More than twelve hundred years ago, the country we now call England was inhabited by small groups of Anglo-Saxons who lived in rural communities called Tuns. Tun is the source of the modern English word town. These Anglo-Saxons were often at war. Sometime before the year 700, they decided to systematize their methods of fighting by forming a system of local self-government based on groups of ten. The two important characteristics that distinguish the Office of Sheriff from other law enforcement units is its history. In England, the sheriff came into existence around the 9th century. This makes the sheriff the oldest continuing, non-military, law enforcement entity in history. Early in England the land was divided into geographic areas between a few individual kings, they were called shires. Each shire there was an individual called a reeve, meaning …show more content…
Also, one of the smallest states which is Connecticut, which only have eight counties and the Office of Sheriffs office were replaced with State Marshalls. Some cities, such as Denver, St. Louis, Richmond and Baltimore, have sheriffs as well. The office of sheriff is established either by the state constitution or by an act of state legislatures. There are only two states in which the sheriff is not elected by the voters. In Rhode Island, sheriffs are appointed by the governor; in Hawaii, deputy sheriffs serve in the Department of Public Safety's Sheriff's Division. The sheriff's law enforcement duties became more extensive and complex, when new career opportunities existed for people with specialized skills such as: underwater diving, piloting, boating, skiing, radar technology, communications, computer technology, accounting, emergency medicine, and foreign languages such as, Spanish, French, and