I’ve seen dozens of different types of Police in all different types of uniforms – green, grey, beige, black, blue, khaki, camo. On the back of the body armour or jackets, there’s Police, Sheriff, Trooper, Military, Border Patrol, State, etc… and probably a few more that i can’t remember.
Does the uniform colour just differ from state to state? What is the difference between Police and the Sheriffs Office? From watching old cowboy films, i thought the Sheriff was one person who was the top rank or something similar. But I see videos where’s a bunch of cops pull up and they all have Sheriff on the back.
Does one department hold any rank over another department when they’re all at the same scene?
In the UK and a lot of European countries. the police wear the same uniform which just have ‘police’ on the back. So it’s quite interesting to see the difference in America.
Thanks in advance for answering.
15 comments
Different municipalities/ jurisdiction. A lot of these have their own laws. Uniforms are up to leadership.
Departments rank as follows:
Federal
State
Local
It can get a little confusing depending on the crime that occurred, where it occurred, and who has jurisdiction.
Sheriffs are county level enforcement. They have specific duties that are usually outside of routine beats and traffic stops. Police uniforms are up to the municipality. Troopers are state-level enforcement and I usually see them on interstate highways. Military is not involved in law enforcement, and border patrol is self explanatory.
Military are not law enforcement, though they do have their own law enforcement on their bases.
Police departments operate in municipalities such as towns and cities. Sheriff operates in the county. In general the sheriff’s department will not respond to calls within city limits unless its an absolute emergency.
Not all sheriffs have law enforcement beats. In Marion County/Indianapolis, the law enforcement division of the Sheriff’s department was merged with the police department in the early 2000s. The Sheriff runs the jail, secures city and county offices, serves warrants, runs the sex offender registry, and assorted other duties.
We don’t have one government in the US. Instead we have tens of thousands of governments. There are nearly 14,000 public elementary school districts alone. Tens of thousands of towns and cities. 50 states. Hundreds of counties. And so on.
The feds run various law enforcement agencies as well but they all have a specific purpose and aren’t out there patrolling beats.
Also like everything else, [The Wire has a great scene for this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt-iNDZziW8)
Not every law enforcement officer has jurisdiction over the same area. And not every LEO reports to the same agency
Police are generally localized to cities/towns and other places of interest
Sherifffs carry jurisdiction over the county
Highway Patrol preside over highways
Border Patrol patrol the border (and report to US Homeland Security)
Texas Rangers report to the state and don’t mandate a uniform, only a dress code
A Sheriff is an elected officer. Police are not voted into power. Different uniforms can be for rank or situations. So there is a dress uniform, an on duty uniform, etc. Some uniforms are for specific situations like being in the desert vs being in the city vs being in an active shooter environment vs being in an office building. A Trooper is a police officer of the state not of a city or town. A Cop is a colloquial way of refering to a Police officer. “To Cop” means to grab, to sieze, to catch, to capture something with force. Someone in the Military is a soldier that protect the people from outside external forces. Border Patrol are police officers, meaning they aren’t elected, of the state that specifically only work at the boarder of the nation. And so all these agencies don’t necessarily work harmoniously in tandem. And so sometimes the Sheriff and the Chief of Police don’t agree on how to handle a situation. Or one’s jurisdiction crosses into someone elses. Or even the amount of funding and resources each different unit has at their disposal to handle specific situations.
ACAB.
Different jurisdictions. Just an example, I live outside city limits in my local area. If I called the police the county sheriffs would come here, not the city police. Even though my mailing address is in that city.
A lot of law enforcement in the US is organized at a low level (in terms of administrative units; in contrast France organizes its police at the national level while Germany, which is a federal country, has mostly state-level police). Which is to say, the law enforcement most Americans interact with on a typical basis are city police or county sheriffs. And that is usually the difference: police are organized by city governments, sheriffs are usually a county thing. Uniforms, ranks, badges, vehicle livery etc are going to vary and depend on how that organization wants to do it.
There are federal law enforcement officials of course: the FBI, US Marshalls, Drug Enforcement Agency, stuff like that. Their jurisdiction is federal crimes though, crimes violating federal law, so like you’re not going to get a speeding ticket from an FBI agent or something like that.
