Talk:List of police tactical units

July 2008
Page was put together to elevate the Special Forces debate. The teams listed are all SWAT/Police/Law Enforcement/etc units (Archangel1 (talk) 15:26, 31 July 2008 (UTC)).

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Merge with List of special response units

 * Agree. They're way too similar. Ominae (talk) 05:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree. They're basically the same, same countries, and same units. B-watchmework (talk) 19:15, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Agree. Merge 'em! Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 04:06, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree. Rob (talk | contribs) 14:23, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

England, Wales and Scotland's Firearms Units
Currently, the Met.'s Firearm unit is listed here. Every Police force in England, Wales and Scotland has a Firearms unit, and I'm not sure it's appropriate to include them. The only real "speciality" is that they are armed, however most standard police forces in other countries are armed. Rob (talk | contribs) 14:01, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Removed Met. unit pending this discussion. If it is preferred to include them, I will add all units for the English and Welsh police forces and Police Scotland (which is a lot of units). Rob (talk | contribs) 14:27, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Special?
Most of the units listed here are just standard operation units, which are specific, such as helicopter units. Shouldn't we only list special operations units? Such as counter terrorism units? Otherwise, this just becomes a list of all non-neighbourhood patrol units (as in the United State's section), most of which carry out pretty routine operations, which aren't really 'special'. Rob (talk | contribs) 16:48, 20 January 2014 (UTC)


 * agree with Rob, looking at the Irish section only 2 units could be considered special forces with the RSU inclusion being questionable — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.174.4.41 (talk) 17:28, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Law enforcement or just Police?
United States' section lists special law enforcement units including non-police, whereas Britain's section lists special police units, only including police. What is this article about? And if the former, shouldn't the article be moved to 'List of special law enforcement units'? Regards, Rob (talk | contribs) 12:47, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

Russian and other post Soviet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMON — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.224.138 (talk) 02:48, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Subject definition
Hello everyone,

While I don't have a problem with the article's title, I think the very first sentence is wrong as it says:

This is a list of non-military law enforcement units tasked with special duties,...

As the liste includes (very rightly) many gendarmerie-type units with a definitely military status, I would suggest to change this first sentence to something such as :

This is a list of civilian or gendarmerie-type law enforcement units tasked with special duties,...

A note could be added to emphasize the fact that, in the context of this article, the word Gendarmerie should be taken as defining a force with military status or military-type organization, whether it is actually part of the military or not. I understand that some of the countries listed (Brazil for example) use military police-type organizations for enforcing law and order so this should be mentioned as well.

But of course, if someone finds better wording, I am all for it !

Any comments and/or suggestions please?

Best regards, --Domenjod (talk) 17:46, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Update - Title of article, subject of article (definition) and whether current units meet definition
I have changed the introduction using the style in the List of military special forces units article including a definition. I have used the term Police Tactical Unit to describe the units.

Contributions from other editors would be great for the definition in particular describing tasking.

I am separately working on the Police Tactical Unit article (work in progress) to produce an article from a world perspective on the units whereas now there is only the U.S. SWAT article.

The term "special response units" and "special law enforcement units" has been applied for these units in the past on Wikipedia. Police Tactical Units is a term that has been used in publications when considering the units on a global scale. In the U.S., the term police paramilitary unit PPU has been applied to SWAT, however, without including the term tactical, PPU could be applied to any police that was similar to a military unit whatever the military unit's role/tasking. I don't like it and it seems to be used mainly used in the U.S..

I might propose that the article be re-titled "List of Police Tactical Units" once the Police Tactical Unit article is decent. I have more research and reading to do for the article.

I have quickly gone through the list and deleted units that are not police tactical units (i.e. using U.S. term SWAT). There are correctional units still in the list I am unsure as to do them. They don't fit as being part of a police force.

There might be police units that are multi tasked for example do search and rescue and other non-tactical duties such as riot control. These units would fit the definition as long as everyone who was in the unit had to pass selection/training and remain qualified/refresher training for tactical duties and was on call for tactical. This would be for small police forces where there is no need for a dedicated unit.

