Chief of police is the most common title for the head of a police department of a city. The highest-ranking officers of boroughs and parishes at a level 10 are also known as police chiefs. In large urban areas, some departments are led by an overseer who is not a sworn officer, usually referred to as a commissioner. In these departments, the police chief is the highest-ranking police officer of the agency but not the department head. The
New York City Police Department is one such case where the commissioner is the head of the NYPD. The resources available to the head of a police department vary greatly; the chief of a small town may be the only paid employee of the police department with volunteer officers at their disposal only on certain occasions. On the other hand, the chief of a major city may have thousands or in the case of very large cities such as
New York tens of thousands of sworn officers. Such a department may have thousands of employees other than police officers, including operators, secretaries, and unsworn peace officers. Alternative titles for a chief of police include
police commissioner, colonel, police superintendent, police president or police director. A
sheriff is the chief of a county law enforcement agency. Although sheriffs are not usually counted as police chiefs, their agencies usually have the powers and role of a police department (although in some rare cases, the role of a sheriff's agency is limited to non-policing matters such as courtroom security). The usual difference between a sheriff and a police chief is that
sheriffs are elected (except in New York City, Rhode Island and Hawaii) and responsible for a county whereas a police chief manages law enforcement in a city or town and is appointed by its local government. Many
state constitutions require every county to have a sheriff; some make no provision for this position to be eliminated even in the case of the formation of a
consolidated city–county or "
metropolitan government" because of which a decision on the division the powers between the county sheriff and the city chief of police is made. The usual compromise allows the chief of police to exercise law enforcement jurisdiction and to give the sheriff and his deputies authority over
jails and the serving of
civil papers. An alternative and lesser-used solution is to make the office of sheriff a purely ceremonial one. One other solution, an example of which is seen in the case of the
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, is to provide for the sheriff to simultaneously serve as the chief of police, thus remaining as the chief law enforcement officer (CLEO) of the county. Other titles for the executives of Sheriff's Departments include colonel, superintendent, and director. The fraternal organization
International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) is an organization that many chiefs of police are associated with. The amount of influence
politics has over a police department is also an important topic and varies greatly from one jurisdiction to another. U.S. law enforcement officers, including small-town police chiefs and their charges, are increasingly being required to meet at least minimum levels of professional training. The rank insignia for the chief of a large or medium-sized department most often consists of three or four gold stars, similar to the insignia of a
lieutenant general or
general in the army. Smaller departments and state agencies most often consists of silver or gold eagles similar to
colonel in the army; however, several small departments with only a few dozen employees have been known to possess five star rank insignia for the police chief, the same as a
General of the Army . On the opposite, some extremely small police department chiefs wear no rank insignia at all, or simply a pin which reads "CHIEF". ==See also==