Judicial Function

Law Enforcement Agencies and Their Organization
By: Wes Stephenson

policebadges3.jpg

We all have seen, hung out with and even been arrested by a person of the law. But have you ever wondered just how many types of agencies are really out there? Before reading this chapter I really thought that I knew about the majority of law enforcement agencies but I was wrong. One staggering statistics reported by the FBI is that there are a total of 14,169 agencies that employ over 708,569 officers. You will find out the different types of law enforcement organizations and a brief overview of what they day.
There are several categories of agencies and they are broken into local, state and federal. You can also include county and municipal level as well as specialized agencies that do not fit into any of the above categories. The majority of the agencies all have common rules to follow but when you go deeper into them you find out that some have jurisdiction over other and some cannot be involved unless they are called upon.
Some of the most well know organizations are the FBI, CIA, DEA, local and state police, State Troopers and county sheriffs. The FBI, CIA and DEA are all federal agencies they can be broken up into smaller teams to work on specific tasks and priorities. The local and state police generally have the same task as protecting their area which could be a town, city or county. If they are needed to, they can go outside of their jurisdiction but only when called upon to do so.
Work Cited
1. Agencies and Their Numbers. 02 Feb. 2008. Web. 04 Mar. 2011. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/data/table_74.html
2. Schmalleger, Frank, and John L. Worrall. Policing Today. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2010. Print.



Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License