My community partner is going to be a police department.  My CP grew from a local need because police departments provide communities with a sense of security.  Although no one likes a speeding ticket, police do more good than bad.  They enable people within a community to feel safe.  It is encouraging to know that if any crime in your neighborhood does happen, there is a department that will be working towards getting rid of that threat.  Policing and criminal procedures usually falls in the laps of state and local governments.  Police departments are generally funded with resident property and income taxes. 

Federal and State law are often at odds with each other, so it is only fitting that law enforcement agencies may harbor some of that tension.  Federal policing agencies such as the FBI, and state-run law enforcement like the New York Police Department (henceforth referred to as the NYPD), may have disagreements about jurisdiction.  A small local government agency like Belmont Police department may not have the same overlap in jurisdiction, at least in individual cases, as a large city such as New York, but Belmont PD is still charged with enforcing federal law.  They cannot prosecute a criminal under federal law, but they may detain someone until a federal officer can retrieve them.  The best example of this is with illegal immigration issues.  Federal law always trumps state law, as sustained by the Supreme Court, so this must be taken into account by local law enforcement agencies.  Adhering to both federal and state law is tricky business. 

Police accountability is often times a concern for citizens of a community.  There are plethora of media stories describing police brutality and abuse of power.  For major police departments such as the aforementioned NYPD, their accountability is to an outside agency called internal affairs.  For small police departments such as Belmont, the local district attorney can conduct an investigation into individual officer’s misconduct.  In drastic cases, and more often because of funding issues, a local police department can be terminated all together and their responsibilities given to the county sheriffs.  A local example of this is the Half moon Bay Police Department.  Due to major funding and staffing cut backs the county sheriffs took over the jurisdiction of the Half-moon Bay community.   It is a change that was not welcome by the locals, but necessary because of the lack of money.