County police

County police are the police of a county in the United States and England (formerly throughout the United Kingdom).

United States

In the United States, county police tend to exist only in metropolitan counties and have countywide jurisdiction. Much more common are sheriff's departments. They fall into three broad categories:

• Full service departments, which provide the full spectrum of police services to the entire county, irrespective of local communities, and may provide contractual security police services to special districts within the county.
• Limited service departments, which provide services to unincorporated areas of the county and usually provide contractual security police services to special districts within the county.
• Restricted service departments, which provide security police duties to county owned and operated facilities and parks. Some may also perform some road patrol duties on county built and maintained roads. County detectives, which are maintained in the northeastern states by county attorneys' offices, also fall within this category.

There are 80 county police forces in the United States, including:

• Albemarle County Police Department, Albemarle County, Virginia
• Anne Arundel County Police Department, Anne Arundel County, Maryland
• Arlington County Police Department, Arlington County, Virginia
• Baltimore County Police Department, Baltimore County, Maryland
• Clayton County Police Department, Clayton County, Georgia
• Cobb County Police Department, Cobb County, Georgia
• DeKalb County Police Department, DeKalb County, Georgia
• Fairfax County Police Department, Fairfax County, Virginia
• Floyd County Police Department, Floyd County, Georgia
• Fulton County Police Department, Fulton County, Georgia
• Gaston County Police Department, Gaston County, North Carolina
• Gwinnett County Police Department, Gwinnett County, Georgia
• Hawaii County Police Department, Hawaii County, Hawaii
• Henrico County Division of Police Services, Henrico County, Virginia
• Henry County Police Department, Henry County, Georgia
• Horry County Police Department, Horry County, South Carolina
• Howard County Police Department, Howard County, Maryland
• Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Clark County, Nevada
• Maui County Police Department, Maui County, Hawaii
• Miami-Dade County Police Department, Miami-Dade County, Florida
• Montgomery County Department of Police, Montgomery County, Maryland
• Nassau County Police Department, Nassau County, New York - full service countywide
• Prince George's County Police Department, Prince George's County, Maryland
• Prince William County Police Department, Prince William County, Virginia
• Queen Anne's County Police Department, Queen Anne's County, Maryland
• Riley County Police Department, Riley County, Kansas
• Saint Louis County Police, Saint Louis County, Missouri
• Suffolk County Police Department, Suffolk County, New York - full service west of Riverhead only; east of Riverhead is handled by town/village police and the Suffolk County Sheriff's Office, which also provides countywide patrols
• Westchester County Department of Public Safety, Westchester County, New York - highway patrol and assistance to municipal forces only

United Kingdom

In England, the police are divided into regional forces based on counties (sometimes amalgamations of two or three counties), which all provide full services throughout their districts. Police forces in Scotland and Wales also used to be organised on a county basis, but are now amalgamated into a number of large forces: eight in Scotland and four in Wales.