There are state-level bodies as well, like highway patrol and state troopers. Highway patrol is self explanatory I think.
Military police are a unit of the military and provide policing services on military bases. I don’t think civilians ever interact with them.
You have different uniforms in the UK and Europe too.
[UK 1](https://mail.pfoa.co.uk/images/Blog-News/2017/July/london_promo_epa.jpg)
[UK 2](https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2013/07/05/07/police.jpg?width=968&auto=webp&quality=50&crop=968%3A645%2Csmart)
[UK 3](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/JG-COMP-XR-LONDON-2.jpg?w=660)
[Uk 4](https://external-preview.redd.it/enJisTCpLFKRnBNDieNFH9_ibQTRZFhqzHMmZNPCS0w.jpg?auto=webp&s=96f989d02ecb3afbff9d246a3be4dd7220db1f08)
[UK 5](https://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/106/590x/Platinum-Jubilee-news-queen-Elizabeth-ii-Royal-Military-Police-arrest-Irish-guards-1-1617243.jpg?r=1653684923138)
[UK 6 Border Force](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/D68F/production/_83972945_027749625-2.jpg)
[UK 7](https://api.thelevantnews.com/uploads/2021/11/1080×1000-UK-police-Police-community-support-Pixabay.jpg)
[UK 8](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/nintchdbpict0003107842881.jpg)
[Other Europe Spain](https://www.spanishsolutions.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/web_guardia_civil.jpg)
[Italy 1](https://3.img-dpreview.com/files/p/TS560x560~forums/57458742/7205d46583394da482dca29668f3908a)
[Italy 2](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/69/6c/63/696c63b11e8c18b32a7545c3be8717bb–italian-police-police-uniforms.jpg)
[Italy 4](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/Three_Italian_police_officers_relaxing_in_Piazza_del_Duomo%2C_Milan.jpg/538px-Three_Italian_police_officers_relaxing_in_Piazza_del_Duomo%2C_Milan.jpg)
[Need I go on?](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/35/36/3f/35363f5f448e5d591eaae75d176f333a.jpg)
Individual states generally have a lot of leeway to set up their own administration and infrastructure, this includes having state and local police forces. Federal Justice bureaus like the FBI are generally concerned with investigating federal crimes and enforcing federal laws, most of your “everyday” crimes are the jurisdiction of the states themselves to investigate and prosecute.
So you have 50 different states setting up their own state, county, City police forces. There are thousands of different police departments across the country.
Re. uniforms: Organizations have some freedom to design their own uniforms. Just like how different private employers might have different uniforms for employees, different law enforcement groups also have different uniforms. For the most part, there is no universal meaning to the different colors– khaki vs. blue vs. green may or may not correlate to a difference in rank or role. Camo is almost universally military, unless a law enforcement agency has a specific need to use camouflage for an operation.
The actual organization of what different agencies do varies a bit from place to place, especially with regards to state police vs. local police vs. sheriffs.
In my state (Pennsylvania), most routine law enforcement is done by local (city/ town) police agencies. The State Police (also called State Troopers in many states) support law enforcement in communities that are too small to have their own police departments, cover traffic enforcement on long-distance highways, and provide forensic services to support the local police departments.
The Sheriff is an elected county official. All of the officers working under the Sheriff are technically called deputies, but since they work for the Sheriff’s department, their uniforms may say Sheriff on them. The Sheriff (and deputies) are responsible for enforcing court orders– serving arrest warrants, delivering summonses, etc.
Border control is a federal (national) agency, whose primary goal is to enforce border policies. There are other federal law enforcement agencies with specific objectives– DEA (drug enforcement), FBI (support investigation of major federal crimes), park rangers (law enforcement in National Parks), USPIS (investigate mail-related crimes), etc.
Military is totally separate, focused on warfare rather than law enforcement. However, the National Guard (basically reserve military) is sometimes deployed to help communities recover from natural disasters.
