Bay Area policing

Gary1977

Hi I am not a police officer. I am from the UK and had a holiday recently in San Francisco. It struck me that there are a huge amount of different police forces in the Bay Area - Oakland PD, SFPD, San Mateo County etc.

On a practical day to day level, how does this work? For example, if an Oakland police officer is investigating a crime in Oakland, but needs to knock on doors and speak to people in SF, can he do this himself, or must he request that SFPD do it???

With so many different counties converging, it sounds messy.

hxturbo

Gary....welcome to the US. Partner before I retired was a Bobby in Bathe before he came over. It works both ways. The Oakland PD can go wherever they want to question the suspect or interested parties. A courtesy call to the outside jurisdiction is all it takes. That way we know they are in our city. They can opt to have another city contact the people but lack of information makes this tough.