beating. I got hit by a bottle and the sheriff’s department was right fucking there. I remember a few deputies standing there watching us get our asses kicked-we kicked back as well. And when things died down, my Lt and I and a few others were yelling at them for not helping and they said “we don’t get involved in city business.” There was a pissing battle between our departments at the time-so that was also a factor, but in my opinion-they were terrified of all the angry black faces that were rioting after a shooting-not a police shooting, but a gang one. This was two days before I went to the academy and we had a deputy that would hitch a ride down with us. He was one of the ones standing there and we never got along personality wise, but I also disliked and did not respect him because of that incident. He was bitch-made.
State police handle similar stuff to the county. They are supposed to handle highways and are sometimes the only law enforcement in rural areas for miles-same as some rural county guys. They manage sex offender registries and enforce only state codes-can’t make arrests on city charges. They supersede both city and county law enforcement-meaning that they can decide to take over a crime scene if they so choose-at least my state. We had a self-defense shooting many years ago where an armed robber went into a pharmacy and tried to steal all their opioids. He didn’t see the pharmacy manager standing to the side, whom was armed, and shot and killed the robber. We (my dept, not me personally) were first on scene. A state police captain showed up and ordered us off the scene and took over the investigation. It was an easy case to clear because it was on video-was witnessed by a dozen people, and was clear cut self-defense of another life. The captain wanted the case because he knew it would be high profile stuff and he was angling for a promotion-at least what I heard. But like the county departments, in my area, they stick to the more rural areas despite their hq being inside our city. Very rarely can I remember a state trooper coming to our aid. They almost never handled traffic crashes on the highways like they were supposed to-especially bad ones. They cited manpower issues because there were only a few assigned to our county. And like the deputies, they generally stayed out of the bad areas and “city business.” My neighbor is a retired state police captain-but he was well respected. They are required to have longer academy classes than other law enforcement in my state-mostly, in my opinion, in order to learn how to properly wear their stupid looking trooper hates and to properly insert the stick up their asses. Oh, and they run the state crime labs as well.
City police enforce state and municipal laws. Obviously, they handle calls in the city but most have mutual aid agreements with county and state authorities to lend officers when needed. They all have that, but as I stated, the other agencies don’t always come into the city when we needed them. Besides la county and a few other large sheriff’s depts that cover big cities in their county- generally the cities are where all the action and serious crime is. Your average city cop has a much greater call volume that the other two agencies-in my area, more call volume than the other two agencies combined and then tripled. I remember one year, our dept handled 46k calls compared to the county handled 8k calls and I don’t remember the state calls-but it was much less than the county. In general, city police officers have way more experience way sooner and are able to handle a greater variety of calls-again due to call volume. On average they will see way more shootings, murders, and crime in general. Again, it depends on where the county is located because lapd, maricopa county, dade county are all very busy departments that also see a lot.
Feds enforce fed crimes like bank robbery, kidnapping, murder of politicians, and have the ability to cross state lines-and make arrests. The other agencies are still law enforcement in other states when they are near the state borders-but they can’t cross state lines and make an arrest and transport the arrest across state lines and put them in their jail. Say you have a pursuit and city of is chasing a vehicle and it crosses state lines-they can still pursue and make an arrest to a certain extent. They can’t chase a vehicle for 30 miles into a neighboring state to serve a warrant or to because they fled a traffic stop. Fresh on the trail of a murder suspect-you stay on them until other law enforcement from that jurisdiction come in-but you wouldn’t simply turn around once they got there-you would continue to pursue and assist in the arrest in that case. Let’s say you have a chase that crosses state lines and immediately there is a crash-city police would make the arrest and then turn the arrest over to the law enforcement jurisdiction there and you would complete a fugitive from justice warrant to have the arrest extradited back to your state. Same way if you arrest someone in your jurisdiction from another state-the warrant would have to be entered ncic as an extraditable offense. You then make the arrest-serve the fugitive from justice warrant on them, take them to your jail to await extradition in which that law enforcement agency has to come and get them within a certain amount of time assuming the suspect waives extradition. If they don’t waive it, they wait in jail u til an extradition hearing where a judge makes a decision to hold the person to await pickup. Anyway, back to Feds. They handle bank robberies because often it involves investigations across state lines and because most banks are federally insured ( if it’s not=state bank robbery charge) meaning that basically banks are fed jurisdiction, however, I have made arrests and handled bank robbery calls many times. I have also served bank robbery warrants when we came across a suspect wanted for one. You still answer because Feds aren’t generally mobile and the first to respond to the call and take the report. Your department still does their own investigation, but the person is charged and tried federally. We have had bank robberies where the feds let us do the investigation and then collected our evidence we gathered and they get the warrants. They completely take over if the suspect flees the state but your officers still have to testify as to what steps they took, what evidence they gathered, etc
As for which one is better-man, it depends on a lot of factors. In general, state police have longer training-but much less experience in all manner of things. They typically ride alone so they have to be somewhat self-sufficient and may be the only law enforcement officer for miles with backup being far away. They are typically less specialized(except state crime lab techs) in terms of gang divisions, detectives, etc-however, most decent sized drug units have multiple agencies involved-city, state, county, and dea officers. As for which type has more of a reputation for corruption-depends. Both lapd and lasd have had big issues. I also know of tiny little departments being fully corrupt-one whole department was dissolved in Georgia-I think, where every single officer was dirty. Small towns are more likely to have a reputation for being more predatory in terms of revenue generation. And imo, city cops are almost always considered “more gritty”-they have to be. They also generally have more opportunities for corruption because typically larger forces, more contacts with criminals, and come in contact with more drugs/money/more criminals/more uses of force incidents/more arrests.
Hope this answers your question.
