Metropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force. They provide all general police services and tend to be headed by a chief called a Commissioner or Sheriff.
In the United States, metropolitan police agencies have often been formed through mergers between several local police agencies formerly holding jurisdiction within neighboring communities within a metropolitan area or county, such as several local police departments and possibly the county sheriff's office.
Typically, such communities have experienced recent population growth and urban sprawl, which causes the area to more closely resemble and function as one single conurbation. Under these circumstances, a single law enforcement agency with a unified command, jurisdiction and support structure comes to be seen as more appropriate and efficient.
A related concept exists in some American counties in which county sheriffs' offices contract with some (though not necessarily all) local cities or towns within their counties to provide all law enforcement services in those municipalities in lieu of a separate city or town police force.
Read more about Metropolitan Police: Metropolitan Police Agencies
Famous quotes containing the words metropolitan and/or police:
“In metropolitan cases, the love of the most single-eyed lover, almost invariably, is nothing more than the ultimate settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list—the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)