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United States Law Enforcement

United States Law Enforcement
Elsie Farias
CJA/204 Introduction to Criminal Justice
Professor William McCauley
University of Phoenix
November 9, 2011

United States Law Enforcement

Police agencies, the field of law enforcement, were developed as the embodiment of the laws created by society, government, being physically enforced. The objective behind these agencies is to protect individual and community rights as well as reduce the civil disorder. In the U.S. alone, there are thousands and thousands of law enforcement agencies ranging from local, state and federal levels. Each agency’s jurisdiction that is”the extent or range of judicial law enforcement or other authority…” (Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law, 2001), is set forth by laws including procedural law which is defined by the United States Supreme Court. As of September 11, 2001, the framework for all the police agencies was altered completely by the development of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The jurisdiction at all levels of law enforcement was restricted as well as the application of services. The American Law Enforcement system, that is, uniformed police officers responding to calls and investigating possible crimes, was developed hundreds and hundreds of years ago in England. At the time, the goal was to prevent crime by using constant patrols of the community. In the United States, the first police agency was established in the 1840’s in New York. Other cities soon followed suit. However, those agencies are completely different in mostly every manner to the modern police departments of today. Although law enforcement employees can be employed by other agencies outside of police departments, all cities or municipals have their Police Department with actual sworn police officers. At this level, the departments can be very

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