State Level Law Enforcement

Over time law enforcement has been a growing and advancing field. From the beginning of its existence in the United States it has grown from the simple “community watch” style of law to the now complex and multilevel force we know today. Just as our law enforcement has developed and changed, so have our laws. It is the responsibility of each level of law enforcement to ensure those laws that are respective to their level be enforced. Each level has a great jurisdiction and, in some cases, a different set of laws they must enforce. These varying levels of enforcement allow there to be a type of “checks and balances” system in place between the local and state levels. It is the federal level, however, that is designed in a way for there to be

These officers handle the coverage over an entire state and are only restricted to the state lines. Because of their vast area of jurisdiction they tend to focus on the larger areas and higher level crimes. At this level the majority of their day to day patrols are consisted of monitoring the state highways. However, it is also at this level where the more “high profile” cases are handled. The state level generally establishes branches of officers to handle specific areas of law enforcement within their state, i.e. gangs, drugs, homicides. These specific areas work closely with the local level law enforcement officers to manage cases and operations involving their respective areas. This allows for a more comprehensive and centralized control and sharing of information between the local departments. Along with state level law enforcement offices that involve uniformed officers, there are also state level investigation bureaus. These offices work closely with their federal counterparts to help with the investigation and control of the cases that are monitored at a federal level, i.e. narcotics trafficking, fugitives, and terrorism. These offices ensure the flow of information between the federal and local level departments as well as manage any state level joint task force

At this level law enforcement is handled by specific bureaus, or departments responsible for enforcing the various federal laws specific to their jurisdiction. This level of law enforcement handles all of the large high profile crimes from counterfeiting to fire arms and narcotics trafficking. Just like the state and local departments have their boundaries, federal departments do as well, the difference between the two is that federal boundaries exist within the laws they enforce instead of physical or location based. Federal law enforcement departments are not allowed, nor capable of enforcing state laws, even if their investigations or operations reveal one of these laws being violated. Because of this most federal departments will ask for the assistance of the state and local departments when conducting various