Sheriff's Department?

[tre8]

I am presently a senior in college, and I am planning on pursuing a career in LE. I have applied to several police departments, and I was thinking about applying to a Sheriff's department. If any of you are deputies, or know anything about the job, I'd appreciate some feedback. What exactly do deputies do, and what is the difference between deputies and police officers? Lastly, do they have an investigative unit?

[bigz]

It depends on what state you are in. In many of the east coast states sheriff's departments primarily run the jails and serve civil process. In the south, midwest, and western U.S. most sheriff's departments are full service law enforcement agencies. They have the responsibility of running the jails, serving papers, etc., but are also responsible for law enforcement in the unincorporated areas of the county. You should check with the individual agencies you are interested in and talk to somebody about what their duties are. I was a deputy for about 4 1/2 years before becoming a police officer and enjoyed it. You usually have a lot larger area to cover and generally get to perform a wider variety of duties. The political nature of some sheriff's departments can be challenging, but being a deputy for a good sheriff's office is one of the better jobs in law enforcement in my opinion.


Z

[tre8]

What exactly do you mean by the "political nature" ? Do I have to know somebody to get in?????

[bigz]

Sheriff's are generally elected officials so they have a constituency to answer to. In more rural communities this can sometimes have an impact on your job because certain prominant people in the community might merit special treatment. As for having to know somebody to get in it depends on the department. Certainly not all sheriff's offices are "political" but some are. It's just my opinion and another generalization but due to the fact that the sheriff is an elected official SO's tend to be more political. The politics of a sheriff's department can also come into play if a new person gets elected because most deputy sheriff's at least where I live serve at the pleasure of the sheriff which means you can basically be fired at anytime for any reason. You have a little more job security with a police department or state agency.

Z

[tre8]

Thank you for your input. I guess I'll shop around my area for a Sheriff's Office.

[DJOHNSON954]

I am a Deputy Sheriff in Ohio. The department I work for performs full LE duties. We are the largest agency in Ohio and the 17th richest county in the nation. All Deputies start out in the jail. NOT as a jailer, Corrections Officer, Guard, but as a sworn Deputy Sheriff. Our department has SWAT, Bomb Squad, Detective Bureau, Special Investigations, Patrol, and Court Services. You can branch out to these different units after being state certified and when a slot opens up. Usually you have to spend atleast 3 years in the jail. However, with the new contract they are trying to get it down to 2 years. We are also under "collective barganing". Which means we are protected by and members of the FOP. So unlike smaller SO's after our probation is over we can not be let go for just any reason. Even if a new Sheriff is elected. I wouldn't change a thing if If I had a choice between a Sheriff's department of Police department. Hope this helps some. Good luck to you.

[tre8]

Thank you for your input,DAJOHNSONNC

[CustomsCop]

Pa sheriff's do absolutly NO POLICE work. If you dont mind standing around for 8hrs in a common pleas court or doing civil process then its an ok job. Sheriff's deputies have no police powers cannot enforce the law (outside of Philadelphia and Allegheny counties, which are the only 2 who can do this by state statute).

[augiedare]

DuPage County Sheriff, Illinois - full police power. Same as the other post, you start in the jail but you are not a corrections officer. You are a fully sworn deputy.

Check out their site. http://www.dupageco.org/sheriff/

[Gotabeme_d]

In California the Sheriff's are also full service LEO. About half of the SO's do jail. Half do not. Most also perform Court Room Bailif duties ontop of patrolling the unincorporated areas. LASO is a prime example. Great department!

About the politics that bigz was explaining...Take this example: Santa Clara County Sheriff's are having a hard time filling spots. They are under-personed which usually means over worked. They have the California HIGHWAY Patrol writing their parking tickets for city STREETS. Then to top it all off the worked so much overtime that they ate up their budget to hire new deputies. So you guessed it, they were on a hiring freeze for a while even though they were under-personed! Pretty comical, eh? The good things is that they have an outside agency for their custody/corrections.

The one bad thing about SO's (that I have noticed out here) is that usually PD's are more community oriented. The SO's are so frickin busy that they don't take time for Joe Q Citizen. PD's usually do.

