Posted: 5/30/2008 6:45:35 AM EDT
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I did some traveling in Kentucky and Tennessee... in both places, while on the interstates, I saw cars for their respective state police agencies. While in Tennessee I also saw county sheriff cruisers out and about, as well as of course, local city cruisers. In a state like that, what happens outside of city limits? What determines if it's a county or state matter? Ohio has a State Highway Patrol, but they only do traffic enforcement/accidents/ etc, if it's a criminal call of any kind, a domestic or an assault or something, it goes to the city or county Sheriff's office. |
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Around here if it's in a city it's the city cops that have primary responsibility. If it's not in a ciry it's the county Sheriff's department that handles it. If the city is busy they can ask the county to help. If the county is busy they can ask the state patrol to help. |
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In Virginia, the State Police have authority over the entire state, on criminal and traffic matters. However, they routinely do not get involved in criminal matters unless requested by the local agency. Their investigative bureau does generate their own work, however. Troopers, of course, have full reign of all public roads in the commonwealth. Troopers also routinely handle traffic crashes in areas that do not have a police department (sheriff's offices rarely handle traffic crashes). |
Troopers = state police, or just highway patrol? Ohio State Patrol Troopers only have jurisdiction on the highways in the state... some Sheriff's Offices do accidents, I'm really not sure how many don't, but the SO I work for does some, but if it's a fatal we usually ask OSP to handle them. Sometimes the people will just call them first and we never know it even happened, sometimes we're busy and when they come in we check and see if a Trooper can handle them. |
Virginia State Police is a full service agency, they have three Bureaus - Field Operations, Criminal Investigation, and an administrative Bureau. North Carolina, for example, has a split system - The NC state highway patrol, and the State Bureau of Investigation. VA troopers have jurisdiction everywhere. Road troopers are assigned to a county, or to a stretch of interstate. In counties where the local group of troopers has a good relationship with the SO, the troopers are even issued local radios and are rotated into the dispatch order for calls for service. We have a good relationship with our local troopers, and they even have a regional sub office set up in our PD - our chief made sure to build an extra office in our new PD just for the VSP troopers to work from. Our troopers are often deployed across the state for major events, such as the Virginia Tech shooting (troopers secured the campus within hours and maintained 24hr presence for over a week), the infamous coal workers strikes in the 90's, and other disasters or large events. |
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Illinois - Local PD's - generally limited to their corporate limits, unless it's an emergency or they've been contracted to patrol an area that doesn't have it's own PD. May or may not patrol the various highways that pass through their community. County SO - all of the unincorporated areas of a county, as well as smaller municipalities that don't have their own PD. Same as above for highways. ISP has "statewide jurisdiction", although they typically work the interstates (and have exclusive jurisdiction for the tollways) and larger state highways, and back up rural county deputies or local LEO's. We also have the Secretary of Sate Police (SoS), who do have a uniformed division tht typically works commerical details like weights, driver and vehicle registrations. |