Monday 20 February 2012

Cops and Rugers


In my previous post, The Long Firearm of the Law, I gave a brief overview of the use of firearms by UK Police forces in 1979.

I thought it would be interesting to look at the subject again in a little more depth, but to look outwith the metropolitan areas. Consequently I found that the history of firearm use by Surrey Constabulary is well documented and provides a good example of how one force tackled the perennially thorny issue of arming it's officers.

In the 1970's, Surrey Constabulary (changed to Surrey Police in 1993) limited firearms to CID Detectives and designated police officers who were trained as Authorised Firearms Officers (AFOs). They were supported by a few snipers, mostly hobby gun enthusiasts within the force and a small specialist unit known as the 'Gas Squad'. The Gas Squad's intended role being to deploy CS gas at sieges and was mostly made up of ex-forces personnel.

 1/76 Surrey Constabulary Ford Escort

Surrey's Special Branch Detectives and Police Dog Handlers were also trained and authorised to carry firearms. The Dog Handlers were often tasked with VIP protection duties alongside Special Branch and the common SOP was for the dog and handler to patrol the grounds of  the VIP's residence, whilst the Special Branch officer provided close protection inside the house.

Training for the AFOs was periodic and largely based on range firing with little in the way of tactics being practised. Weapons available to Surrey Constabulary at this time included Smith and Wesson model 10 revolver (six inch barrel) for AFO's,  Detectives/Special Branch carried the model 36, five inch short barrel, five shot revolver, the 'Gas Squad' used the Webley CS gas gun and snipers' had the Parker Hale 7.62mm Safari sniper rifle.

In 1978 Chief Superintendent Eric Hughes instructed Inspector Eric Adams to form the Firearms Support Team. The role of the Firearms Support Team was to provide specially trained volunteers and uniformed officers of marksman standard, who would be on call for major firearms incidents, sieges and pre-planned firearms operations.

The Firearms Support Team undertook intense training in weapon and tactics in 1979. Authorised Firearms Officers (AFOs) still remained to supplement large scale incidents and to provide containment and guarding operations. For instance AFOs could be deployed by division to contain an incident pending the arrival of the Firearms Support Team, which could take a minimum of an hour to arrive on scene.

With the Firearm Support Team now taking a greater role in pre-planned ops such as staking out banks, leading raids or making arrests where the suspects were thought to be dangerous and armed, the need for local division detectives outwith Special Branch to carry firearms diminished.

During the early 1980's the Firearms Support Team continually strove to improve skills and tactics. Weapons improved accordingly. The Browning 9mm pistol, Ruger Mini 14 .223 calibre folding stock rifle, and the Remington 12 bore shotgun, with the Hatton round solid slug to shoot off door hinges all joined the Surrey Constabulary arsenal.

Operations could now involve plain clothes deployments in conjunction with the Regional Crime Squad, Metropolitan Police Flying Squad or even CO11. Firearms Support Team members were also trained in rural covert observation and undertook that role on several occasions as the threat of terrorism on the mainland increased.

I hope you found this article interesting. For me, it's prompted several new scenario ideas and I am left thinking that the Firearms Support Team provides a further layer of depth to our Winter of '79/Geezers games, giving the civil authorities a greater degree of experience and firepower to tackle organised criminals.  Plus, they can take on revolutionary/terrorist groups without recourse to the military.

Cheers
Mark

9 comments:

  1. A story - but of relevance to your period and this post - one Friday I was kicking about camp (Lucknow - Tidworth) with some mates when our Lt. came up and asked us if we'd like a days shooting as there had been a cock-up and there was a spare slot to blat some rounds off...the catch (?) being that it was the NITAT guys who were running it and they'd be non-standard weapons!

    Well we were young men fresh from having used sanitary towels thrown at us by the 'Women's Peace camp' up the road at Greenham so we leapt at the chance to play Audy Murphy for the day...

    Off we trolled to Luggershall in a borrowed lanny (only civis call them landies) where we were met by the NITAT bods who then gave us a days 'orientation' on the weapons we were likely to encounter should we get to Ireland (we were 'Spearhead Battalion' at the time).

    Point if the story - The weapons we fired that day were;

    *Lee Enfield (No.'s 4 and 5 I think)
    *FN Fal - full auto!
    *Various military and civil versions of the armalite M15/M16 family
    *Various AKM's and AK's ('47 and '74)including a Czeck Scorpion and a Polish para thing.
    *M1 Garrand - big recoil
    *M1 carbine AND Ruger mini-14, but with wood stock
    *M60 (lovely sound)
    *German G3 and similar Austrian (or Swiss?)thing
    *MG3 (sounded just like the Pathe News reports!)
    * A captured IRA/home-made Stirling/Sten using chair-leg parts and steel water-pipe!

    There were a few I can't remember, Italian and Scandinavian semi-automatic assault rifles and so on and a few handguns.

    The anti-tank rifle which was PIRA's deadly swansong had not yet made it's appearance.

    This would have been between April and November 1985, but it was warm so sometime in the summer.

    Sorry for waffling but that was what was available to smugglers in your time-period and it was the Ruger that tripped the memory as the NI Team had several - old WWII M1 carbines and civilian sports rifles and stressed that the IRA liked them...easy to conceal as broken-down parts, short - for running in and out of the housing-estate ally-ways, and reliable.

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  2. Brilliant! Not waffle at all. Thanks for sharing!

    Cheers
    Mark

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  3. Yup, very interesting anecdote to top off a very interesting article. Although by my day (late 90's to mid 00's) we'd started to call them Landy's. At least in my part of the world. Would be interesting to know when this changed -and if it was a general change or just how we did things. Usually its military slang being adopted by civilians rather than the other way around.

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  4. Well...you know what they say about old soldiers and their stories...The Royal Regiment of When'eyes...When I was in Kenya, when I was in Berlin, when I was in the sass!

    Now - of course - they all have real stories to tell...

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  5. Lead - you were commenting while I was writing! I was Glosters so maybe it's a West Country thing? But my father's generation called them lannies as well...Landie is almost as clumsy off the tongue as Landrover! Maybe all these LRO's sons have taken the long-form into the military!!

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  6. Could very well be. There's an awful lot of ex-military Land Rovers in civilian hands after all. Wouldn't mind one myself.

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  7. Mark

    Could you please provide the link to the document for the Surrey Constabulary. Sounds like it might be an interesting read.

    Cheers,

    Joe

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  8. There you go Joe

    http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/history-from-police-archives/RB1/Pt4/pt4FirearmsSupTeam.html

    Cheers
    Mark

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