POLICE STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION:
A STATE-BY-STATE GUIDE to
Federal Agencies, State/County/Municipal, and The Table of Links.

    There are approximately 18,760 separate police agencies in the U.S. with approximately 940,275 employees and a combined annual budget of about $51 billion, of which the federal contribution is only about 15% and with part-time employees counted as half an employee.  Given the fact that most money to support the police establishment is raised locally, and the fact that two out of every three small towns in America have no police agency at all, the United States is far from a police state.  The 10th Amendment of the Constitution reserves police powers to the states, and both federalism and tradition have resulted in a fragmented police structure at lower levels of government; this fragmentation exemplified by the separation of local into two levels: municipal and county.  States also have special agencies or task forces separate from their state police or highway patrol; counties may have railroad or tribal police; and metropolitan cities may have special port, transit, causeway, housing, school, and/or capitol police.

    Counting the actual number of police agencies is a fine art, and some counting methods result in a total of well over 20,000 agencies, with indeed, some counts around 23,170 and others much higher.  One problem is how you count state police agencies.  Some states have a state police barracks in almost every county, and these can be counted separately since they report crime directly into the FBI's UCR system with a unique Originating Reporting Agency Identifier (ORI).  Other states, like Florida, have a vast amount of special purpose state police agencies, such as those devoted to wildlife, fire, and alcoholic beverage control (427 at last count).  In other places, at other levels (Texas, for example), constables are counted as a separate ORI from local government.  Regional special purpose task forces (such as for drug, gang, or terrorist control) exist at all levels of government, are constantly being created, and few are taken away from the counts after they have been decommissioned, or completed their work. 

    Count totals are further compounded by problems of classification at the local level.  Some local governments are true municipalities, while others are classified as townships or villages that may or may not have qualifying police agencies.  There is a surprisingly large number of housing districts and transit authorities in the United States (34,684 at last count) which obviously, do not all consider themselves as having their own police agencies.  A large number of independent school districts also exist (13,726) which are independent of any other government authority, and can have or not have their own police agency.  Many colleges and universities, both public and private, have their own police departments, although there is a tendency to not count the private college agencies since they often don't meet the DLEA definition (BJS Directory of Law Enforcement Agencies) of a law enforcement agency.  With multibranch campuses, the problem becomes one of whether you count the police agency at every academic site as a separate police agency.  Railway police agencies are generally counted at the county level, but hospital, port, airport, and tunnel police agencies are often counted at the local level.  Tribal police agencies also exist at many of the nation's 567 federally-recognized reservations, and it is unclear if they should be considered state, county, or local police. 

    State, county, and local governments are also frequently involved in consolidating or creating new police departments.  Massachusetts, for example, has abolished several county governments and assigned their police function to state agencies.  In other states (Michigan for example), a state police agency may be assigned to a single city or county, and for all practical purposes, is a local police agency.  Consolidation occurs when two or more departments are combined, and typically occurs in places where twin cities have come together or a city has grown so large it takes over the whole county.                    

    There are approximately 60 different federal police agencies, and the Big 8 reside in either Justice or the Treasury Department. Defense, Interior, State, and Agriculture also have police agencies, and a few of them are listed here. There are also about 13 intelligence agencies that can be counted as law enforcement, if you like, along with military police, who can also be counted. 

    The Justice Dept. was created in 1870, and is responsible for enforcing laws passed by the U.S. Congress (federal crimes). Its 4 primary agencies are listed below with the FBI as the largest and Border Patrol as the fastest growing. The Treasury Dept. was established in 1789 and its enforcement function revolves around the collection of revenue. Its 4 primary agencies are also listed below with Customs as the largest.

Other federal: U.S. Postal Inspectors, 2nd Unofficial site for Border Patrol, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, U.S. Park Police, Bureau of Prisons, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, U.S. Capitol Police, Environmental Protection Agency, National Security Agency, Federal Trade Commission, Diplomatic Security Service, Indian Affairs, GSA-Federal Protective Services, and Amtrak.

    There are 26 agencies called Highway Patrol and 23 agencies called State Police (Hawaii doesn't have a state police agency per se, but a Department of Public Safety). Some of the first State Police agencies were the Texas Rangers (1835), the Colorado Mounted Rangers (1861), the PA Capitol Police (1895), the Arizona Rangers (1901), the New Mexico Mounted Police (1905), but the Pennsylvania Constabulary (1905) are usually recognized in most textbooks as the first full-service, non-volunteer agency. Highway Patrols usually but not always limit their authority to patrolling state and federal highways. State Police function much the same as local agencies but with statewide jurisdiction and state crime labs. Highway patrol states also have state crime labs, but under a different umbrella structure.

