What is the difference between a sheriff and police department? Do they govern different things and have completely separate powers? Does one have more jurisdiction over another and what happens when it comes to committing a criminal offence?
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Sheriffs in each counties (or parishes in Louisiana) serve as bailiffs for court, correctional officers for the county jail, police officers for cities that have low populations to have the budget for a full time police department/unincorporated areas. Also issues conceal carry permit. Some departments provide air support to other agency.
One last thing, sheriff provide coroners service.
Sheriff departments and police departments often do mutual aid to each other and they have the same power.
In American law enforcement, sheriffs and their responsibilities vary state by state, and even county by county.
Some of the big differences: a sheriff is elected, while law enforcement is not. This means that there’s a political element to sheriffs, although how overtly political the sheriff is varies wildly. Sheriffs are elected the law enforcement of a county, while police departments usually are the law enforcement of a city.
Sheriff’s deputies are the county police, basically, and also they run the county jail. So there’s a lot of overlap with the police but basically police are in charge of cities and towns, sheriffs are in charge of the unincorporated areas of the county and the county jail. Most cities (AFAIK) don’t have a jail of their own or only have a few holding cells, so they’ll take you straight to county.
Also the Sheriff is an elected position.
In the USA, states are divided into counties (parishes in Louisiana) to make administration easier. The sheriff handles the law enforcement tasks for the county. Cities are incorporated subsections of counties that are self-governing; they take over some of those legal functions such as law enforcement by city departments like the police. There are also various other law enforcement entities such as the state police, highway patrol, or bureau of investigation. Each of those are considered law enforcement officers. Basically, the difference is jurisdiction; for example, the Seattle police department is responsible for the city, while the King County Sheriff’s department is responsible for law enforcement in the unincorporated county and smaller towns. Most of these entities have some sort of mutual aid agreements so that, for example, a city police officer can pursue a criminal suspect out of the city if necessary.
In the United States most people live under several overlapping governments, all of which can have their own police force.
You have the federal government which operates various investigative and enforcement agencies like the FBI or ATF, but most people don’t count these as police.
On the state government level you have highway patrol and state troopers who have jurisdiction over interstate highways and the bits of the state that don’t fall under the smaller governments we’ll get to later.
The you have the county level, where sheriffs are elected. Counties are fairly large geographic areas that can include multiple towns and cities.
Then on the lowest level you have the towns and cities that operate their own local police departments. Depending on which state and even which county you are in the local police may or may not supersede the county level law enforcement.
The US has multiple kinds of overlapping law enforcement and there are complex laws and agreements that govern their jurisdiction. For example federal law enforcement is only involved when a criminal crosses state lines in the commission of a crime or if the law violated is a federal law, or when dealing with Native American tribes. Sheriffs are the law enforcement of a county, *the* sheriff, the equivalent of a Chief of Police is generally an elected position that the residents of the county vote for. The sheriff’s department has jurisdiction over unincorporated land in the county, that is any place that hasn’t legally incorporated as a town/city. Smaller incorporated towns may also contract with the sheriff’s department to provide policing for them if they don’t have the resources to have their own police department.
Jurisdiction is dictated typically by where the crime took place, so if there’s a robbery in an unincorporated part of the county the Sheriff’s department will handle it, whereas a murder happening in a city with it’s own PD will be handled by that PD. Sheriffs and police departments generally have at least *something* of a working relationship that allows for things like providing backup in cases of large scale crisis, notification of a suspect fleeing and crossing jurisdiction lines allowing them to continue chase or hand over there chase, or if a sheriff or PD has a particular asset that the other is in need of. But information sharing on a case level is pretty freaking piss poor in the US, there is nothing compelling sharing of information on a local, state, or federal level, and no consistent way of recording crime. There have been multiple attempts to make federal databases of crime data but participation is usually somewhere around 60% of departments sending data and what data is sent is often not all to the same standard. This lack of communication between departments causes real issues with serial crime since multiple departments can be within very short geographic distances of each other and yet not share information it can be hard to identify things like serial killers.
I feel like Sheriffs in America Have a presence that is different in larger states than in smaller states. In Massachusetts, I don’t even know who my sheriffs are or where they work out of. I’ve never interacted with them at all. You just never hear a single thing about them. When I lived in New York, they seem to have a bigger presence, especially in the counties with large rural areas. In larger states out West and in the South, they seem more visible.
Fun fact: the word Sheriff comes from late Old English scirgerefa “representative of royal authority in a shire” from scir (see shire) + gerefa “chief, official, reeve” (see reeve):
https://www.etymonline.com/word/sheriff#etymonline_v_23383
In late Anglo-Saxon England, the Shire Reeve’s job would be to watch over the county borders and raise the fyrd, in case of incursions from a rival kingdom.
They still have sheriffs in Scotland.
Yah they probably don’t either. Its all different everywhere. They got municipal cops, state cops, regional county cops, federal cops, private security guards with guns and handcuffs.
So – to put it in british terms – It would be the same as if the police commisioner of York was elected, not appointed, with the power to change/enforce “”some”” laws as he/she saw fit for that area. He/she would have the same powers – but in the US vs UK there is a bit more jurisdiction differences, in that a Yorkshire police officer, is still a UK police officer in Newcastle, or London, while in the the US its many different law enforcement agencies, sometimes overlapping – and the FBI is supposed to be “the national cops”
I have never been a cop in the US – but in reality I imagine its not at all a “competition” like in the movies where the police starts questioning each other on authority, but more on “who is actually going to fill out the paper-work for this arrest, well it should be “you” because he was arrested where you had jurisdiction. I can not imagine a situation where ie a local cop was to abort a chase just because the car is now in a different jurisdiction, its not that black/white.
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