In the Days of Natasha: A Day Spent At Copenhagen Police Facilities

This Wednesday I had another field study with my Danish Politics and Society class. Not one to ever let us down, my professor Jacob took us to the headquarters of Denmark’s police equivalent of SWAT.

Walking up to this locked down facility where armored trucks sat outside, I knew that this was going to be an interesting experience. And the next several hours fully lived up to my expectations.

As soon as we arrived, we were briefed on procedures surrounding things such as anarchist groups, drug busts in Christiania, and football (soccer) hooligans. It says a lot for the safety of the area when the biggest map found in the briefing room is of Parken the football stadium, and the immediate area. Since I really have an interest in Danish society I thought it was really nice to learn all about their usual procedures and what they do for special events, such as the climate summit that was here in 2009.

The Commander who was touring us around then took us to the equipment area, where we got the opportunity to look at the various pieces of equipment the police have available to them. I thought it was interesting that the majority of equipment utilized by this group is defensive in nature. It is unfortunate but true that usually on occasions that these officers are utilized more of the officers get injured than participants in the occurrence.

After lifting the woman’s vest, trying to pick up the riot shield and looking at all the other equipment each officer would have on their person, I can confidently conclude that I would never be a member of this team as I would not be able to move. With the equipment weighing more than I do, it would be quite comical for me to be placed as a riot officer outside of Parken during the Brønby FCK game. I assume that is why all the people I saw working at this facility are a lot taller than I and incredibly fit. Needless to say, I have a new appreciation for riot police and their struggle to move quickly to counteract malicious doings of others.

The grand finale of our tour was a demonstration put on by some police officers being trained on how to function on occasions where all the gear is necessary. As we were watching from above, you could tell that the demonstration would be action packed when the ‘suspect’ (also a police officer) was sitting with a baseball bat laying across his knee.

Sure enough it was action packed. The bat ended up in two pieces, and the ‘suspect’ got foam strayed in his face just as he was tackled by the police officers.