How effective are police as infantry?

I don't mean military police, but actual normal police units. They've been used that way a lot in recent wars
>Ukrainian police defended Kiev
>Afghan police did a lot of the fighting against the Taliban
>Balakliya held out for a while due to a SWAT team

But are they actually effective or are they basically just cannon fodder?

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    About as effective as line cooks as infantry.
    They're a militia, they're not much more elite than the average joe with a gun.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >About as effective as line cooks as infantry.
      Aren't they sort of effective though? Cooks were often used that way in Afghanistan

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Yeah, cops would be worse than line cooks. I remember that former army reservist that killed 5 cops and injured 9 others in a shootout in Dallas. The gulf in shooting ability and composure was totally apparent and he was apparently a crappy reservist. He only got killed when the cops sent in a robot with a bomb strapped to it when they surrounded him.

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    They suck. Policemen LOVE to LARP as military though guys and have military toys, but are much more likely to shot you in the face than your typical idiotic grunt in a COIN operation.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Sounds like they're better at COIN than grunts are then

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    At the risk of being labeled an anarkiddy, the police are literally just a legal way to use armed forces against the people. They may not get exactly the same training but in terms of just straight up organized firepower it's pretty much the same thing.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      literally nothing wrong with being an anarchist.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      You're right though.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      On the other hand, cops can't even use APCs with weapons mounted and not get shit for it in the USA. Every time some moron claims there's a police "tank" it turns out to be a Bearcat.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Cops are all white men subverting the interests of white men. Blows my mind people are fine with this.

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Being a cop and being an infantryman doesn't carry over as easily
    Which is why cops like recruiting former MPs rather than infantryman,and why infantryman dislike MPs, since they work differently and get arrested by the former but do heavy grunt work sweating in the fields living in dirt sand and mud with heavy fricking bags and SI while staying tactful and conducting operations in an AO
    Cops don't shoot for distance as much as Infantryman do nor do they practice Battle Drill 6 although they do their own room clearing tacsops

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Police and military train for completely different scenario.

      >Cops don't shoot for distance as much as Infantryman
      This in particular. The longest confirmed police sniper shot was taken at just 187 yards and the average shot just 51 yards, meanwhile pic related is what infantry can expect for engagement distances.
      https://www.policemag.com/339408/swat-snipers

      I really wish people would stop insisting that military combat is anything like the situations you might encounter in civilian life, even if society went to shit.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        First, depends what kind of police you are looking at and then what their role would be. Then you would have to look at different countries. Not all tiers of police forces are comparable globally. Overall they are obviously not nearly as capable at doing infantry things as infantry. Because that is not their job.

        Anon, its about playing soldier boy dress up and being the hero of GWOT. It has nothing to do with reality. Same for the idea that hardly trained irregulars without heavy weapons have any chance of winning sustained combat even against a militarized police force.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        I don't get how that y axis works. @ 0M, 0% targets engaged and at 600M, 100% targets engaged.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          It's supposed to be cumulative. Between 0 and X, they engaged Y% of targets.

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Have a couple of NG Infantry guys who are cops in their main career; and they'll be the first to tell you that police department's abilities vary wildly.

    Sheriff's department near me competes in the annual SWAT contest in FL, and are mostly good people; the municipality police are quota hire ridden and mega ass.

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Policing is 90% talking to drunk people and paperwork.

    Military is about shooting people.

    So a police department is only going to be marginally more effective as a military force than drunk people off of the street. Of course, it's a different story for gendarmes and other military police.

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    most po po are ex vets so there's that

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Their SWAT can be used for specialized operations much like what happened in kyiv. Regular units can be used in combat, but they are no as efficient as regular infantry. Because thats not what they are trained for. SWAT can act as a psuedo special forces group since.

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    During our independence war (which funnily enough also started as special military maneuvers) border control police had to bear a lot of the fighting as they were the only organised pseudo-military force we had along the fledgling Territorial Defence forces. Their record in defending border crossings was extremely mixed, with most yielding to the Yugoslav army armoured columns after protracted talks.
    Basically even if they were well trained all they had was small arms, and maybe a squad support weapon if they were lucky, that sort of force couldn't engage an actual army with all of its equipment in a conventional fight.
    Still a lot of local commanders were excellent at keeping their cool in the face of Yugoslav intimidation tactics which allowed them to drag the talks for as long as possible, buying precious time for the newly independent government to organize a successful defence of the country.

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Depends of the police branch really.
    as an example, the GIGN and the BRI in France could do pretty good.

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    CADIA STANDS

  12. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Former Soviet countries tend to have at least a couple units of elite psuedo-SWAT that are often times better equipped than line infantry. They are likely to have real body armor, flashlights and above all trigger time with their weapons. I doubt those guys could handle actual special forces troops but if they are matched against a conscript who fired 5 shots from his rifle in training and no fighting spirit they could probably mop up them up. Especially if it is urban warfare and close quarters engagements a SWAT equivalent is going to be more better prepared than someone who has little or no training at all for that kind of fighting. Some of the deadliest units in the Yugoslav wars were former counter-terrorism or special police that were doing exactly that.

