Sheriffs and Local Police

Policing in the United States is overwhelmingly local. The Bureau of Justice Statistics has counted about 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies, employing roughly 700,000 full-time sworn officers. The largest category is municipal police departments, created by cities and led by chiefs appointed by mayors or managers. The first modern American police departments were established in Boston in 1838 and New York in 1845, modeled partly on London's Metropolitan Police.

Sheriffs, an office inherited from the English shire reeve, lead about 3,000 county sheriff's offices. Sheriffs are elected in nearly every state, making them directly accountable to voters rather than to mayors or councils, and they typically run county jails, serve court papers, provide courthouse security, and patrol unincorporated areas. Connecticut abolished county sheriffs in 2000, and Alaska has none. Some sheriffs have asserted that they may decline to enforce laws they consider unconstitutional, a view courts have rejected.

The federal government shapes local policing through grants, training, and civil rights enforcement. Since 1994 the Justice Department has been authorized to sue departments engaged in a pattern or practice of unconstitutional policing, producing court-supervised consent decrees, and after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 it opened several such investigations, which the Justice Department moved to drop in 2025. Federal agreements under Section 287(g) let local officers assist with immigration enforcement and expanded sharply in 2025. Debates continue over police funding, accountability, and the balance between local control and national standards.