    Thirty-five states have additional agencies with police or investigative powers. These "limited purpose" agencies have familiar acronyms like ABC (Alcohol Beverage Control), DCI (Dept. of Criminal Investigation), DMV (Dept. of Motor Vehicles), or SBI (State Bureau of Investigation). Where these agencies exist, they often share power with their state police counterparts under an umbrella organization such as a Department of Public Safety (DPS), a Department of Law Enforcement (DLE), or a State Dept. of Justice (DOJ).

    When people think of County law enforcement, they usually think of a Sheriff's Office, and there are about 3,100 sheriffs in the U.S. Most of them are elected officials who exercise political control and influence and go to a County Board for money. Some counties (like Orleans Parish in Louisiana) have two sheriffs: one criminal and the other civil. Sheriffs, in general, have other duties besides law enforcement, such as running a jail, collecting taxes, serving papers, and courthouse security. A contract system also exists where cities contract with the Sheriff's Office for police services.

    Not all counties have Sheriff's Offices. Some, especially the larger ones, have County Police Departments run by a Chief of Police. Other places where a particular town has grown large and taken up practically the whole county have consolidated city and county departments. When such cases occur, there are usually funding problems in continuing to maintain the Sheriff's Office, the workload has become too much for the Sheriff, or county officials want to exert more power over law enforcement. Some counties have BOTH a Sheriff's Office and a County Police Department. Some places have NO county law enforcement.

    There are more municipal police departments (over 15,000) in the U.S. than any other kind of agency, and this number includes transit, school, and housing police.  There are about 800 departments that have only one officer, but NYPD is in a class by itself with about 40,000 regular officers and 13,000 special purpose transit, school, and housing officers (see NY). A complete list of ALL "special purpose" police agencies would include animal cruelty, beach, harbor, hospital, housing, port, railroad, sanitation, school, transit, and transportation authorities. These are usually separate municipal-level agencies, and should not be confused with specialized units belonging to a single department, such as airborne, band, bicycle, bomb, DARE, detective, forensics, gang, graffitti, HAZMAT, intelligence, internal affairs, K9, marine, motorcycle, mounted, narcotics, operations, organized crime, sex crimes, SWAT, or traffic.

    The vast majority of municipal departments are small, having 10 or fewer officers. The great number of these "micro" agencies helps keep the average size of all police departments in America around 25 sworn officers, not counting civilians, a measure of police strength (counting the civilians is a measure of professional growth). Larger, "macro" agencies with 1000 officers or more usually have specialized units, such as Crime Analysis and the occasional profiler unit. More "medium" to "large" sized agencies with 26-999 (average 150) officers usually maintain extensive order maintenance functions assigned to municipal "peacekeeping" agencies in general. Training to become a city or county police officer consists of attending a municipal police training academy which usually has an extensive curriculum like the BLET in North Carolina.  There are also about 1000 campus law enforcement agencies in the U.S.

THE TABLE OF LINKS:

    In the following table (which is near-complete), what I've tried to do rather than produce just another alphabetical listing of state, county, and municipal or local agencies is to create a way to do research on what police departments are doing right or wrong (at least as far as their web sites can tell us). The rankings are taken from an NCIA quality of life index with a 1 representing the BEST state to live in and a 50 being the WORST state to live in. If you are interested in city-by-city comparisons on where it is safest to live, visit the Morgan Quitno Press site. Known or estimated sizes are given (if incorrect, please contact me), based on total employees, both sworn and unsworn positions. Scroll or use the following shortcut table:

[AL][AK][AR][AZ][CA][CO][CT][DE][FL][GA][HI][IA][ID][IL][IN][KS][KY][LA][MD]
[MA][ME][MI][MN][MO][MS][MT][NC][ND][NE][NH][NJ][NM][NV][NY][OH][OK]
[OR][PA][RI][SC][SD][TN][TX][UT][VA][VT][WA][WI][WV][WY]

For more NC Law Enforcement, see the Related Mega-Site: CJ Carolina

Last Updated 11/04/04
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