Armed Police

In my verse, all police officers are armed, mostly with an assault rifle or such. Would that be extremely unnecessary in a country where nobody is allowed to possess any form of firearm? It's mostly due to the fact that there are some skilled Augmenters who can easily break down bank vaults and cause heavy casualty. Oh, and all police officers are required to learn Le Parkour as well. There are some scenes where all civillians in a certain district are forced to retreat inside the buildings because of Urban Warfare.

Still, I want to mostly portray them as normal fellas and would armed police patrolling be too dissonant in lighter, Slice of Life moments?

Actual policeman in modern times walk around with firearms, but nothing keeps them from being portrayed as regular guys. In fact, I'd be more concerned that the parkour would cause some trouble with seeing them as regular guys. More people carry around guns than jump around from building to building.

In a world where the bad guys have magic and such, I don't see any reason why the police wouldn't want to use any resources they can get a hold of to combat them, including guns. Just because these guys carry around guns, or drive around in tanks, etc, doesn't keep them from being ordinary people. They're just ordinary people with guns and tanks and such.

Also, just because this place doesn't allow their citizens to carry around firearms, doesn't mean that some won't get a hold of some firearms. So yeah, the police would be stupid not to carry around rifles or such.

Depends. What's the threat level of these Augmenters? It'd have to be pretty serious to warrant most officers in the country being armed with assault rifles, which is a policy that would probably be pretty unpopular in a country where civilian ownership of firearms is restricted (ie Japan, UK, Australia). I think portraying them as normal guys just doing their jobs is a good idea, though.

Also, wouldn't the rifle make Parkour somewhat tricky? A fair amount of parkour moves require your hands to be free, IIRC.

edited 30th May '11 3:06:53 AM by RiotousRascal

There are certain offensive types of Augmentation that can allow you to throw cars around and set small police squad on fire. It's just that those kind of practices are illegal (same as why firearms are forbidden) and sealed away from general public (aka, good luck trying to finding the spell offline and online). Also, anyone who is strong and skilled enough to be able to use such scale magic is registered to the local authority and kept on check. The police is mostly averse in using Augmentation, simply because one of the most famed officer and the founder of modern police force is apparently Batman. Well, not really.

I forgot about that.

Do puny human bullets work against Augmenters?

Extremely well. In fact, the police is NOT PUNY. I'm currently writing the opening and it involves 8 counter terrorist force raiding a building occupied few dozens of Augmenters and nearly manhandling them. Oh, and the police routinely strikes down Giant Flyers and vampires and such.

So, when a police officer asks you to show your license, just do it. It's good for your health.

edited 30th May '11 5:55:03 AM by dRoy

Police that aren't expendable Mooks? Awesome. You, good sir, just took down one of my pet peeve tropes.

If they're going to do Parkour while lugging a rifle around, they need to use body armor that protects the spine. Were they to fall on their backs with the rifle strapped to it, they'd get paralyzed, so the body armo has to take that into account.

One in five police officers should carry an anti-materiel rifle, in case they have to deal with Nigh-Invulnerable Augmenters.

Of course, while the police force is not puny, I doubt they could just Crush Kill Destroy a significant proportion of Augmenters. I mean, dudes who can just raise a bus and use it as a bludgeon to dispose of a police squad?

Battles between police and augmenters would be probably messy and bloody and lead to plenty of casualties on both sides. Odds are cops would win most of them out of having moar backup: A gang or a guerrilla movement cannot win against police on a war of attrition.. But quick skirmishes would probably end up in an Augmenter victory.

edited 30th May '11 7:47:44 AM by SavageHeathen

Heh, they didn't just went Leeroy Jenkins on the Augmenters. It involved combination of (lot of) sniping, air strikes (via helicopter) and gas bomb. In my current draft, I'm having a sniper, albeit with an Augmented Barret M89, taking down at least a dozen close combat oriented Augmenters. Yes, there are police casualty as well.

Maybe I should just scrape this parkour thing.

I know, right? I really hate that when it happens. You know what the sad thing is? If anything like that actually happens in my country, they probably will be expendable...my country's police suck, really.

edited 30th May '11 8:02:56 AM by dRoy

AR 15 and M1911?

Both Civillian and common arms. The police have AR 15's.

Also, that situatuin would call a SWAT team, so the normal police may not need it anyway. (swats for bank robberies from magic people and such)

True. But my setting isn't America and really, it's something of an Alternate History here and there. I admit that I don't know much about firearms...

The AR 15 will more than do the job for most things that police have to come across.

But a SWAT team shows up to things like bank robberies and hostage situations. The cops don't rush in, they wait on teh team for anything.

I've seen a swat team in action once, the guy next door had just a pistol and made a threat about something and I had a guy with either a rifle or shotgun pass by my window, then a cop asked us to leave.

And this was just a pistol they knew he had.

How much do you know about firearms?

Like,

what is the difference between semi and fully automatic? The difference between a rifle and assault rifle? How to turn on and off the safety? The difference between a sub-machine gun and machine gun?

Do you know for example that sub-machine guns use the same caliber of ammo as hand guns? There are so many things, I can't say all of them.

Though the AR 15 has a good track record. It is a lot like the M16 actually. It is built for accuracy. Though I do not think it goes well against armor.

