As of 2013, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than half of the law enforcement agencies in the US serve jurisdictions with 10,000 or fewer residents.
Nearly half of all police departments have ten officers– or less. Rural policing is the reality for much of our country.
We don’t see their stories on the big screen, or find them in our news feed. But they’re happening, just the same — remote, or small, or few, they are real, with real people who love them.
The Rural Badge is a place for the stories and concerns of these agencies, and those who love them:
local police, sheriffs and town marshals, highway patrol, state troopers, rangers and agents from state and federal agencies , tribal police —
anyone who knows what it’s like to work where cell phone signals are spotty, and backup may not exist.
It’s not a competition with big city law enforcement. It’s a parallel universe that, just sometimes, intersects.
The Rural Badge 