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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In more rural areas of the United States it’s pretty common for individual towns to not have their own police, or if they do it’s one or two full time employees with finite resources. So they rely on the Sheriff’s office which is organized at the county level to include several neighboring communities.
In the same manner it’s impractical for every individual town/city to have their own courts, judges, prison, ect, so those services also tend to get organized at the county level. Sheriff’s office also tends to do most of the heavy lifting for these systems.
In more developed areas the responsibilities trend towards the latter, while in rural areas they do a lot more basic policing.
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