Reply #1: Holy Shit!

[Pert_UK]

You mean that gun crime in London is so bad that we may have to increase our armed police to the level of.........

A whole ONE CAR per borough?!?!?

Unbelievable! Roughly 23 permanently armed patrol cars for a city of over 7 million people!

And maybe even "some" of the detectives assigned to combat armed crime "may also" be issued with firearms!

It's like living in Baghdad out there! I'm off to hide under my bed!

For the unaware, ARVs are basically very quick Police Patrol cars with 3 highly trained firearms officers in them. As far as I am aware, they patrol like any other police car but can also be called upon for a quick response to any crime where firearms may be involved and an armed police response is necessary. In addition to ARVs, there are specialist firearms units who can be called upon.

"If an armed containment is deemed necessary to isolate an armed suspect from the public, then two of the crew will deploy leaving one to control the incident, calling for further armed support and liasing with the local senior police officer. All these officers are personally armed with 'Glock' 17 self-loading pistols and two of the officers have access to 'Heckler and Koch' MP5 carbines as shown here."

See here:

http://www.met.police.uk/so19/arv.htm

P.