Talk:Police Rapid Response Unit (Finland)

Untitled

I would dispute what's said about Karhu's legal ability to request military weapon systems to their disposal. AFAIK they can't e.g. call in F-18's to perform an air strike, or call in tanks. So the 'any' part in that sentence is, to my knowledge, wrong and should corrected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.250.223.204 (talk) 08:34, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree with that. Nothing such is mentioned in the Finnish article. --82.141.93.150 (talk) 15:01, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Police can request support from military, that's for sure. For example when dealing with barricaded suspect, it seems to be pretty much standard procedure to call an army armored vehicle to back up the police. Considering that, I don't see any reason why they couldn't ask for guns too, though I don't know if they usually do that. I also recall that some time ago the law was about to be changed to give army more freedom to give assistance for the police, eg use heavy weapon systems in case of a terrorist attack. Khilon (talk) 01:14, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

This is actually covered in the Finnish article pretty well. The laws governing the use of military equipment are pretty strict, and actually the personnel in KARHU are not allowed to use military equipment. This equipment means basicly anything bigger than standard personal weaponry. All other equipment must be used by DEFENCE FORCE STAFF (not conscripts). Also, the use of these things requires ministry of interior to make a request of their use to defence ministry. But these are VERY VERY extreme cases, and the laws only exist as precaution. The usual case of requesting armored vehicles for protection rarely involves KARHU, and they are usually not used near shooting, but more as a backup (since the crews are conscripts and law forbids the use of conscripts in situations, where they might get shot or injured otherwise). --88.112.6.164 (talk) 10:52, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Only professional soldiers are used in missions like these, usually professional military police. Conscripts never drive or command armoured vehicles when used in police missions.--193.66.68.211 (talk) 15:54, 25 January 2013 (UTC

I can confirm that. It is always professional soldiers and mostly MP. I do these kinds of missions occasionally. I'm not MP, but an APC instructor (I train drivers, commanders and gunners, both in tech and tactics), but mostly it is MPs.--80.186.72.129 (talk) 18:46, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Name

This is kind of an unclear thing for me (see the Finnish version), but it seems that the correct spelling of the name of this arcticle is Karhu-ryhmä, not Karhuryhmä. Could somebody change the name?

Done. (The official spelling is indeed with a hyphen. [1]) Muad (talk) 08:09, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Someone had reverted to the old 2004 naming of the unit despite the internal notes to the contrary. The current name in Finnish is "erityistoimintayksikkö", which is translated to English as "Special Operations Unit" by Helsinki PD. The article refers to the 2004 Poliisit magazine article, which still uses the old name. Added a link to the current Helsinki PD page about Team Karhu. The 2004 link with the picture should remain since it has a nice picture to it. --88.112.231.120 (talk) 19:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)