While different law enforcement organizations have different priorities, they often work together when needed. Local police often support the sheriff when executing a warrant of a suspect who is dangerous or likely to try to run. In recent high profile news, Border Control assisted the local police in Uvalde, TX when the local police crapped the bed in their response to a gunman at a school.
I cannot speak to your question about whether one agency has authority over another when they’re both responding to the same incident. We’ve all seen the TV shows where the FBI agents show up at a crime scene and tell the city police to fuck off, but I’ve got no idea if that’s remotely realistic.
The crux of this is jurisdiction. Every entity you listed has a different jurisdication and a different set of roles and responsibilities.
Police – Genereally speaking town/city law enforcement. Anything that happens within the “city limits” will be their responsibility
Sheriff – County. Anything that happens outside of city limits but within a specific county will be the responsibility of the Sheriff’s Deparment. To your point, there usually is a “Sheriff” who is (usually…I think) an elected official who is in charge of the Sheriff’s Department but his officers and/or deputies will wear uniforms indicating they are part of the Sheriff’s Department.
Trooper – I assume you mean state trooper/highway partol. These are state level law enforcement officers. Most folks will deal with these officers during traffic stops on state highways (including interstate highways)
Military – thats…the military (Army, Air Force, Navy (thank you /u/Subvet98), Marines, Coast Guard…Space Force?)…they usually don’t do much law enforcement activity on US soil to my knoweldge. It’s usually a pretty newsworthy event when the miliraty is brought in to do something on US soil (humanitrian aid after a disaster, crowd control during a riot, anti terrorisma activity at major events and transit hubs, etc)
Border Partol – They patrol…the border. I don’t think a I don’t *think* a US citizen would have much interations with the border patrol…unless they lived in an area where the border patrol is particularly active. I live near a US border and near multiple ports of entry and I can’t recall ever seeing a Border Patrol agent. FYI, when you go through passport control you are delaing with a US Customs and Border Protection official, not Border Patrol…not sure if this is helpful or more confusing to you.
State – to me, “State” and “Tropper” are probaly synonomous
​
The above is a general guide by a layperson that has lived in Missouri, Illinois and New York state. Different states and municipalities might have different structures. Also, I’ve never gotten anything more than a speeding ticket, so I don’t have a lot of direct experience with LEOs.
> In the UK and a lot of European countries. the police wear the same uniform which just have ‘police’ on the back. So it’s quite interesting to see the difference in America.
But in each country in europe the police all have slightly different outfits, uniforms, cars, kits, etc. It’s the same here in the US at the state level. Remember, in the US states have their own governments, constitutions, judicial systems, heads of state, congresses, school systems, laws, *and police* (among many other things). With our federalist system the US government mostly only handles interstate level issues (imagine what the EU might be like in a few hundred more years of incrementally gaining power over member ***states*** (notice the term “states” here as well).
The states here mostly delegate policing to the city and county level, where police are the law enforcement for cities and sheriffs are the law enforcement for counties.
Another thing to consider is our population density. City jurisdictions don’t just all butt right up against each other, we have more unincorporated land that *isn’t* part of any city’s jurisdiction than we have land that *is*. So, we use a separate law enforcement entity to cover the areas that aren’t covered by city police.
> Why are there many different Police/Sheriff units?
Each state, county and town has it’s own law enforcement agency. Nationally there are also multiple law enforcement agencies: FBI, Secret Service, DEA, AFT etc. each specializing in particular classes of Federal crimes. States may have more than one law enforcement agency for the same reason. Counties and towns will generally just have one though really big cities like New York City may have a large enough department that there’s
> Does the uniform colour just differ from state to state?
And from town to town and county to county. They’re all independently run and have their own uniforms.
> Does one department hold any rank over another department when they’re all at the same scene?
Usually yes, agencies all have different jurisdictions and in cases of shared jurisdiction usually one agency is superior to another either because it represents a political entity with superior jurisdiction (Federal vs state or state vs local cops at the same scene) or a more particular jurisdiction vs a more general one (local cops vs sheriff within city borders) or because that agency has particular jurisdiction over the crime in question vs an agency with more general policing authority.
