You can counteract that somewhat by delegating rural policing to a larger force, so that the overhead of some programs are shared.

Maybe it wouldn't be too popular in the States, where everyone from the Mayor down to the city hall janitor (and including the sheriff) is elected. But it seems to work fairly well in Canada. Jurisdictions too small to warrant their own regional force contract the RCMP or provincial force (e.g. OPP) to serve as the regional force.

The flip side is that it can lead to a certain detachment (no pun intended) from the community because the officers consider it a "tour of duty" to serve at a tiny outpost before graduating to a "real" position.

And how does that play considering study after study and program after program showing that a successful approach in fostering harmonious police-citizen relations and reducing crime is to have the cops "walking the beat" and becoming known and recognized in the areas they're policing?

That already happens to some degree, but the point of aggregation is from local police to county sheriff and is primarily driven by economic concerns.

In my area towns with less than 10k residents have been outsourcing policing to the county sheriff instead of continuing to staff their 1-2 officer police departments.

I don't think you have to delegate to a larger police force, I think those small town's should be able to/have to send their officers the state police academy (or something similar) to ensure proper training, recurring education, standards etc.

> Should a single officer department in a rural county enact the same programs that NYC has?

That single officer should receive the same level of training or better. I don't see lack of backup being a good argument for those officers receiving LESS training, which is your implication.

Now if you give them MORE training, then I'm all for it. I just said a minimum level of training and continued education.

Which of the above suggestions wouldn't apply to both?

I understand what you're saying in general, but there are a lot of universals that would apply across all kinds of jurisdictions.

I think mainly the training regimen could vary wildly based on local needs.

I imagine someone in a tiny town in Alaska would need more training on dealing with wildlife than somebody in NYC would. Their training on handling humans should be pretty much the same.

With the exception that rural people probably have more and bigger guns than NYC people.

> Should a single officer department in a rural county enact the same programs that NYC has?

A very small department probably needs higher minimum standards, but there's also a minimum viable size, greater than 1, for a separate department.