Who coordinates the efforts of different police departments?
Most American agglomerations aren’t single cities, but rather metropolitan areas containing different cities or even counties. Let’s take the San Francisco Bay Area. It is composed out of nine counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. All of those counties have different Sheriff’s Offices. There are cities like San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Fremont, Santa Rosa, Redwood City, Concord, Fairfield, Berkeley, Napa, San Rafael, Hayward which have their own respective Police Departments. That gives us 12 different PD’s!
With crime not knowing any borders or limits, how those Sheriff’s Offices and Police Departments manage to coordinate fighting crime? Is there any central institution for the coordination of different SO’s or PD’s? How police detectives manage to find criminals hiding outside their jurisdiction?
More thoughts on the topic:
Isn’t there some kind of law enforcement structure on the state level?
For example, in California, there’s California Highway Patrol, which serves as the State Police. They mainly control the highways and state roads, but they also have jurisdiction anywhere in the state of California and can aid local LE if necessary.
BUT, can they also coordinate various LE agencies, command them to do something, etc.? Isn’t there ANY state supervision over the local agencies?
3 Responses
John U
22 Aug 2011
MikeTL
22 Aug 2011
There is no central coordination system. Police departments work within their jurisdictions. They share information through various databases and the CAD system.
When a major incident that involves several jurisdictions occurs then the NIMS system takes over. NIMS was created by FEMA after 9/11 to aid in interagency communication. It is primarily used by fire departments but can be used by police as well.
NIMS specifies that knowledge and skill, not rank, dictate who a scene commander will be. In the case of Law Enforcement, the scene commander is usually a veteran officer of the department of which the incident is taking place. In WA we have a radio frequency called LERN (law enforcement radio network) which allows us to communicate with other departments.
Some areas have multi-departmental task forces as well.
In short the only offical US wide system in place is NIMS, other than that departments work together in whatever ways suits their needs. There is really no clear cut way to give you an answer.
Alexis
01 May 2014
Hi Jenny the trip and pics look fabulous and your blog has been a hoot to read. Glad you are safe and havnig a wonderful time. Am worried about Dudley not havnig his own bike helmet! Keep safe.
Yep although Police and Sheriff’s have to stay in their own jurisdiction they are now using technology to share information. We still have the NCIC that any LE agency can use to look up criminals and if someone may be believed to be hiding out in another jurisdiction the detective or whoever is on the case can contact that PD or SO and ask for their assistance which they will do. When it is a serious case of a wanted felon that is usually handed over to the Feds such as the US Marshall’s or ATF who have jurisdiction anywhere and everywhere within the borders of the US. There are many ways to get past being held down in your own jurisdiction and any LE agency is going to be more than happy to oblige another. Think about it this way, if you were a detective in San Francisco and you got a call from a detective in San Jose who needs your help to arrest a felon hiding out in your city would you blow them off knowing you now have a felon in your jurisdiction that in all likelihood is going to continue their criminal activity but now it is in your jurisdiction? Well the answer is no. In many cases as well PD’s may form a task force with officers from two or more PD’s and they will work together to find someone. If that person is found in one jurisdiction the officers from that jurisdiction will make the arrest and the others will only assist and vice versa. There are a lot of ways for PD’s to work together and depending on what they have in front of them will depend on how they will approach the problem but either way I can almost guarantee that every one of those agencies have "Mutual Aid" agreements between all the other jurisdictions that surround them and they can and will work together but again, how depends on what they are trying to solve but solve it they will.