Rural Police

Police agencies in nonmetropolitan counties, counties with fewer than 50,000 people and that are not immediately adjacent to and economically dependent upon larger metropolitan areas, include sheriffs’ offices with countywide jurisdiction and relatively small municipal police departments. In the United States, these nonmetropolitan departments outnumber departments in metropolitan counties by about 1,700 agencies.

It is difficult to provide a simple description of rural police while also recognizing that rural areas vary tremendously from one part of the country to the next. For example, some sections of Appalachia have extreme levels of violent crime, whereas other rural areas have relatively little. Many nonmetropolitan counties are steeped in poverty, and others are relatively wealthy. Parsimony demands that the current discussion focus on the typical or average rural agency, recognizing that not all rural areas are alike.

There is a public perception that rural areas have little crime and that rural policing is not “real” police work, that it is easy and safe compared with the dangers of urban policing. Although the overall crime rate is lower, rural crime is still a problem. Drug use and domestic violence rates are similar to those in cities, and methamphetamine and marijuana production occurs more often than in cities. At the same time, rural police work may be substantially more demanding and more dangerous than urban policing, and will often be performed with relatively fewer resources. On average, per-officer annual expenditures for rural police are about one half those of urban police, and in some jurisdictions, rural police work without benefit packages. It is not unusual for rural police to pay for their own weapons and uniforms, and job applicants who have already paid for state-mandated training often have an edge in hiring.

Rural police are poorly positioned to demand better pay and resources because they often work in economically weak areas with small tax bases, and only about a quarter of rural police agencies are unionized. In many jurisdictions, rural police must also contend with the issue of geography, in that they are often responsible for large areas. The average county in Arizona, for example, is about the size of New Jersey. This can mean long response times and long waits for backup.

Rural departments tend to be small. The typical nonmetropolitan municipal department has three officers, and about 80% of rural municipal departments have fewer than 10 officers. Small budgets, small numbers of officers, and large geographic areas mean that rural police often patrol alone and [Page 412]without nearby backup. One national survey found that in rural agencies, an average of 60% of domestic violence calls were responded to with only one officer—something few urban departments would even consider. To compound the problem, in-service training for rural police is often limited, both by budget constraints and by the reality that sending an officer away for 1 or 2 weeks of training can cause hardships for those officers who remain in a three-person department in which citizens still expect the department to fully respond to their needs.

Small departments mean that rural police are more likely to be generalists. Rural chiefs, for example, often spend a substantial portion of their time on patrol, and rural agencies may not have the luxury of having officers who specialize in juvenile cases, traffic, or investigation. There are small-town chiefs whose duties include putting up Christmas lights on city streets and checking on chemicals in the water treatment plant. In many rural areas, the police are the only social service agency available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

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