4. ‘As Well Armed as the Criminal’: The Armed Tradition

Contrasting with the doctrine of minimum force policing is the armed tradition of policing, which is explored in this chapter. In the Anglophone world, the armed tradition has two major streams. One derives from the centralised, mounted constabulary model widely used in the British Empire in colonial times. The other emerged from the community-based and less-disciplined policing services of the United States. In recent years the influence of the American armed tradition has become more widespread, a trend often referred to as militarisation. We use an Australian police organisation as a case study in how militarisation has led to changes in the uniforms and equipment of operational police. We also use American professional policing journals to interrogate the assumptions which underpin the armed tradition, particularly that police require powerful firearms, both to protect the community and to be safe themselves. We find a paucity of both coherent theory and real-world evidence to support these assumptions. We conclude that, as is true of the minimum force doctrine, the armed tradition of policing needs to be tested against evidence.