driving standards

I believe you need to complete an advanced driving course. You would then have a further course during your firearms training to teach things like hard stops and handling differences between soft and armoured vehicles.

ARV's where I work are used as traffic cars until an incident occurs which requires them to act.
 
Ideally 2 of the crew of 3 should be advanced drivers, The Metropolitan Police crew their ARV's with crews of 3 where alot of county forces only employ 2 officers per vehicle. Even if you are not an advanced driver, on attending an ARV course you will drive and practice the tactics. Met ARV's do not do traffic they are solely employed as ARVs, of which their are 14 of them between 0800 and 0200, they also have standing authority to be armed whilst on duty, which only several forces employ. Most other forces rely on their command rooms to authorise them to arm. This in my opinion is outdated and should be changed. The Met Firearms Department deal with around 15000 spontanious armed incidents (for half of these, no or little action is taken by the ARV crews) and 2500 pre-planned operations a year.

Hope this answers your questions
 
Hampshire go double-crewed but have a higher than national average investment in dricer (dricer? driver) training hence do not automaticaly recognise other driving courses. This causes some problems for transferees who are generally rated as 'basic' until it has been considered. Some, I know, just haven't been able to carry their skills over at all and have had to wait to do the Hampshire courses, which is annoying for ARV work.
 
Northumbria CSU, double crewed and all advanced drivers, therefore like traffic rats are allowed to pursue, others on borough are standard response and can only follow. Now in the real world whats the difference
 
I can't understand how most forces 2 crew their ARV's, on a busy day its manic, dealing with the comms and map reading.

My busiest day on the ARV's, 1400hrs deployed down to South Norwood and detained 3 armed robbers, redeployed to Hayes West London to intercept other armed robbers coming into London from Thames Valley who were being followed by the Flying Squad, numerous non compliant stops initiated on vehicles in Hayes and persons detained. A number of armed dig outs were then initiated in West London by all the ARVs in London. Redeployed to hostage situation in Southall, once completed redeployed to more armed dig outs concerned in the Thames Valley armed robberies. 11pm get our first brew. These were the times when there was only about 8 ARV's on shift for London.

This was a very busy day, and is the subject of an excellent story involving one of the crews, but i couldn't have imagined doing this day in just a 2 crewed ARV.
 
In Sussex all ARV crews are advanced drivers. With regards to numbers, marked ARVs have 2 officers in (AFOs). Duty teamleader patrols 3 up in an unmarked car (SFOs).

Although each vehicle still has East/West Sussex map books - TFU, RPU and some GP vehicles have Garmin SatNav systems - much easier (when they work) :)
 
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In answer to CO19 "i cant understand how forces only double crew their ARV blah blah" - They dont have the resources! Simple as that. Yes it may make good tactical sense for a 3 man (sorry "person") crew but there are not enough authorised officers to do so and maintain 24 hour coverage. The busy day you describe i am sure is typical but hey London is one of the best and largest Capital cities in the world with 10,000,000 people so thats about right and after all youve got all thos PSCO's to help you now, do they carry Glocks or prefer just the taser!
 
Currently, London is swamped with Armed Police. The 19 cars have to battle with "ARV" cars from the DPG and the Airport (it's a bit like being in the TA...not actually doing the job properly, but getting all the kit) when there is a call. It can be as manic as is described above, but so not often. Mind you, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I still start to grin when the lights and horns go on, and I'm old enough to have got it out of my system.
And the alternative (punting a panda around Peckham) is too dreadfull to comprehend.
Okay, I'll just finish this pint and have a jog around the block, otherwise I'll never pass that fitness test.
 
Currently, London is swamped with Armed Police. The 19 cars have to battle with "ARV" cars from the DPG and the Airport (it's a bit like being in the TA...not actually doing the job properly, but getting all the kit) when there is a call. It can be as manic as is described above, but so not often. Mind you, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I still start to grin when the lights and horns go on, and I'm old enough to have got it out of my system.
And the alternative (punting a panda around Peckham) is too dreadfull to comprehend.
Okay, I'll just finish this pint and have a jog around the block, otherwise I'll never pass that fitness test.
 
Our ARVs are dual roled also. Therefore all AFOs are Advanced drivers as they are primarily Road Policing Officers first and AFOs second.

Ours are double crewed, and cannot be crewed with anymore staff for reasons that I am not going to discuss on here!!

We also have an on call firearms team of 4 and any Task Force that may be on duty.
 
Personally i do not think that dual purpose ARV's are a good idea, it is all about money. Most forces have moved to the single role and concerate on this. Concerning driver training, most are advanced as we are, this is essential as there is pressure on route and you need the skills to do it. I have personally found some forces training to be very poor and it reflects on the crews.
With the intro of taser we now have more deployments to jobs we would never have gone to, less lethal is the way ahead and i agree with it.
Currently we have a standard car course which is 5 weeks, including response pursuit etc, then you are required to do the advanced which is another 5 weeks. This course is a very high content and the pass rate is 50 percent. We will then get further training almost every month on vehicle use hard stops, opposed stops, naturals, coverts, overts etc etc.
Like most forces we train for stopping vehicles by force, not something i would like to do operationally.
 
In PSNI the arv's are still to go live. They will be shortly i am told. (watch this space). However all in the 3 person crew will be advanced drivers. And i am told will be pursuit trained as well. as the PSI are armed anyway, it will be taken for granted that the ARV's will be armed also. In a lot of stations, the response vehicles are armoured so for a lot of folk in their probation, all they drive are armoured cars. The armoured landrovers will be used in the ARV's if required.
 
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