If you've read my previous blog entries about armed policing, then you may recall that the Tactical Firearms Commander (TFC) makes the decision to deploy armed police, and comes up with a plan; then the Operational Firearms Commander (OFC) is responsible for putting the plan into effect on the ground.
To help both commanders develop and deploy a plan, they make use of one or more pre-defined tactics, which outline how the armed police officers should approach and deal with any threat. Armed officers practice these tactics over and over, and use them every time they are deployed.
There are tactics for dealing with people on foot, vehicles and their passengers, and buildings, and for each scenario there are different levels of tactic, depending on the perceived risk. So an enquiry can be low-level, routine policing (albeit with armed officers), or it can be deliberately aggressive and dominating where the threat from the people involved is high risk.
The choice of tactics is continually reviewed as information changes, to ensure they’re the most appropriate, proportionate and effective for the particular situation. All police officers, in any situation, make use of the National Decision Model, a way of considering information and intelligence, defining options, and coming up with a plan. The NDM is very important in particular in armed policing, and forms the basis of training, briefing and the audit trail for any subsequent investigation or enquiry.
Usually any change in tactics will be discussed between the TFC and their tactical advisor, and then communicated to the OFC so that they can change their plan on the ground.
Sometimes, things move so fast that there isn’t time for a commander to communicate a change of tactics, so they may have to be changed on the fly as the situation unfolds - this is where the OFC earns their money and their training and experience really pays off.
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