[dragonwriter]

> Why can't there be a federal law enforcement division that works on behalf of federal agencies with a need?

Because a substantial portion of the work of many agencies involves specialized law enforcement in the domain of responsibility, and it's organizationally inefficient for that to invo love coordinating units where the lowest common level of management is the President of the United States.

[pc86]

Exactly - the IRS and the DEA and the ATF have very different law enforcement objectives and domains but all have legitimate law enforcement requirements.

The spotty history of the FBI notwithstanding, it makes more sense to have smaller decentralized law enforcement units specialized in their given area than to have one large agency made up of the same specialized groups.

[67726e]

Would it not be possible to have relevant domain experts as a part of the relevant organization working in tandem with the actual "force" of some sort of white label federal law enforcement? I realize police work involves more than kicking in doors and shooting bad guys, but surely most of these organizations do not need folks running around with guns.

[dragonwriter]

> Would it not be possible to have relevant domain experts as a part of the relevant organization working in tandem with the actual "force" of some sort of white label federal law enforcement?

So, instead of specialized law enforcement for agencies like the park service and forest service, you want to have generic federal cops accompanying unarmed park/forest specialists, and so on throughout the government? That sounds like it would be somewhere between merely grossly inefficient and utterly disastrous in practice in many cases.

> I realize police work involves more than kicking in doors and shooting bad guys, but surely most of these organizations do not need folks running around with guns.

Maybe some of them don't, and I'd like to hear specific arguments for specific agencies as to how things would be better if they didn't.

But in my working career I've seen enough of people distant from a particular organizations work deciding "surely they don't need <resource> in that organization" and producing bad results thereby that I'm highly.skeptical of such claims without some kind of specific, convincing analysis of why the alternative actually is superior for the specific case.

[dbaupp]

The domain experts could be cops themselves, in a specialist department of a broader police force. I'm sure a lot of the basic training and equipment required is the same across agencies.

In any case, the current hyper-local US system for both police and other services is disastrous in practice for many groups of people, and has its own gross inefficiencies (economies of scale are smaller, weaker bargaining positions when purchasing things, etc.).

[dragonwriter]

> The domain experts could be cops themselves, in a specialist department of a broader police force. I'm sure a lot of the basic training and equipment required is the same across agencies.

To the degree that that's true, the basic non-domain specialized training is already shared. [0] There are also, I believe, jointly-developed shard equipment standards and mutiagency equipment purchasing. Even if there weren't, you don't need to put operational authority in a central LE agency to achieve that.

What is the specific benefit to be gained by centralization?

> In any case, the current hyper-local US system for both police and other services is disastrous in practice for many groups of people

A specific argument on this point, particularly about how this is relevant to the subject-matter division of federal agencies rather than the territorial divides of city/county/state general-purpose option policing agencies would be welcome.

[0] https://www.fletc.gov/learn-about-fletc

[HeyLaughingBoy]

It may be inefficient, but as I mentioned up-thread, I like that it's more localized.

I've had a neighbor call the cops (in this case sheriff's office) because our horses got out at night. I much prefer dealing with the local deputy who might have a few head of beef cattle himself (and so understand the issues with keeping large animals where you want them to be) vs. a cop from the nearest city who's never had to personally deal with anything other than his cat running around the backyard.

Think of it as community policing on a larger scale.