[PA PO]

burgh, I am going to respectfully disagree with CustomsCop on his post. If you are checking into PA Sheriffs dept. then it will matter on the county. I live in Washington County, our deputies do not actively participate in traffic arrests for the most part, however if someone was blatantly putting the community at harm in a vehicle then they would interact in some fashion. Washington Counties Sheriff dept. does have a SWAT Unit, they do have a Fugitive Unit, they can arrest you, they can run an investigation, they do have to be ACT 120 certified, they can file charges, and they do have police powers. They also do serve civil papers, serve as court security, and the are the primary law enforcement agency concerning our county property ie. parks and court related offices. I believe that being a police officer may in fact in some instances allow you a more high speed career, but not always. Being a parole officer I work with our sheriff's dept. frequently concerning warrants. Heck my dept. has it's own warrant squad, we have the third most arrests in the county year in and year out. My point is if you get onto a sheriff's dept. then you willmore than likely need to put some time in doing the boring stuff, however if you get on with the right one you can move into a special detail and perform a more interesting function. If you in fact do look into Allegheny Co. you are probably going to need to have a political in. Allegheny does have all the units Washington Co. has and more including a drug unit.

[Joe159]

In all of my time living in PA,(years) I have never ever seen a PA sheriffs deputy do routine street police work. The point being. If you want to do police work right out of the gate(right out of the academy), join a police dept. rather than have to do the boring stuff w/ a sheriffs dept prior to hitting the streets. But again I've neve seen a PA deputy work the streets. Not saying they dont, I've just never seen it. Also, in the past I have spoken to ex PA deputies from PA now at our academy who did not qualify for our lateral program. They Had to do the full academy.

[CustomsCop]

PA PO, Im gonna have to disagree with you on this one. Sheriff's offices in Pa dont do le work compared to most municpal police or their counterparts in the South and west. Most sheriff's agencies are not 120 certified but Pa crime commission training certified. Most deputies dont do traffic or street police work nor are they considered police officers as certified by MPOTEC but mainly court enforcers for the common pleas courts.

[PA PO]

Customs Cop I understand fully what you are saying, however I am telling you that the Washington County Sheriff's Office requires their deputies to be ACT 120 certified. The office is run by three former Troopers and they are very proactive. They do make arrests and file charges. My officers make arrests with them all of the time including 1543 (b) violations frequently. Here at the parole office as you can imagine we have plenty of people on supervision that have the 1543 (b) clause suspended license due to a DUI conviction. So we have a camera set up in our parking lot and when one of my PO's catches an individual driving here to ther appointment in violation of the 1543 (b) we arrest them and the sheriff's department files the charges. 1543 (b) is a violation of the vehicle code and they file on this and win all the time. So as for traffic stops I have actually talked with the Captain there who is a friend of mine and asked if a blatant traffic violation was putting citizens in jeopardy would they take action and he said absolutely, whether they would file the actual charges or not is another story but they would attempt to interact in some way. As far as arrests, my guys and the deputies do several house searches throughout the year and we find a ton of drugs. For those of you that do not know anyone on supervision here in the County of Washington is subject to warrantless searches of their property and person. We search known dealers and users day in and day out. The Sheriff's department assists us on these searches. The catch is if you find anything while we are in charge of the search it cannot be used as evidence in filing new charges. However the trick is to stop the search once we have gained entrance and found evidence of drugs or paraphernalia. After this small evidence is found we back off and let the deputies take over and we move to the assisting role. The deputies then either get a consent to search signed or file for the search warrant. We have found more drugs than the task force doing this and it is all legal, in fact a couple of the perps over the years have appealed to have the evidence suppressed at the state supreme court level and have lost. Now if the Sheriff's didn't make an arrest (which i know they did) and they do here in Washington County all the time then who did? On this basis and the above points i can only tell you what I know, and what I just stated are facts. I was only trying to give Tre8 the true story which is it depends on which county you are in. Law Enforcement is a big field and there are alot more options available to a young student than just police, not that police is a bad option. As far as ACT 120 goes this is certainly not the holy grail of training. I do quite a bit of instructing in this field and I have seen a whole lot of weakness in the ACT 120 program. It is getting better though. I am not going to even get into the whole police have more authority than others stuff, because that is all relative. As a PO I am a peace officer in the state of PA as are all of my PO's and we are the only ones who can violate an offender in the County of Washington, a police officer cannot do that. We are all in this game together and I would hate for young Tre8 not to explore all of the options. Yes PSP patrols the areas of the county that do not have their own police, and i am pretty sure that is standard state wide. I am just saying that PA Sheriff's DO ABSOLUTELY NO POLICE WORK is an innacurate statement. Maybe they don't do as much as some police departments however they do perform several of the same functions as a police officer.