These editors may have views looking at their edit history for SWAT ,, and special forces on the introduction of this article, definitions, tasking, etc.. --Melbguy05 (talk) 18:42, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Good work Melbguy. The key problem for these types of non-line, more highly trained units is definition. Once we get a gold-standard definition from a high-quality source, we can establish what goes in and out of the articles and start to cut down on fan-boy hype. Happy to advise should you like further inputs. I would probably import the definition of PTU into this article, with references, and explain the PTU/PPU (and SWAT) distinctions in the introduction. Once you have the definition fixed, we will need another page for special correctional service units. Your thoughts on multi tasked units seem fine. Buckshot06 (talk) 22:58, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Hi, also there are the military units that are trained to police tactical unit standard but only police within military establishments for example U.S. units (one global example). They are "police" but are "military police" with military status under a military command confined to a tactical response on a military base/establishment. I thought they would be best on another page as well.--Melbguy05 (talk) 19:57, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

Afghanistan (2021)
After the Fall of Kabul (2021), some police units did not exist any more. CRU 222, has stopped existing. Perhaps the following source is adequate. 89.8.102.57 (talk) 22:42, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
 * August 20,2021. Source quotes Chief of Defense (Norway): Taliban has taken over the leadership of [some or all] Special Police [forces]; afterwards soldiers put down their weapons; afterwards soldiers were dismissed; unconfirmed reports say that some leaders (of police tactical units) and some of the soldiers/policemen have been executed. 89.8.134.120 (talk) 22:14, 20 August 2021 (UTC)/ 89.8.134.120 (talk) 22:18, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * August 29, 2021. NRK. 89.8.162.243 (talk) 18:04, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Purpose...?
Is there a purpose to this list? The US alone has 18,000 law enforcement agencies, all of which have some kind of tactical support... should they all be listed here? Does this list comply with WP:SAL? And how many ways does it violate WP:NOT? At a glance, many of the entries are not supported, and most are just the name of a parent police department, and do not link to an article for any specific tactical unit. This list may need some reconsideration. -  wolf  20:38, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
 * As the title states it is a "List of police tactical units" as per WP:SAL there is a lead (titled Definition) that provides necessary background information for selection criteria. There are entries that are links to dedicated articles, entries without articles but have sources and entries that do not have sources that require attention.
 * It is exceptional for a country to have as many tactical units as the US, however, most are part-time unlike other countries. A study by the NTOA and IACP released in 2016 stated that the US had more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies. The study found that 60.3% of law enforcement agencies had their own tactical unit with 89.8% of these tactical units part-time. To answer your question, no not all US law enforcement agencies should be listed here, as not all have a tactical unit. To minimise the number of US tactical units listed they could be the 10.3% comprised of full-time officers. If such a narrow inclusion policy was applied it would however exclude notable units such as the Drug Enforcement Administration SRT, FBI Special Weapons and Tactics Teams and U.S. Marshals Service SOG.
 * Can you be more specific as to how it violates WP:NOT.--Melbguy05 (talk) 22:36, 18 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Law enforcement in the United States states there is currently 17,985 agencies in the US, so I rounded up. Other than the brief definition, what value does this list provide? It just seems to be a dumping ground, which conflicts with WP not being a directory. If this page were to be cleaned up of all non-suported content, iow, if all entries that didn't have a ref attached, or link to an article... what would be left? Two of the three examples you just listed don't appear to have their own articles. Sure, refs could be provided, if they aren't there already, but that doesn't provide much context when it's just a basic name-only list entry (or up to 1800 entries, for just the US alone!), as opposed to an article. This page has been tagged for clean-up since March, so it's due. I had considered just doing just that, but thought I would start discussion and see what people had to say. -  wolf  01:51, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Afghanistan
Afghanistan section is out of date as the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan fell to the Taliban and became the Afghan Emirate