I’m fairly new to living in the US and I see all three on the roads here. In the U.K. we only had police.
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The difference is jurisdiction. You have this in the UK too; there isn’t just one police force policing the whole country, you have [territorial police forces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_law_enforcement_agencies_in_the_United_Kingdom,_Crown_dependencies_and_British_Overseas_Territories#Territorial_police_forces), e.g. the Metropolitan Police have jurisdiction in London, and the Manchester Police have jurisdiction in Manchester.
The US is the same, except way larger and with a lot more jurisdictions, plus sub-jurisdictions inside those jurisdictions.
In general, cities have police departments, counties have sheriff’s offices, and states have the state troopers (sometimes called the highway patrol). There are also federal law-enforcement agencies, like the FBI, although they aren’t typically involved in ordinary policing; their opposite number in the UK would be the National Crime Agency.
Where one department’s jurisdiction ends and another begins can be very complicated and depends on the states and cities involved. A stated, cities normally have their own police departments but in some cities, especially small ones, most policing might get outsourced to the county authorities. State troopers normally have jurisdiction on the highways, which is why in some states they’re called the Highway Patrol but they also get involved in major investigations.
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