    One advantage a police force has is knowledge of local terrain and especially moving around in ways that a road atlas will not show you. A cop who has done foot patrols in the same area for a couple years will know which alleys lead where, which streets a extremely dark at night, the front and back entrance of a few buildings or which ones interconnect, etc etc. In this context even an ambush using service pistols and whatever long guns are available to the police would be devastating, especially since the vast majority of Russians are not armored.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      I'll assume you're American, so there's something that you guys might not know.

      In many countries all over the world, they don't ascribe to your view of police forces being mostly organized in the local level while nationwide law enforcement is handled by a tiny federal bureau of agents cooperating with local law enforcement (the FBI).

      What many countries in the world have instead of a meme FBI/NBI is a Gendarmerie. These are basically militarized police forces organized at the national level similar to an army and trained as a paramilitary police force. Their duties, to put it in Mutt terms, is to be the FBI/National Guard/SWAT all rolled into one. They deal with crimes from a national jurisdiction level, handle internal security in the event of a domestic crisis, handle counterror operations, and minor armed operations that would be the equivalent of SWAT operatons in the US. They're basically the police whom the beat cops call when they can't handle a particular crime or it goes beyond the municipal/local level jursidiction.

      Depending on the country, the Gendarmerie could be a civilian paramilitary organization country answer to civil authorities. In some European countries, they are even bigger than the ground forces (like in the Netherlands IIRC). In some countries the Gendarmerie are part of the military as reserves & auxiliaries. This is China's case, which has the largest Gendarmerie on the planet (the People's Armed Police) and answers to the PLA.

      So how effective are police as infantry? Your average hick sherrif or municipal pd? No. A Gendarmerie? Yes. In both of your examples, both countries run Gendarmerie forces.

      Pic related, where I'm from (the Philippines) the police- both the regular mobile patrol groups and the Special Action Force- regularly participate in alongside the military in operations vs. assorted rebels.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        American here with frog family, so I’m one of the few familiar with Gendarmerie. In France, while their main function is rural policing, they are trained in infantry tactics. We don’t have a gendarmerie system in the US because it’s against our constitution. Granted, a significant portion of US law enforcement officers are GWOT veterans, but having leo’s with combat experience is going to significantly drop over the next 10-15 years. It’s also pretty irrelevant as there is basically no chance of the US being invaded. A more likely scenario where they would end up being used in such a role would be a domestic issue like civil war. We will likely have another ape out like 2020 if the republicans somehow sweep the midterms. If Biden loses in 24, there will certainly be mass scale ape outs regularly for the following 4 years.

  13. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >How effective are police as infantry?
    Ask the kids in the Texas school shooting.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Oof and Uvalde-Cops-Are-Pussies pilled

  14. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    not very

  15. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Police in most parts of the world are considered to be gendarmerie which answer to a ministry of defense, internal security, or some such, assuming civilian duties in peacetime and military ones in wartime. These kinds of police forces, like Rosguardia, Ukrainian police, French Gendarmerie, etc are trained to a military standard and have access to military equipment.
    Entirely civilian police, ala LAPD, NYPD, etc don't have these benefits - Their access to armored vehicles consists of cruisers with IIIa ballistic panels in the doors (Useless in combat) and a handful of Bearcats (Mobility killed by the first bullet to the tire), they don't have any logistical infrastructure, they don't have any meaningful casualty management. Communications are done on unencrypted radios, officers are used to working as two man partners - They don't typically work as a squad under the direct lead of their sergeant, and when they have, they've never done it for small unit tactics beyond lining up with riot shields and batons.
    Specialized units like SWAT teams have a handle on small unit tactics, especially CQB, but all the cool high speed shit they can do is limited by the fact that they're reliant on support from the rest of the department to do it - Can't rappel if your civilian helicopters can't fly.
    Individual officers probably have access to hard armor, helmets, hopefully a patrol rifle and a few magazines, and have enough training to use them effectively. Ultimately, civilian police probably amount to about the best defensive militia you can get, in the sense that they're somewhat paramilitary organized, are equipped, and know how to use their equipment - but unless they get a crash course in small unit tactics, reorganized into fireteams, squads, and platoons, and handed some key military equipment like encrypted radios, they're not even close to infantry.

  16. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    i mean they are pretty good 'doing-jack-shit-half-of-the-time' and doing nothing is already half of the job of a soldier

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      supposedly this guy was texting his wife who was one of the teachers or something and this happened to be open on his phone or something like that

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        What about the gay who went and got hand sanitizer?

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          idk

  17. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    supposedly russia used some siberian swat team on the frontlines there was an article about it a few days ago

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