How big an area do each Police Officer patrol?

Question

Like for each officer do they only get a few streets in their city or are they responsible for the entire city?

Answer 1

This entirely depends on the size of the city...

In a small town.. they work the whole town.

In a major city, such as where I work, the city is broken down by districts, sectors and zones. 100's of officers assigned to a district, who are as squads assigned to sectors and each radio car is assigned to a zone. And each zone is broken down by grids. The grids are studied to see how busy the area is. The busier it is, the smaller the zone, the quieter it is, the larger the zone.

Confused yet? I could go on all day! lol

And each sector has its own radio frequency.

Answer 2

it depends on the size of the city, as well as the size of the deaprtment. I worked for a city police department which was supposed to have 5 officers on at all times. This meant that each officer was responsible for an area of about 2 square miles (not counting the areas that overlapped with another officers area). But many nights there were only two of us on to cover the entire area. Then again, I worked for a Sheriff's department in a very rural county, and each deputy covered almost 50 square miles. Many larger cities, with huge departments put two officers in each unit and have overlapping areas of less than 1 square mile.

Answer 3

Depends on the department. Major cities like Philadelphia may have almost one officer on each block. Then drive an hour west and one officer may be responsible for a 20 square mile town.

Answer 4

Like everyone else has said, it depends largely on the size of the city. The county seat where I live is sixteen square miles and is covered by five officers at all times. The county itself is 789 square miles and there are six certified officers to cover it. That gives each officer 131 square miles, give or take a few.

Answer 5

It depends on the size of the city. It is then seperated into beats. How many patrols are in each beat really depends on the city's budget.

Answer 6

It depends, in a big city it might only be a block.

An Alaska State Trooper may cover an area bigger then Delaware

Answer 7

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Answer 8

most officers have "beats" or "areas" they are responsible for but can travel outside that area/beat to if necessary.

Answer 9

i am responsible for an entire county

Answer 10

a 70 x 100 lot. approximately the size of a dunkin' donut store.