Kenly is a small town with a population just under 2,000. It made national news recently when the chief and all the full-time officers in the Kenly Police Department resigned. It sounds like Kenly is planning to rebuild its police department. But that isn’t mandatory. For now, the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office is providing law enforcement services in Kenly, and Kenly could choose to do without a police department on a permanent basis. In fact, there are hundreds of municipalities in North Carolina that don’t have their own police departments. This post highlights some of the considerations for small towns thinking about whether or not to have a police department. Small towns, small departments. The size of a police department tends to be proportional to the size of a municipality’s population and tax base. So small towns have small police departments. Nationally, the Washington Post reports that nearly half of local police departments have fewer than 10 officers. This Marshall Project story chronicles the lives of three officers, each of whom is the chief of a single-officer department. In North Carolina, about 82 out of about 347 municipal police departments in the state (24%) have 10 or fewer officers. About 33 out of 347 agencies (just under 10%) have 5 or fewer officers. As discussed further below, small agencies face some challenges by virtue of their size. As an aside, the prevalence of small agencies is a distinctive feature of American law enforcement. In England, the Home Office provides central, national [...]
Faculty Coordinators
