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County, state policing boundaries under review as officials push for mutual-aid clarity
Summary
Colonel Jamie Leonard told the New Castle County Public Safety Committee the county is reviewing jurisdictional agreements with Delaware State Police to resolve gray areas such as mixed-use developments; councilmembers asked for a phased analysis and warned rural/southern areas need additional resources.
At the Feb. 18 New Castle County Public Safety Committee meeting, Colonel Jamie Leonard said the county is re-examining jurisdictional agreements with the Delaware State Police to clarify which roads and properties each agency will police.
Leonard said long-standing agreements work in many areas but produce “gray areas” when residential units are added to commercial sites — for example, apartments built above businesses on Silverside Road. “The businesses themselves are handled by the state police,” he said, and the county is trying to “balance that out.”
Leonard described the familiar division: primary roadways are policed by the Delaware State Police, secondary roadways and residences by New Castle County Police, with some caveats and carve-outs. He said the county has a decades-old agreement north of the canal and a different arrangement below the canal that evolved about 20 years ago; the older approach assigned cases to the first responder but was replaced by a more structured system.
Council members said the status quo shortchanges rural and southern parts of New Castle County. Councilman Carter said his analysis with staff suggested the county would need roughly 10–12 more officers to bring southern towns to the same policing level as other areas. “That's how big the discrepancy is,” Carter said, and he urged the county to have a “come to Jesus talk” with state police to resolve the patchwork jurisdictional map.
Leonard said mutual planning is under way and that his office meets monthly with the Troop 9 commander to coordinate deployments. He also warned that if the county unilaterally reassigns large areas the county could inherit additional calls that the department is not yet resourced to handle.
Ending: Committee members directed staff to phase a deeper review of roadway and jurisdictional boundaries with the state police and to bring back recommendations tied to resource and staffing projections.
