Mayberry revisited: a review of the influence of police paramilitary units on policing

Abstract

In the mid-1990s, two separate surveys of the Police Paramilitary Units (PPUs) were undertaken, which have been used to assert that police are becoming militarised. The assertion is based on the survey's findings that the number of PPUs had increased between 1980 and 1995 in cities with populations between 25,000 and 50,000, and cities with populations of more than 50,000. The survey authors' claim, from their limited analysis of the survey findings, that the increase in number of PPUs or in the increase in the number of their deployments is not a result of the increase in criminal offending nor is it because policing has entered a new era. This paper refutes the proposition that policing has become or has increased in militarisation and analyses the original survey findings and subsequent literature in a wider context, which includes the argument of the professionalisation or the evolution of policing.

Keywords:

• paramilitary
• SWAT Units
• militarisation
• police

Notes

1. The expression Five-Eyes is from the international intelligence sharing arrangement between the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These countries are referred to as the ‘Five-Eye Partners’.

2. The USA has 88.8 firearms per 100 residents, Canada 30 per 100 residents, New Zealand 22 per 100 residents and Australia 15 per 100 residents (Small Arms Survey 2011).

3. Determinism is the general philosophy thesis that states that for everything that happens there are conditions such that, given the environment, nothing else could happen.