Police Law Enforcement Agencies, or the Police

Police

Law enforcement agencies, or the police force, operate on several jurisdictional platforms within the United States. In general, their primary mandate is to help maintain societal order and the rule of law by assisting subjects with legal compliance, protecting property, helping to keep citizens and property safe and secure, and for assistance in extraordinary events. The police force is part of the social order of society and mediates public events, pre-empts anti-social behaviors, helps mitigate potential dangers at large events, works with other agencies in general search and rescue, crowd control, regulations, education and awareness campaigns, and to support the rule of law (Cole, 2004). Under the rubric of law enforcement, there are three major categories of police: Federal, Local and State.

Local law enforcement provides routine and micro-policing to the communities within their jurisdiction. This may include traffic enforcement, criminal investigations, local laboratory or forensic investigation, certain types of detention, community service, crime prevention, and liasoning at the local level. State law enforcement takes a broader approach: the State's highways, rural areas, motor vehicle inspection and many of the same functions as local police, but with different staff, budgets, and jurisdictions. At the Federal level, policing becomes more specialized; whether firearms, drugs, immigration, multi-state issues, counterterrorism and intelligence, cybercrime, and large scale racketeering and cross-border criminal activity (Dempsey and Forst, 2009).

In most cases, the easiest way to differentiate the duties is the same way we would think of government: local moves to State moves to Regional moves to Federa. In the case of law enforcement, often times duties overlap, depending on jurisdiction (e.g. A crime that occurs in two counties, two States, or in multiple States). Additionally, there are crimes (terrorist, espionage, cyber crime, etc.) that are considered Federal in nature because ot their repurcussionsate (The Difference Between Federal and State Law, 2010).

There are a number of Federal Agencies in the United States that work to uphold legal standards and protect citizens and property. For the purposes of our discussion, we will focus on the Department of Homeland Security, the Diplomatic Security Service, and the Bureau of Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Homeland Security (DHS) is a Cabinet Level Department that holds the primary responsibility of the protection of the United States from terrorism, outside terrorist attacks, and the response to natural diasters. This department was created after the events of 9/11 to ensure greater cooperation between intelligence agencies, as well as a clearing house for the massive amounts of information collected daily on suspected terrorist and terrorist activities. Theoretically, the agency was formed to eliminate waste, duplication of effort and bureaucracy. However, since its inception, it has been critized for over excessive bureaucracy, ineffectivness in its mission, and the waste of billions of dollars in federal contracts (Hedgpeth, 2008).

The Diplomatic Sercurity Service (DSS) is a federal agency and part of the Department of State. The majority of its members are career Foreign Services officers, primarily made up of U.S. Federal Agents. The DSS is the most widely represented U.S. law enforcement agency in the global market. The DSS has several mandates; threat protection for State Department and other U.S. Officials in foreign countries, passport and visa fraud, counterintelligence and duplomatic adtivities, and investigation of crimes dealing with U.S.citizens abroad.