On our previous post, we discussed the militarization of the police. So I tried to find picture of different types of police around the world just for fun. My results are below. Finding good pictures isn't as easy as you think. And I am hopefully respecting all copyrights by posting links to their original sources (you also uncover wack job sites as a result of such searches).
In general, it seems that the major law enforcement agencies in Europe and Canada have a military component that is usually tied to the army. Also, looking at the pictures, it appears that many police forces are more armed than they used to be, or than I remember them being when I saw them in person back in the 1990s. Riot police, no matter where they are from, are the most intimidating with street patrol people the least frightening.
I dug up some photos of Danish and French riot police who are as scary looking as our own. I also noticed that regionally, police seem to dress alike. So Swedish police and Norwegian police seemed similar from their photos.
In bigger cities the police always seem more protected than those in smaller towns. So in some way, my casual, unscientific study seems to show that as the "dangers" multiply, so does the militarization of the once civilian forces. It is an unfortunate evolution. See below.
Here is a picture from Prison Planet of U.S. police in Florida. These guys look like crowd control. These are our riot police.
Here is the average foot patrolman from San Francisco. I found this at ZPub . 
Now, let's compare this to what we see other places.
Here is Florence, Italy from Wikipedia:
Here are the French CRS police taken from Rantings of an Okiesite. He was making fun of how many police it took to round up the terrorist on the bike.
And here is their really scary street patrolman (he's having a challenging day)from Street Style and the really intimidating French police cars from Wikipedia.
United Kingdom: From Reform
Here is a nice Danish sample.
And finally the Germans. They get to drive in style with Mercedes. They are changing their uniforms from puke yellow and green to blue in order to comply with EU standards.
This was taken from the Baden Wuerttemberg Police Site which has other pics and info if you are interested.
And here is a Norwegian Policeman from Kjetil Ree at Wikicommons
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Law Enforcement Around the World
Posted by USWest at 12:05 AM
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2 comments:
Thanks for the pics, US West. I love the little compact cars that European cops (except for the Geramns) drive. Of course who can blame the German police for driving a Benz?
Of course it wasn't a scientific study but the US police do ramp up the body armor and automatic weapons at the drop of a hat. Body armor and automatic carbines for riot control???? What are the planning on doing when the crowd gets out of hand? Spraying the crowd with automatic weapons fire?
The Christian Conservatives (Christian nationalists would be a better description) are right about one thing at least. We're in the middle of a culture war. This country (and the world) can't afford for the American center-left to lose it.
I am glad you like the pictures. It gets addictive to find them. I was curious about Swizterland. Here is the Google image search. (warning: the first picture is a but gross as it is of an injury that resulted from Swiss police cutting a climbing rope of a protester). Even a neutral, peaceful country like Switzerland seems to have scary police. In fact, their riot police are even more frightening than ours. Look at the photos. They look like Darth Vader's storm troopers (Only they carry a quaint shield made of basket reed). I clicked into some of the source pages and discovered that Swiss police have been slammed for years by Amnesty International for their brutality with protesters. So while I am not pleased with American police, it seems we aren't the worst. It speaks to the fear of that police have of the people. And very often, the police getting nervous and cause the problem by intervening too soon and too aggressively. Also, I think police officers all need a donut ban. I noticed that in many pictures, they were less than svelte looking.
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