> i thought the Sheriff was one person who was the top rank or something similar. But I see videos where’s a bunch of cops pull up and they all have Sheriff on the back.
Sheriff is usually an elected office which heads a Sheriff’s department which are the police of the county level government. The word “Sheriff” on the back refers to the department not the individual’s job title which is going to be Sheriff’s deputy or something like this.
This does vary state by state. My own state is is almost unique (along with a couple other New England states) in that there is ZERO county government of any sort. “Sheriffs” in my state are the employees of a state agency which manage security in state courts.
It’s all about having options.
See, the free market and its invisible hand has determined that competition drives the market force. So because of that we didn’t want to monopolize force to one group; thus we have law enforcement at all levels of government, so no one government has a monopoly of violence to inflict upon its subjects. From this we have seen innovative progress in law enforcement – they compete from city to city to county to state to the whole nation trying to find new ways to slay their ~~innocent subjects~~ suspected criminals whether through hard earned talent or sheer incompetence.
Diverse enforcement is free market enforcement and is a system to be loved and revered.
But in all reality it’s because. We have a fuck load of people and diversified laws from city to city to county to the nation. Our law enforcement needs to be specialized in the law they’re enforcing (not that they are, but quality of training is a different discussion).
So, there’s different agencies, some do different jobs, others just have different jurisdictions.
You have your *local city or town PD.* They’re specifically assigned to your town or city, funded by your locality, and have their own uniform. Depending on where you are, they can be scary as hell (the NYPD is larger than some *armies.*) or mainly do stuff like traffic stops.
The next administrative size larger than a town or city is a county, and that’s where you get *sheriffs*. These guys handle the areas between towns, usually, and in really rural areas where towns don’t really have a PD, they handle basic law enforcement for them too. The Sheriff’s office has its own officers. (Where I live, there are County of New York Sheriff’s Department people, but you rarely if ever see them).
Modern sheriffs are (despite what some will actually tell you) much different from the Old West sheriffs. For one thing, when we talk about Sheriff’s Deputies now, we’re usually talking about actual police officers, rather than whoever the Sheriff feels like deputizing.
The next administrative unit over that is a state and that’s where you get State Troopers. State Troopers, where I grew up, were a mixed breed- MA’s State Troopers have an investigative division and the equivalent of SWAT teams, but also are mostly known for patrolling highways for speeders and whatnot). You did call it, different states have different state-police colors for their uniforms. The Texas Rangers are what Texas has instead of Staties because Texas always has to be *special.*
All of these guys have specific jobs, and will generally only call in someone from the next division up if it’s an emergency. (Like, for me, living in a small town, if you saw the County PD, someone *important* was being arrested. You never saw the Staties, unless you sped on a highway.)
Then you get the federal agencies, because the next administrative unit over that is the *US of A!* 🙂
*Military Police* are not a thing in the US like they are in some countries. (We don’t have the whole thing where some cops are Municipal and some are, like Carabinieri.) An actual State of Emergency has to be declared to have them called in- it happened after Katrina for instance- but typically no. This might also be confusing, but MPs (Military Police) are also what branches of the US military call internal security that polices their own members on-base and whatnot.
*Border Patrol* is a federal agency that only has jurisdiction within 100 miles of a border or coastline. (On the other hand, you would not BELIEVE how much of the US’ population is inside 100 miles of a coastline or border). Their job is enforcing immigration laws. (Yeah, those guys.)
Then you get the specialised agencies like the ATF (covering Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), the FBI (covering all sorts of stuff, they’re our domestic intelligence agency), the Secret Service (who cover forgery and threats to the life of officials like the President), Postal Inspectors (they handle things like bombs in the mail and other crime involving the post office), the Coast Guard (they rescue people at sea, and also do a lot of drug interdiction), TSA (Travel Security Agency, they work at airports), etc. Some of these will be under the Department of Homeland Security (which is an administrative thing).
Then there’s some things that don’t quite fall in the same category (The National Park Service has SWAT Teams, for instance, but the NPS isn’t strictly speaking a law-enforcement agency.)
It can get a little confusing and I’m leaving some stuff out, but in general, each of these is going to have a slightly different uniform.