Law enforcement is the act of enforcing laws, maintaining public order, protecting citizens, and redressing harms to human life and nonhuman nature. It is a broad field that encompasses the policing of crimes, and it can be considered in both its narrow sense as the policing and enforcement of laws and in a broader sense of the reinforcement and expression of societal rules and dominant ideologies through the use of force.
Law-enforcement agencies can be organized and structured in a variety of ways. They can be categorized as being at the local, state, county, or municipality level (such as the police department in the city of Boston), or they may have jurisdiction at a national or international level. They can also be specialized by the type of crime they investigate and prosecute, such as DEA agents investigating illicit drug trafficking.
During a crisis or disaster, the roles of law enforcement agencies change to accommodate the needs of their communities. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, police departments implemented programs to reduce their need for face-to-face contact with members of the public by limiting the types of calls they respond to and allowing them to be submitted via telephone (NPF 2020). In addition, some agencies reduced the number of officers on patrol by shifting them to other tasks that did not require them to be in close contact with the community (Winton & Tcheckmedyian, 2020). In doing so, they hoped to limit the potential spread of the virus from person to person.
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