Law Enforcement Paper

Law Enforcement Paper Samuel Rounds CJA/204 Chris Cannon February 14, 2011

This Law Enforcement paper will describe some of the historic background of police agencies and their jurisdiction in regard to local, state, and federal law enforcement, all of which fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security. Also covered in this paper, is a brief overview of each department’s responsibilities with regard to their primary purposes. History and Development of Police The rise of police as an organized force throughout the Western world, took place the same
There are several state police agencies that exist today. For example, State Police, Weigh station operations, Highway Patrol, State park services, Port authorities, Fish and wildlife agencies, and State bureaus of investigations, to name a few State law enforcement agencies are most often organized after one of two models. The first model is a centralized model, where the task of major criminal investigations is also combined with patrolling state highways. With the centralized type, state police agencies will assist local law enforcement with criminal investigations if asked. They will also patrol state highways, operate centralized identification bureaus, provide certain training for municipal and county officers, and maintain a centralized criminal records repository. The second state model is called the decentralized model or type of police organization and operates in the Southern United States, but there are also a few Western states, and it also can be found in the Midwest. With this model, there is a clear difference between traffic enforcement on state highways, and other state-level enforcement activities. For example, some states use both highway patrol and state bureaus of investigation. Even though the names often vary from state to state, the basic functions do not
The FBI’s efforts in combating terrorism included collecting, analyzing, and sharing information and critical intelligence with other federal agencies and departments. Some of these departments are the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as well as other agencies across the country (Schmalleger, 2009). Some changes were made by the FBI as a result of September, 11, 2001. For example, the FBI has made modernization of its information technology (IT) systems a top-level priority. This is a multi-phased program code-named Trilogy. With Trilogy, the FBI can do three important things: First, the FBI has deployed a secure high-speed network that enables people in the FBI offices around the country to share data, including audio, video, and image files. Second, the FBI has given its agents and intelligence analysts more than 30,000 new computers that run several modern software applications. Third, the FBI has developed an IT infrastructure that enables secure communication with FBI intelligence partners (Grabosky,