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this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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It still amazes me that your public safety agencies (police, fire and ambulance) are city based, not state based. Is there a compelling reason for that?
Our police come from organizations that were used to round up slaves. There is less logic to this and more historic leftovers.
Agreeing with two other sub-comments before mine, I also want to add that to some degree it's similar to the awful reason why the U.S. runs its schools with localized school districts. So that residents of more affluent areas receive more extensive services.
The size of some states like Alaska and lack of resources, not money but people and material required to do the job is either unrealistic or unsustainable. For example, Alaska is the size of Europe but has the population of Iceland. Imagine if you had a job that had you fly out to Romania (either you stay for a month to finish the investigation or travel back and forth each weekend) and then when that case is over you fly out to Normandy for another case. Then fly out to Estonia after that. The distances mean that you, the detective, would have no life except wading through the worst part of humanity. No wife, no family, a home that would sit empty (if you had a permanent residence at all).
And basic policing? The only way to enforce such a huge area and not bankrupt a nation from travel fees would be to have the police live where they patrol. And if they live where they work, you now have community based jurisdictions. Some places are too big for a unified approach and smaller actions that report to a larger body is really the only what that would work - and it's how the US does policing.
In Australia we have state based policing and the police live where they work. We have local police stations but the money and equipment come from state taxes. And our states are bigger than yours, WA is almost 1,000,000 km² larger than Alaska, and most of our states have much lower populations and population densities than yours. It can work, which is why I asked.
We do have state police. We just also have city police, county police, federal police. They are all seperate and depending on the crime committed different ones will get involved. City or county police will handle your typical day to day policing. State and federal police get involved if the crime crosses county/state lines, happened specifically on state/federal property, or if the county/city police don't have the resources to deal with it. In theory this means that the higher policing jurisdictions provide oversight over the lower ones and the lower ones can provide more focused efforts onto their specific areas that the higher jurisdictions wouldn't be able to do. In practice though a cop is a cop and they all cover for each others crimes/inadequacies.
We do have them though. The US has State Troopers, regional and state Fire Marshalls, state owned healthcare agencies, state operated hospitals, and state operated EMS services.
Here's a few examples:
Yeah. I think it’s also important to remind people outside the US just how big it is, landmass wise. Germany is smaller than Montana. About 26 Montanas can fit into the US, area wise. So a federally run police force would need to cover more than 26 times the square footage of Germany. State, and then local groups just make more sense at that scale
I fully agree. Places like Montana also have quite a few indigenous nations within them that have their own public services and operations. So I'd argue it would impose an even greater imbalance of powers if there was one gigantic police force that all the other smaller independent police forces were required to work with.
I know as an American I'm propagandized towards believing that a proper balance of powers will "fix" things (as in the 3 branches of government), though in this case I believe it's true.
My state has city, county, state police and even special police for some agencies.
We have both, technically all 4.
Police are often city, not always but often. (Cities like Kansas City had their police captured by the state and no one likes it)
Sheriff's are county
Highway patrol/state troopers are state
The three letter agencies are all federal.
Due to unique internal limited sovereignity there is some overlap between all of them but generally speaking that's how it works.
Practically speaking most rural policing of import is accomplished by state officers in Alaska.