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I was recently ticketed by the Portland Police Bureau—but my case was before a Multnomah County judge. Seems like the cops work for the city, but the courts (and jails) are county-operated. What's up with that? —Leadfoot
The county has cops, too. In ye olde England, a county was pretty much defined as the area under the jurisdiction of a sheriff. The word "sheriff" itself is a corruption of "shire reeve," from "shire" meaning "county," and "reeve" meaning "scourge of poltroons."
Incidentally, the English word for the administration of a sheriff—the equivalent of "presidency," or "admiralty"—is "shrievalty." Thus, we might say, "The six-year shrievalty of Bernie Giusto came to an end in 2008."
The point of all that (like there was one) is to note that it's not quite as simple as the city handling law enforcement and the county handling administration of justice.
In fact, most of our overlapping jurisdictions do both: There are state police and state prisons, as well as county sheriff's deputies and county jails. (Metro, thank God, does not yet have a police force, though I predict we'll see a recycling patrol on hovercraft Segways by 2035.)
But while we have plenty of city cops, there's no corresponding city hoosegow. This isn't some bedrock principle of American justice—plenty of cities have city jails. Portland itself had one, and a municipal court as well, until 1973.
In that year, as a result of state and local measures passed in 1971, Portland's Municipal Court was merged with the Multnomah County District Court (which was itself folded into the Multnomah County Circuit Court in 1981).
Not that the current system is all that centralized. "You can be arrested by city police, go to a county jail, see a county judge in a state court, and go to a state prison," notes the Police Bureau's Pete Simpson. "The wheels of justice have many cogs." And I've got the parking tickets to prove it!
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