Your thoughts Sheriff's Office working with Local Police?

I am looking for opinions from Deputies and Officers on the matter especially from those who work for a Sheriff's Office that provides court security, correctional security, and serving of civil processes, and limited law enforcement services; and the Officers where thier Police Department provides primary law enforcement services much like the South Eastern Virginia Area, I would Prefer the responses to be from officers and deputies from Commonwealths like Virginia. Civilian responses are fine too.

I am really looking for information on how well the two work together or not work together. Any and all help would be great.

I am not a Deputy but I hope I can shed some light on your question. Our town used to have 2 City Police and a County Sheriff's Office. About 8 or 10 years ago the County Sheriff and one of the City Police merged. Then just this year the other City Police merged. Now they are all under the County Sheriff's Office. All former employees were kept. But while they were separated they worked well together and even assisted each other on calls. They still have the old City Police squad cars and one of the old City Police buildings is empty. I hoped this helped some.

I work for a sheriff's dept that also provides police services for 4 contract cities - so the PD's officers are actually employees of the sheriff's dept - kind like being on loan.

For the most part, the sheriff's dept and various PDs work pretty well together - backing each other up and so on. While there's always a little departmental rivalry, they're always gonna be there when you need them...