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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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.
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