[cmdkeen]

Armed Response Vehicles (ARVs) are the mainstay of British armed policing, outside of London they are pretty rare and often fall back to traffic policing duties.

The qualfiied officers are Authorised Firearms Officers who will also stand up the equivalent of SWAT teams as needed for each constabulary.

London has Specialist Firearms Officers as well who are a standing set of SWAT type teams. Several have written some very good books about their experiences, Steve Collins especially.

The main thing in the UK is that armed officers who discharge their weapon, let alone kill someone, face extremely rigorous scrutiny by an external agency. This combined with no specific legal protections means that a police officer shooting their weapon is very rare, it happens a handful of times across the UK each year.

[mc32]

I think I helps when the odds are low that suspects will be carrying firearms. In north America the odds are much higher that police will have a confrontation with armed suspects --and of course NaM police have greater legal protection when discharging a weapon.