The county seat and county are too big for just 4 officers. You cant have just 4 deputies in Murdersville USA. They never address a local PD either. Maybe there is one in Durant and other cities in the county, maybe not. It just doesnt make any sense. Also several times all 4 of them leave the county.
shareIt irks me too
shareI agree as well, especially as the neighboring (and also fictional) Cumberland County Sheriff's Department seems to be significantly larger in terms of staffing than Absaroka County. In the one episode where Hector escapes the scene is crawling with Cumberland County deputies.
Edit: in the books it is mentioned that the department has at least one substation in the southern part of Absaroka County staffed by 2 deputies. So they have 1 sheriff, 4-5 deputies and 1 civilian. Still, that's pretty small.
For what I gather Absaroka County is based on the real life Johnson County, and Durant, WY is based on Buffalo, WY. Buffalo has it's own police department with 11 sworn officers and 9 civilian employees. The Johnson County Sheriff's Department has 29 sworn officers and 1 civilian employee. Yeah, the real life county sheriff's department has SEVEN times as many deputies as the TV show LOL
I got the above figures from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. According to the report this only includes FULL TIME sworn officers and civilian staff. These numbers may be even higher in reality.
I wonder what the crime stats are there.
I lived in a town of 200 people and no police force for a couple years and it's county had 18 deputies and 10 jailers. Granted the county seat had 2000 people and had its own police force. I just feel like they could or added some background people that really didnt have a part. It would just make more sense.
I think they want the feel of a classic western in modern times. Those old westerns had one sheriff and a deputy or two.
Most rural areas in the country have a limited number of deputies. That's why it's so important to have gun laws that reflect the diversity of environments in the US.
shareYes, because we all need to be armed at all times in order to solve all our problems with gunplay without the need to involve law enforcement. Right.
shareYes, because we all need to be armed at all times in order to solve all our problems with gunplay without the need to involve law enforcement. Right.
It's the same kind of plot hole that also has the sheriff reporting a mayor.
Clearly Absaroka County failed Civics 101.
The department would have to be larger as Walt and his crew are routinely hours away from the county so who answers the 9-1-1 calls in their absence? And a jail with only one cell could be filled on a single drunken payday, much less with what is shown on the series. Walt must also be a terrible administrator as he's have to fill out budgets, manpower requests, evaluate his staff and a host of other duties which sheriffs have to do.He spends a little too much time in the field.
My thoughts: The department is small because the budget is small. If Longmire was on network television....or even HBO...things would seem to be "bigger" than they are.
Bad films are a crime against humanity.
http://movieplotholes.com/message-board.html
But if the show was realistic in it's portrayal of a small (rural) sheriff agency nobody would get past the first ten minutes of the pilot episode. However the SO has too few deputies and there would probably be a municipal police department since they make the county seat look like it has probably a few thousand residents. I work for a municipal police department in Idaho. City of 50,000 (+) residents and the county seat. The sheriff department is a few blocks from us and though deputies can enforce the law anywhere in the county (while we are restricted to the city limits) they rarely do. They step back for us in the city though they don't hesitate to help us on a call if we're spread thin.
shareWalt must also be a terrible administrator as he's have to fill out budgets, manpower requests, evaluate his staff and a host of other duties which sheriffs have to do.He spends a little too much time in the field.
I actually find it very realistic.. I live in a county in OR it is 688 sq miles with 7 city/towns and (acording to the Internet) 30 Unincorporated communities. I live outside of city limits and if something goes wrong I don't get a cop from the "city" of my zip code I have to wait for county/state.. An example is we had a body dumped on the main highway, lady was from Portland and in an interview with the sheriff he said something along the lines of it took so long to idintify the body because we are understaffed (he is a *beep* sheriff and lost all our money but that's neither here nor there). I think we have 4 deputies and the sherif (not 100% on that). Anyway the moral of the story is if something happens out here in the boonies the sheriff's department doesn't work with the "city" PD. I'm sure in one of the bigger towns it does, but I would compare that to Longmire working with the reservation..
shareIt's a TV show,
bigtonk