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Although legal scholars have over the years developed an increasingly sophisticated account of policing in the largest cities, they have largely overlooked the thousands of small departments that serve rural areas and small towns. As this Article makes clear, small departments are hardly immune from the various problems that plague modern policing. But their sheer number—and relative obscurity—has made it difficult to get a handle on the magnitude of the difficulties they present, or the ways in which familiar reform proposals might need to look different in America’s small towns.

This Article begins to fill this gap. It does so by blending together empirical analysis of various dimensions of small-agency policing, with in-depth case studies that add much-needed texture to the patterns that the data reveal. It argues that the problems of small-town and rural policing differ in important ways from those that plague big-city police, and that there are predictable patterns that explain when and why small agencies are likely to go astray. In particular, it shows that small agencies are susceptible to two types of systemic failures—those that reflect the inherent limitations of small-town political processes and those that are driven by the capacity constraints that some small governments face. It then draws on the data and case studies to provide a preliminary sense of how prevalent these problems are likely to be.

This Article concludes with the policy implications that follow from this richer and more nuanced account of small-town and rural police. It begins with the oft- made suggestion that small agencies be made to “consolidate” with one another or simply dissolve, and it explains why consolidation is not only highly unlikely, but also potentially counter-productive. It argues that states should instead pursue two parallel sets of reforms, the first aimed at equalizing the dramatic disparities in police funding across municipalities, and the second focused on a set of regulatory measures designed to address specific small agency harms.

The problem of changed circumstances recurs throughout constitutional law. Statutes often outlive the conditions they were meant to address. A once-reasonable law may come to impose burdens that the legislature never intended and would not now be willing to impose. This Note asks whether courts are ever permitted to step in and declare that, as a result of postenactment changed circumstances, a once-valid law can no longer be constitutionally applied. It argues that the propriety of changed circumstances review depends first on whether the applicable doctrinal test is substantive or motives-based. A substantive test is one that imposes an absolute prohibition on certain categories of legislation, or requires a particular degree of fit between legislative means and ends. A motives-based test asks only whether the enacting legislature intended to further an impermissible objective. This Note demonstrates that where the underlying test is substantive, a reviewing court must at least consider whether circumstances have sufficiently changed since the challenged law’s enactment to justify striking it down. If the test is motives-based, then the court should generally consider only whether the statute is valid based on facts as they existed when it first went into effect.

Of all the agencies of executive government, those that police—that employ force and engage in surveillance—are the most threatening to the liberties of the American people. Yet, they are the least regulated. Two core requisites of American constitutionalism are democratic accountability and adherence to the rule of law. Democratic accountability ensures that policy choices are vetted in the public arena and have popular support; the rule of law requires that those choices be constitutional as well. Legislative enactments governing policing are few and far between. Although police departments have internal rules, these rules are rarely made public or publicly debated. When it comes to regulating policing, we rely primarily on ex post judicial review, which at best ensures policing practices are constitutional (though it often fails on this score), and does nothing to assure democratic accountability or sound policymaking.

This Article argues that it is fundamentally unacceptable for policing to remain aloof from the ordinary processes of democratic governance. All police practices—such as use of drones or other surveillance equipment; SWAT, Tasers, and other means of force; checkpoint stops, administrative inspections, and other warrantless searches and seizures—should be legislatively authorized, subject to public rulemaking, or adopted and evaluated through some alternative process that permits democratic input. In addition to spelling out the ways in which the ordinary processes of governance can be utilized to regulate policing, this Article fills in substantial gaps in the existing literature by analyzing why this has not been the case in the past, and explaining how, within the existing framework of administrative and constitutional law, courts can motivate change. It also directs attention to the manifold questions that require resolution in order to move policing to a more democratically accountable footing.