Does the US have anything equivalent to our RCMP? A co-worker, (former RCMP) says that you do not. And if not, would it be a good idea?

Let me be the first to show my ignorance. . . Uh, what IS RCMP????

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Royal Canadian Mounted Police (also known as Mounties)

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Ahhh! Later in the morning, I might have figured that out myself. Didn't help that for some reason this morning I was thinking BBP was on the other side of the pond (England).

We have US Marshalls who work at the Federal level for federal crimes. Kinda like the "police" side of the FBI, if I had to draw a comparison (whereas the FBI would be more like the detective squad). Someone can correct me on this if I'm off base. . .

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I'd say you're right, Wally, in that the RCMP encompasses the Canadian equivalent of the US Marshall Service, the FBI, and both missions of the US Secret Service. Depending on the area, they also often have the mandate to take up local law enforcement and highway patrol duties.

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Here in the USA it's commonly the state police who are responsible for highway patrol and for law enforcement in areas which have no local police department.

Sometimes that last is handled at the county level. For example, here in Los Angeles County the county sheriff's department is contracted by some smaller municipalites to provide police services.

The American government has always seemed overly complicated to me. The law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and military are pefect examples because there seems to be a lot of overlap in their rolls which would seem to cause conflict between them.

Combining the FBI, US Marshalls, and the Secret Service would make cooperation easier, and you wouldn't see the kind of competitiveness that complicated the September 11th investigation. You could also combine the multiple intelligence agencies (CIA, NSA, etc.) so that they aren't keeping secrets from each other like they do now (they should be working together, not against each other).

I believe that some of that is to be addressed with the Intelligence overhaul bill that the President signed today (or was it yesterday?).

We also have 250 million+ citizens, and a global presence. That explains a great deal of the "complication". Most experts argue its not the number of agencies that's the problem, or the overlap, but information sharing. If we can get a standardized series of data systems in place, efficiency will improve tremendously.

But if your three (or more) federal law enforcement agencies were merged together into one agency sharing information would be easy because it would all be in one place. There also wouldn't be any rivalries between agencies.

I don't know... it just seems more efficient to have fewer agencies. And that's just the law enforcement... what is the difference between the army and the marines? Or the CIA and the NSA? They seem to have similar roles, so why not merge them together?

The Army is the large military organization tasked with waging, and winning, land warfare. The Marine Corps is a small relatively light force that belongs to the Navy. Its role is to provide another option for force projection ashore for Naval commanders. It generally operates for short periods of time and it is supposed to be mobile enough to be able to be deployed from ships. The Marines and the Army have distinct cultures and goals, but they actually work together quite effectively.

That would be true, if the agencies weren't as individually large as they are. Each of these single agencies rivals most other nations' intelligence/enforcement/whatever presence in sheer manpower. Even the "little" Secret Service has thousands of employees.

If these big agencies were combined, they would have to be subdivided anyway just for task management. Your end result would be the same, except for the "big boss" at the top. But even that difference has been addressed this week by the president.

Many of our state and federal "environmental-type" agencies are merged all the time, as their staff numbers tend to be tiny, directives change, and budgets get slashed.

The Coast Guard wasn't merged per se following 9/11, but transferred from one civilian department to another. Some people argue it should be incorporated directly into the Navy. Neither the Navy nor the Coast Guard want this to happen.

For curiousity's sake, how large is the RCMP?

I don't know how it works now that the Coast Guard are part of DHS, but last I checked the Coast Guard could be swallowed up by the Department of the Navy during "times of war". But, yeah two very different agencies with different missions. Superficial similarities (like they both use boats) are not a good reason to merge two organizations, the smaller will undoubtedly be swallowed by the larger and the mission would suffer.

One of the emergent properties of size seems to be complexity. As a very rough guess, ten times the size means ten times the complexity. Actually, I bet it's more.

Like plants or animals. A grass plant can have just a few leaves, but a tree has branching ramifications as a result of its larger size.

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On one hand, competing bureaucracy and limited communication are probably part of the reason 9/11 happened (the decline of the CIA didn't help either). Certainly there have been a number of government moves lately to better coordinate and centralize the many U.S. intelligence and police agencies. On the other hand, there is a certain logic in not wanting them to be TOO well coordinated. And, the CIA and FBI were deliberately given different scopes of operation because we didn't want the same group spying on other countries and acting as a police force in our country. 9/11 definitely altered our attitude on the subject. There is always the old, old debate between security and freedom ...

Straight from the Mountie's mouth:

I do have to admit that I'm kind of curious as to what "other regular members 4" means.

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And you, to whom adversity has dealt the final blow
With smiling [faces] lyin' to ye' everywhere ye' go
Turn to, and put out all your strength of arm and heart and brain
And like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again.