How is it that in the US the police is such a deregulated entity? Almost anywhere I’ve been in the world the police worked the same nation or state wide, maybe the local police department of town A works a little different from that of town B but the core rules are many and the same for all of them.
Which historical, legal and cultural reasons bring to this situation where a small town can shape a police department so freely?
Generally if a crime occurs within a city it's that city police that will investigate, if it is outside the city within a county it may be the county sheriff or state police, and across state lines, the federal government gets involved. Obviously this can cause some confusion or fighting over jurisdictions. On the flip-side a local police department can help the needs of the community specifically. For example, where I live we have a small police department that responds immediately if there is a problem when you call them. They often help elderly residents that are having trouble, will drive by your house when you're on vacation, etc. Depending on states and cities local laws, sheriffs and police chiefs may be hired or elected.
Culturally, the United States has been oriented towards local control and biased against federal control. The states traditionally have been very independent of the federal government. For example most state constitutions are very long compared to our relatively short national constitution. In the western part of the united states, as communities were developed and grew, the need for local law enforcement grew with those communities, often before they were really a part of a state or the federal government had any control. So the legacies of those localized police and law enforcement entities has lived on.
I'm less familiar with how Europe's or other countries' police came to be, but typically those countries are far smaller than the United States and generally have more centralized federal power, which means having a centralized police force makes more sense.
Just blows my mind.
Anyway I feel there is something missing and I cannot exactly say what it is. Maybe it is simply something cultural that is not so easily graspable from those living somewhere else, it always feels so strange to me that a small town has so much freedom to shape its law enforcement so freely… for me a shared law across the state is the basis for equality, and to have a shared law you need to enforce it similarly.
Thanks again :)
Accountability, that is missing!
In general Republicans are more against central control, and Democrats more for it (but not as much as Europeans).
So for example that voting rights fight going on right now is not about voting rights, it's about the Federal government setting rules (Republicans are against that) vs. the State setting rules (Democrats are against that).
There's arguments both ways for which is better, I don't want to go into that, but this should help explain what you are missing.
This same argument shapes things like Health care - which is currently local, not federal, and actually a HUGE amount of political stuff boils down to local vs federal.
Another thing is that personal determination is equated with local control (i.e. person decides what's best for themselves), while federal control is equated with social services (since some central authority decides what services to render).
Keep in mind the way the country was created was "united states", with the main authority being the state, and the federal government given only limited power. Also keep in mind a US state is similar in size to a European country.
Different laws are set at different levels, and historically policing was always at the city level. Also building codes are often at the city level.
Voting is typically at the county level (which is a group of cities, or one very large city).
Etc, etc. There are customs for most of these laws, and which level of entity is in charge of them. And the "higher" level entity can step in if necessary, but usually does not.
Also typically a "sheriff" is a voted position, while police is appointed by the mayor. So ultimately they answer to the voters, either directly or through the mayor.
For example, most people in jail are not in federal jail. Most people are served by local police. Rules on taxes vary county to county as needs vary county to county.
This is good and bad
The main thing in this is law enforcement discretion. There's no way the population would vote these malicious leaders in if the tickets were being given to residents. They are mostly hitting non-residents. This is very common near military bases. The law is the same, but they choose not to apply it to residents (and apparently make up violations too).
Hopefully people have dashcams, and record interactions on their phones. It sounds like they will end up losing much more in lawsuits than they are bringing in. Perhaps the FBI and DOJ will get involved due to rights and color of law violations.
What I don’t understand is about police in particular, if police is “law enforcement”. I’d expect some laws to be national, then some laws to be state, then going down and down until we reach a single small town where something might be different from the next one but they should share many things… how is it that the enforcement part of those same laws is so subjective?
IMHO the law has two sides: the normative one, what it actually is, and the enforcement one, how it is applied to society. If the enforcement part is highly subjective we are distorting the law. It should be desirable to minimize the differences of enforcing the same law.
Is it something really appreciated by the population over there that the same law is applied very differently in the next town over simply because it decides to enforce it in a different manner?
I remember a few decades ago, AAA (large US auto club) recommended against using certain stretches of highway in Florida because the local town loved to ticket out-of-state drivers (heading from the northern border to Disney World in Orlando, IIRC).
And because enforcement is decentralized, so is enforcement of police procedures. "Thin Blue Line" is the term used to describe cops backing cops, even when they do illegal things. Like planting evidence in Baltimore (a few news worthy cases over the past several years).
Basically, policing in the US is completely broken. And the Supreme Court has decided (not recently) that police have zero obligation to actually help and protect citizens. So, if a crime is occurring, the police aren't obligated to help. They just wait until the beatings and rapes finish, then maybe arrest suspects, if they can be bothered (ie, did the crime make headlines and is a politician pressuring them to do so).
The reality in the United States is that the only national law in situations where you don't explicitly deal with the federal government is the Consitution, and even then the Constitution is interpreted differently by different states.
The states are more or less free to ignore (refuse to enforce) federal law. How do you think certain states legalised weed, illegal immigration and refuse to enforce the NFA in certain situations?
I guess this is what I’m missing, it is really peculiar from my point of view that a smaller entity can ignore a “higher” law.
From what I’m used to the higher law always wins, so during disputes: national > state > county > town.
What you are saying is that in the US a smaller entity is free to say “fuck you, come and get me” to a higher entity and get along with it, and the only way for a higher entity to step in is using force? (not literal force but force nonetheless)
Maybe it’s a combination of: common law (instead of civil law), most towns are relatively recent, sheer size of the country, isolation of some communities and a strong sense of local autonomy.
Yes. And the feds would have to use literal force to get someone for smoking weed in say, Colorado.
Your friendly neighbourhood FBI or DEA agent can still arrest you for smoking weed in Colorado, it’s just that the local and state police don’t care and they won’t transfer you to federal custody.
Obviously this is not how federal law enforcement works. They don’t do patrols, and they are extremely reliant on state law enforcement to transfer the cases that fall under their jurisdiction to them, except when they are doing the investigation themselves.
Harbouring illegal aliens is illegal under federal law, but what are you going to do, if California doesn’t care and straight up refuses to cooperate with the ICE? ICE has the authority to enforce federal law within California, it’s just that they have to put the boots on the ground themselves now, for which no federal law enforcement agency has the resources.
This was by design. States are sovereign entities.
The state part is something I quite got already from popular culture, but is there something similar also inside a state? I mean, counties can do the same “fuck you” with the state and towns can do the same with the county?
Generally no, because the state is the sovereign. Counties/towns/any other local communities aren't.
For what I read around it is unusual, and mostly when something really bad happens and/or hit the news. If the state is sovereign, why is it not enforcing its own law inside its borders?
(thanks again BTW)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/08/most-police...