Expert: Philip Sweeting - 4/16/2007

Question
Hi, This is just a general question. I was curious about whether there are substantial differences in police rank and hierarchy, between city forces and small town forces? Obviously a small town will have a smaller force but would they still have detectives etc? And if this is the case, in the event of a situation such as a murder, where a detective would be required, would they be brought in on loan from a larger city?
Thanks for your help!

Answer
Most police departments are the same but they can also be different. 95% of all police departments in the U.S. have less than 100 officers.

In large police departments such as New York with over 30,000 officers for example they will have officers assigned as full time SWAT officers where in smaller departments they will have part time SWAT officers.

In other words in the smaller departments a SWAT officer will receive all the training required for that work but they have very few incidents that require SWAT so they will also handle calls just like any other officer.

On the other hand many department have less than 20 officers and they can't afford the resources for a SWAT unit...even part time... so they then rely on another agency in their area for that need. It could be the County Sheriff or they may have an agreement with a nearby larger agency.

The same thing holds true for detectives/crime scene investigators. It would all depend on the money available to train the detective and can the department afford to allow him/her to spend the time investigating a murder.

Most police departments like to operate independently and unfortunately adopt a position that they can handle anything.This attitude often leads excessive cost to tax payers for resources they seldom if ever need and inexperienced/poorly trained officers investigating crimes.

I came from an agency with 150 officers and we had everything,... canine, marine unit, SWAT unit and Bomb squad. In all the years I was there I think we had maybe one bomb call per year....so how cost effective was it? The local sheriff would have been glad to handle all our bomb calls for no cost.