Duties
The PSP's duties include patrolling all state and federal highways across Pennsylvania, enforcing the Pennsylvania Vehicle Code, overseeing the state's automobile inspection program, enforcing the state's commercial vehicle safety regulations, and providing the full range of police protection for municipalities without full-time local police departments. The PSP patrols more than half of the state's 2,565 municipalities and the bulk of its rural areas, as the sheriffs in Pennsylvania are restricted by tradition to performing court services.
The PSP provides primary service for 27% of the Commonwealth's population, accounting for over 60% of the Commonwealth municipalities.
This constitutes 85% of the Commonwealth's land area and 66% of the Commonwealth's highways. This is accomplished with only 19% of the police officers in the Commonwealth.
The PSP's Bureau of Forensic Services provides crime lab services for criminal investigations. A special unit of the PSP act as bodyguards for the Governor of Pennsylvania and certain other state officials. The PSP also temporarily patrolled the state's 28 airports and five nuclear power plants in the months following the 9/11 attacks. However, the PSP still conducts security checks of all of the Delaware River Bridges along the PA/NJ border, in agreement with the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.
The PSP administers the Pennsylvania Instant Check System (PICS), which is responsible for providing background checks in firearms purchases statewide. The PSP are embroiled in a controversy concerning the maintaining of a firearms "registry" contrary to both Federal and State laws. The issue is being addressed in the courts and the legislature.
The PSP also administers the PATCH (Pennsylvania Access To Criminal History) background-check database and the Pennsylvania Uniform Crime Reporting System.
Read more about this topic: Pennsylvania State Police
Famous quotes containing the word duties:
“The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a “taxing- machine;” to the contented, a “machine for securing property.” Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish-constable.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“The traditional husband/father has always made choices concerning career, life-styles, values, and directions for the whole family, but he generally had another person on the team—called a wife. And his duties were always clear: Bring home the bacon and take out the garbage.”
—Donna N. Douglass (20th century)