Different Roles in Law Enforcement

In: Other Topics

Submitted By bmtilley
Words 412
Pages 2
Local law enforcement has many different duties that they are responsible for every day and each agency is broken down into many different roles. Local police officers for example are responsible for providing safety within the communities and their specific jurisdiction by patrolling the streets, providing public information, conducting investigations, and forcing traffic laws, preventing crimes, providing and monitoring the local detention centers and drug and alcohol testing to name a few. In 2007, there were approximately 2575 local police departments that were operating in the U.S. In these departments were approximately 463,000 full time personnel.
State law enforcement consist manly of the state police and the higher patrol. The duties of these two departments consist of patrolling specific areas, conducting investigations, and enforcing traffic laws on high ways. The state police are much like the local police except that they have a much larger jurisdiction and they are broken down into specialized units, such as, the investigative unit, the aviation unit and tactical unit. The highways protrol's main duty is to enforce traffic laws on state roads and highways, in the means of DUI enforcement, drug trafficking, and traffic accidents. Hawaii is the only state without a state police or highway patrol In 2007, there were 49 state law enforcement agencies with approximately 107,000 full time personnel. The California highway patrol way largest of all state law enforcement agencies with, in 2007, 7,085 full time personnel.
There are mainly two types of federal law enforcement agencies, uniformed and investigative. The uniformed law enforcement agencies patrol a specific location, like the white house, the capitol building, the FBI building, the supreme court and varies federal buildings. The investigative law enforcement agency are appointed to specific...