A Few Questions from a Newbie

[GodAtum]

Hi all. Hopefully I can learn a lot from the people on this forum.

Are the Mercerdes police cars I have occasionally seen ARVs? I know the BMW ones are.
Also, how come officers in ARVs only wears baseball caps and not helmets?

[valor]

The Mercedes used by ARV's are distinguished by a circular yellow sticker on the windscreen. The ARV crews don't need helmet, as unlike the SFO's who wear the PASGT's, they don't intend to be in CQB.

[co19]

Valour sorry you are wrong, the ARV crews do wear the helmets and should do on most deployments unless it is impracticable. ARV's do spontaneous and pre-planned search to contact operations whether in premises or not. In the Met they are not Rapid Intervention trained, they are trained to conduct proggressive search to contact ops which are slightly slower that rapid. They use a mix of BMW's and Mercs in the Met. ARV's supply 14 cars + 3 MOE Vehicles + 2 Trojan Dog Vehicles in London 0800-2400, there are also 2 TST teams and 7 SFO teams.
You are looking at 450 people including the training wing.

[valor]

They are issued with them, but they usually wear baseball caps and some still wear the blue berets. They will only wear PASGT's when deployed for 'house calls' and the like.

[co19]

No, trust me Valour if they have the opportunity to use the helmets they will put
them on (H+S), no one likes using the caps as you look like a spanner, but they wear them occasionally. Alot of the time they will not wear any head dress.
As for the berets, I started out with SO19 at the beginning of 1997 and no one wears berets unless its on a course photograph! Berets are also only issued to instructors.

[GodAtum]

Thanks for all your replies.

How come this officer is not wearing any PASGT?



(Source: Terror police nearly shot Tube driver | Evening Standard)

[valor]

As they never wear helmets while on normal duty and he was one of the SFO's deployed at stockwell after the shooting, note the g3ka4.
I recently encountered officers from CO19 with berets escorting a prison vehicle, they werent aru's though.

[co19]

Both officers are SFO officers from CO19, on plain clothes duty, I have worked with both numerous times, this is the scene of the Stockwell shooting. Under ACPO guidelines you have to be identifiable in Plain clothes by use of a cap or arm bands.

[co19]

CO19 dont escort prison vans, it was the SEG or if its in The City of London it was the City Police.

[valor]

True, but I meant escorting on foot, just around the rear entrance of the court room.