A law enforcement agency (LEA) is any government agency responsible for the enforcement of the law.
LEAs which have their ability to apply their powers restricted in some way are said to operate within a jurisdiction.
LEAs will have some form of geographic restriction on their ability to apply their powers. The LEA might be able to apply its powers within a country, for example the United States' Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or its Drug Enforcement Administration; within a division of a country, for example the Australian state Queensland Police; or across a collection of countries, for example international organizations such as Interpol, or the European Union's Europol.
LEAs which operate across a collection of countries tend to assist in law enforcement activities, rather than directly enforcing laws, by facilitating the sharing of information necessary for law enforcement between LEAs within those countries, for example Europol has no executive powers.
Sometimes a LEA's jurisdiction is determined by the complexity or seriousness of the non compliance with a law. Some countries determine the jurisdiction in these circumstances by means of policy and resource allocation between agencies, for example in Australia, the Australian Federal Police take on complex serious matters referred to it by an agency and the agency will undertake its own investigations of less serious or complex matters by consensus, while other countries have laws which decide the jurisdiction, for example in the United States of America some matters are required by law to be referred to other agencies if they are of a certain level of seriousness or complexity, for example cross state boundary kidnapping in the United States is escalated to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Differentiation of jurisdiction based on the seriousness and complexity of the non compliance either by law or by policy and consensus can coexist in countries.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
A police station (sometimes called a "station house" or just "house") is a building which serves to accommodate police officers and other members of staff. These buildings often contain offices and accommodation for personnel and vehicles, along with locker rooms, temporary holding cells and interview/interrogation rooms. Large departments may have many stations to cover the area they serve.
In the law enforcement system in Japan, prefectural police are prefecture-level law enforcement agencies responsible for policing, law enforcement, and public security within their respective prefectures of Japan. Although prefectural police are, in principle, regarded as municipal police, they are mostly under the central oversight and control of the National Police Agency. As of 2017, the total strength of the prefectural police is approximately 260,400 sworn officers and 28,400 civilian staff, a total of 288,000 employees.
Riot control measures are used by law enforcement, military, paramilitary or security forces to control, disperse, and arrest people who are involved in a riot, unlawful demonstration or unlawful protest. If a riot is spontaneous and irrational, actions which cause people to stop and think for a moment (e.g. loud noises or issuing instructions in a calm tone) can be enough to stop it. However, these methods usually fail when there is severe anger with a legitimate cause, or the riot was planned or organized.