I mean, saying you do not know much about guns can mean many things. I do not know much about guns, I admit, but I know the answers to all those questions.

Check out these links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR_15

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1911

Both are old but good weapons. The M1911 has been in service for 100 years now in the US, and the M16, a variant of the AR 15 for over 40, though the M4 Carbine is phasing the M16 out a lot, or at least until we make a better gun.

link for M4:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_carbine

Any of these guns would be in a police force in limited amounts. The AR 15 would be easier to get than an M4, but really anything like what you described would have a S.W.A.T. storm in, full of specialized weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWAT#Weapons

Wikipedia is your friend. These type of topics are rarely subject to vandalism.

"Outlaw guns and only outlaws will have guns" is the old adage. More accurately it should be "...only outlaws and those engaged by the State to protect people from outlaws..."

Even if firearms are not permitted to normal citizenry, the police would need the means to cope with those who feel the law does not apply to them (and desire to protect their illegal activities with force).

Here in New Zealand, where citizens can own firearms for sport or hunting but with higher restrictions than parts of the USA, the police force typically does not carry firearms (though firearms use is part of their training) and there is a specialist group of police called the Armed Offenders Squad whose job is to deal with, you guessed it, armed offenders. This is because firearms-related crimes were typically few and far between so there was no point in having the all the police armed.

In Australia, where the firearms laws are even stricter (you can't even own Airsoft guns over there without getting a licence), the police wear pistols.

Police, when armed, typically carry a pistol - (high capacity 9mm semi-automatic over here), pepper spray and extendible baton so they have the choice of lethal and "less-than-lethal" means to control a situation.

If things turn really pear-shaped, our police usually use rifles - bolt action or semi auto - to control the perimeter and wait for the AOS to turn up with semi-automatic "assault rifles", pistols and sniper rifles.

If your 'verse has something like Augmenters that can kick arse without swallowing their bubblegum, you may want to have a specialist police group that has the skills and weapons - possibly Augmenters of their own - to deal with the threat.

Your threat levels are going to be:

Unarmed citizens - dealt with by regular police, no weapons necessary but they'd probably carry pepper spray and extenda-batons to deal with belligerent drunks. They could carry pistols if you like.

Armed citizens - dealt with by armed officers with specialised training and better weapons. Pistols worn and access to assault rifles, sniper rifles etc.

Augmenters - dealt with by officers with whatever the fuck it takes to deal with Augmenters in your 'verse.

People shot in the head are still dead though. I would think that even magic can't stop a sniper one can't see. Bullets go really really fast. It is a chunk of metal literally flung into the air. If a rock will hurt someone, so will a bullet.

Like I said earlier, any form of Augmentation that allows people to kick police's, a highly trained ones at that, asses is more or less banned to the public. Also, you can use Augmentation only in places where using it is allowed. There are career Augmenters, but they are not many, compared to other jobs that is, and has to get license, which is pretty hard. In short, no throwing fireballs at your paperwork.

Of course, there are some really talented Augmenters who commits crime and there is another class of police force, that borders on military police, that can deal with them. They don't get to be deployed often because when they do, it's the real shit; citizens are forced into shelters because when these guys show up, expect more or less Charles Atlas Superpower incarnation supported by attack helicopters and vehicle-mounted machine gun. Of course, that's when a single sniper shot cannot do the magic.

My main point was that even with an "unarmed" populace, an armed police force is conceivable and there would be levels of arming to suit the situation.

Our AOS is made up of the best shots in the police force but they don't just sit around waiting for the bad guys to show off the hardware they've stolen/smuggled in. Under most circumstances they do regular police work and get pulled away from their regular duties when there's a situation that warrants their special skills.

The unarmed (save for baton and spray) cop you're talking to about your noisy drunken neighbours one day could be suited up, armed and dealing with a meth lab full of angry, armed gang members the next.

I don't know if SWAT is like that in the US or if they have enough "business" to warrant them doing only SWAT work and training.

Specialist SWAT teams, armed to the teeth. deal with the Augments. Regular cops with sticks and pistols deal with Human criminals. It would be an horrific waste of resources sending the elite SWAT teams to direct traffic.

Yeah. You'd want the anti-Augmenter dudes to be a specialized subdivision of the police, sort of like SWAT or FBI HRT in the US, or CO 19 in the UK.

edited 2nd Jun '11 2:03:08 AM by RiotousRascal

You know...you are right, why did I ever thought of arming the guys who guide the traffics? 0_0

Really bad drivers?

"FAILING TO GIVE WAY AT INTERSECTIONS PUNISHABLE BY SUMMARY EXECUTION"

edited 2nd Jun '11 3:06:53 AM by RiotousRascal

In a Hilarious in Hindsight moment, my country DOES have really bad traffic and some crazy drivers (at least my province does) . Also, the police does not get much respect.

Hey, at least there is some place where speed limit is enforced by aircraft!

edited 2nd Jun '11 4:16:58 AM by dRoy

Whether the SWAT teams count as part of Policc, Army, Militia or Ministry of Science depends on needs of the plot.

Minstry of Science? Where did that come from?

Ministry of Sufficiently Advanced Technology?

Ah. Crap, never thought about any governmental structure regarding that. *adds it on the list*

edited 2nd Jun '11 7:23:25 AM by dRoy