At the federal level, there is both a federal police force, which has full federal authority under the United States Code (U.S.C.), and federal law enforcement agencies, which have the power to enforce various laws at the federal level. The police and law enforcement agencies work at the highest level and are endowed with police functions. Each can keep a small part of the other (for example, the FBI police). The agencies are responsible for federal law enforcement in all U.S. states, territories, and U.S. possessions. Most federal agencies are limited by the U.S. Code to investigate only matters that are specifically within the jurisdiction of the federal government. However, federal investigative powers have become very broad in practice, especially since the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act.
There are also federal law enforcement agencies, such as the U.S. Parks Police, that are granted state detention powers outside of primary federal jurisdiction. Law enforcement agencies are also involved in the initial response to emergencies and other threats to public safety. the protection of certain public facilities and infrastructures; the maintenance of law and order; protection of public officials; and the operation of some detention centres (usually at the local level). Law enforcement in the United States is one of the three main components of the U.S. criminal justice system, along with courts and correctional facilities. Although each component operates semi-independently, the three together form a chain that goes from investigating alleged criminal activity to administering criminal sanctions. Fatal Encounters is the best source of data for identifying the cause of civilian death, although it does cover cases where law enforcement may not have played a direct role in the death. By far the most common cause of death is firearms, followed by motor vehicles (for example, motor vehicle accidents and pedestrian fatalities). Death by suffocation, which would include the use of chokeholds and other methods to secure people with neck chains or compression by police, accounts for a very small proportion of all deaths that have decreased over time.
Through NLETS, law enforcement and criminal justice agencies can access a wide range of information, from standard driving licence and vehicle applications to criminal history and Interpol information. [105] The transactions involve nearly 1.5 billion transactions per year on more than one million PCs, mobile and wearable devices in the United States and Canada with 45,000 user agencies and 1.3 million individual users. [103] Confirmed cases of people killed by law enforcement are not routinely documented by any agency. In addition, no single data source fully verified full details on the contextual factors associated with these deaths, such as whether the victim was armed or not, the number of police officers present, the race and ethnicity of the victim and officer, and whether the incident was prosecuted. Each available data source tells a slightly different story, partly reflecting the size and limitations of the data. Law enforcement agencies work mainly through state police authorities. There are 17,985 U.S. police departments in the United States, including city police departments, county sheriff`s offices, state police/highway patrol, and federal law enforcement agencies. The purposes of these law enforcement agencies are to investigate suspected criminal activity, report the results of investigations to state or federal prosecutors, and temporarily remand suspected offenders pending trial. Law enforcement agencies are also often tasked to varying degrees, at different levels of government and in different agencies, with deterring criminal activity and preventing the successful commission of ongoing crimes.
Other tasks may include the service and execution of arrest warrants, documents and other court decisions. A law enforcement officer may briefly detain a person if there is reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in a crime, but there is no probable reason to arrest the person. Contrary to popular belief and Hollywood depictions on television and film, the mere lawful detention of a person – in itself – does not deprive a person of his or her right to unlawful searches. Federal, state, and local laws, as well as law enforcement policies, govern when, where, how, and to whom a law enforcement officer may perform an “analysis,” “protective search,” or “sponge pat-down,” based on several U.S. Supreme Court decisions (including Terry v. Ohio (1968), Michigan v. Long (1983) and Maryland v. Buie (1990): In 2019, there were 58,170 attacks on law enforcement officials (including federal, state, and local agencies), injuring 17,560 people. The Combating Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 authorized the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice to bring civil lawsuits against local law enforcement agencies, combat abuse, and hold them accountable. [73] As a result, many ministries have issued consent orders or letters of intent committing them to organizational reforms.
[72]:5 This approach shifts attention from individual officers to police organizations. In 2008, federal law enforcement employed approximately 120,000 full-time law enforcement officers authorized to make arrests and carry firearms in the United States. [106] In the 1990s, many law enforcement agencies began to adopt community policing strategies, and others adopted problem-based policing. In the 1990s, CompStat was developed by the NYPD Department as an information-based system for tracking and mapping patterns and trends in crime, and blamed the police for dealing with crime problems. CompStat and other forms of information-based policing have since been replicated in police departments across the United States. [ref. needed] At a crime scene or disaster involving a large number of people, multiple jurisdictions or large geographical areas, many law enforcement authorities may intervene under mutual assistance agreements. [5] For example, the U.S. Federal Protective Service responded to the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina. In such situations, command remains a complex and flexible issue. In 2008, state and local law enforcement agencies employed more than 1.1 million full-time employees, including approximately 765,000 sworn employees (defined as those with general powers of arrest). The agencies also employed about 100,000 part-time employees, including 44,000 sworn public servants.
[107] Data on fatal encounters show the highest number of deaths, as these include cases where law enforcement officers were present but may not have played a direct role in the death. Police violence mapping data comes from multiple sources and extracts relevant details from the three largest and most comprehensive participatory databases, FatalEncounters.org, the U.S. and KilledbyPolice.net Police Shootings Database. These original lines of evidence are further researched for verification purposes and to extract additional information to improve data quality and completeness. The Washington Post tracks people shot by police with a gun, but not those who were killed in some other way. Both data from Mapping Police Violence and the Washington Post show similar trends, but both projects are new and data are only available for recent years. Law enforcement has always been a male-dominated profession. There are approximately 18,000 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies with more than 1.1 million employees. [110] There are approximately 12,000 local law enforcement agencies, the largest of the three types. [110] In a 2013 survey, Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics found that 72.8% of local police officers were white. Black or African Americans were 12.2% (the black population in the United States is about 13%) and Latinos or Hispanics were 11.6%.
Women accounted for 17% of full-time sworn officers. [110] Women, Asian and Hispanic officers are significantly underrepresented in the police force. Many law enforcement agencies are trying to hire a variety of recruits to better represent their communities. [110] Law enforcement officers are given certain powers to carry out their duties. If there is a probable reason to believe that a person has committed a serious crime, an offence in his presence or a few offences that are not in his presence, a law enforcement officer may handcuff and arrest a person who is detained in a police station or prison pending bail or charges. Despite these reforms, police authorities were led by highly autocratic leaders, and a lack of respect remained between the police and the community. In the days of police professionalism, law enforcement agencies focused on fighting crime and other serious crimes, rather than preventing crime. [29] After the urban unrest of the 1960s, the police placed greater emphasis on community relations and adopted reforms such as greater diversity in recruitment. The Kansas City Preventive Patrol study in the 1970s found that the reactive approach to policing was ineffective. [30] The cost of policing increased rapidly in the 1960s. In 1951, U.S. cities spent $82 per person on policing.
Adjusted for inflation, police spending increased by more than 300% to $286 per person in 2016. [31] The Department of Justice (DOJ) is responsible for most federal law enforcement functions. [2] These include the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the United States Marshals Service, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), and others. [3] In most states, law enforcement officers operate under the same self-defense laws as the general public.