Police

A police force is a constituted body of persons empowered by the state to enforce the law, protect property, and limit civil disorder. Their powers include the legitimized use of force. The term is most commonly associated with police services of a sovereign state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility. Police forces are often defined as being separate from military or other organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors; however, gendarmerie are military units charged with civil policing.

Law enforcement, however, constitutes only part of policing activity. Policing has included an array of activities in different situations, but the predominant ones are concerned with the preservation of order. In some societies, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these developed within the context of maintaining the class system and the protection of private property. Many police forces suffer from police corruption to a greater or lesser degree. The police force is usually a public sector service, meaning they are paid through taxes.

Fairfax County, Virginia

Fairfax County, officially the County of Fairfax, is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,081,726, in 2014, the population was estimated to be 1,118,883, making it the most populous jurisdiction in the Commonwealth of Virginia, with 13.6% of Virginia's population. The county is also the most populous jurisdiction in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area, with 19.8% of the MSA population, as well as the larger Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA Combined Statistical Area, with 13.1% of the CSA population. The county seat is Fairfax.

Fairfax was the first county in the United States to reach a six-figure median household income and has the second-highest median household income of any local jurisdiction in the United States after neighbor Loudoun County.

The county is home to the headquarters of intelligence agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and National Reconnaissance Office, as well as the National Counterterrorism Center and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The county is also home to ten Fortune 500 companies, including three with Falls Church addresses.

County police

County police are the police of a county in the United States, Sweden and England and Wales in the UK, Scotland now has a single and only region wide police force Police Scotland, as well as Northern Ireland whose regional and only police are the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Sweden

Until the end of 2014, all of the 21 Counties of Sweden had its own County Police Department. In 2015, Sweden merged all local police departments into a single police agency, dividing the country into seven police regions instead.

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 then were amalgamated into a number of larger regional forces: eight in Scotland and four in Wales. In 2013, Scotland ditched it's eight regional forces and created one national police force known as Police Scotland.

Fairfax County Police Department

The Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) is a full-service law enforcement agency, located in Northern Virginia. The FCPD services a population of 1,081,726 residents within 395 square miles (1,020 km²) of Fairfax County, Virginia.

The stated mission of the department is to "protect persons and property by providing public safety services, and the fair and impartial enforcement of the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the County of Fairfax, while promoting community involvement, as well as stability and order through service, assistance and visibility."

History

In the 1920s, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors began appointing road police, whose job it was to patrol the roads of Fairfax County and arrest traffic violators. In February 1932, the Board relinquished control of the county traffic police, and the four officers employed, Captain Haywood J. Durrer, Carl R. McIntosh, Louis L. Finks and Arthur W. Mills, became special officers and deputy sheriffs under Fairfax County Sheriff Eppa P. Kirby.

Fairfax

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