The Aviation Policing Command (APC) now renamed as Aviation Security Operational Unit (SO18) is a

Specialist Operations The Specialist Operations directorate is a unit of the Metropolitan Police of London, UK responsible for providing specialist policing capabilities including national security and counter-terrorism operations. The Specialist Operations Directorate ...

unit of

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

Metropolitan Police Service The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), formerly and still commonly known as the Metropolitan Police (and informally as the Met Police, the Met, Scotland Yard, or the Yard), is the territorial police force responsible for law enforcement and ...

. The unit is responsible for providing

policing The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and t ...

and security for both

Heathrow Heathrow Airport (), called ''London Airport'' until 1966 and now known as London Heathrow , is a major international airport in London, England. It is the largest of the six international airports in the London airport system (the others bei ...

and London City

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surfa ...

s.Metropolitan Police
/ref> London's other airports,

Gatwick Gatwick Airport (), also known as London Gatwick , is a major international airport near Crawley, West Sussex, England, south of Central London. In 2021, Gatwick was the third-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the UK, after H ...

Stansted London Stansted Airport is a tertiary international airport serving London, England, United Kingdom. It is located near Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex, England, northeast of Central London. London Stansted serves over 160 destinations acro ...

and

Luton Luton () is a town and unitary authority with borough status, in Bedfordshire, England. At the 2011 census, the Luton built-up area subdivision had a population of 211,228 and its built-up area, including the adjacent towns of Dunstable an ...

are policed by

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the Englis ...

Essex Essex () is a Ceremonial counties of England, county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the Riv ...

, and

Bedfordshire Police Bedfordshire Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing the ceremonial county of Bedfordshire in England, which includes the unitary authorities of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Luton. Its headquarters are in Kempston, Be ...

respectively, as they are not located in the

Metropolitan Police District The Metropolitan Police District (MPD) is the police area which is policed by the Metropolitan Police Service in London. It currently consists of the Greater London region, excluding the City of London. The Metropolitan Police District was creat ...

History

Policing at Heathrow was initially undertaken by the

Civil Aviation Authority A civil aviation authority (CAA) is a national or supranational statutory authority that oversees the regulation of civil aviation, including the maintenance of an aircraft register. Role Due to the inherent dangers in the use of flight vehicles, ...

. In 1965, the responsibility was taken over by the British Airports Authority Constabulary, which subsequently passed to the Metropolitan Police on 1 November 1974 as a consequence of the Policing of Airports Act 1974. Policing of

London City Airport London City Airport is a regional airport in London, England. It is located in the Royal Docks in the Borough of Newham, approximately east of the City of London and east of Canary Wharf. These are the twin centres of London's financial ...

has always been undertaken by the Metropolitan Police, with Aviation Security acquiring the remit from local officers during 2004.

Policing today

The unit employs around 400

police officer A police officer (also called a policeman and, less commonly, a policewoman) is a warranted law employee of a police force. In most countries, "police officer" is a generic term not specifying a particular rank. In some, the use of the ...

s, the vast majority being trained Firearms Officers. Along with carrying out routine policing, Aviation Security must always guard against

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

and be ready to respond to an aircraft emergency.

Human trafficking Human trafficking is the trade of humans for the purpose of forced labour, sexual slavery, or commercial sexual exploitation for the trafficker or others. This may encompass providing a spouse in the context of forced marriage, or the extr ...

is another area policed, with close working relationships existing with the United Kingdom Border Force and

UK Visas and Immigration UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) is a division of the Home Office responsible for the United Kingdom's visa system. It was formed in 2013 from the section of the UK Border Agency that had administered the visa system. History The then Home Secre ...

. Traffic wardens and

Police Community Support Officer A police community support officer (PCSO; cy, swyddog cymorth cymunedol yr heddlu, SCCH), or as written in legislation community support officer (CSO; cy, swyddog cymorth cymunedol, SCC) is a uniformed member of police staff in England and Wal ...

s work at both airports. In 2005 the

Metropolitan Police Commissioner The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is the head of London's Metropolitan Police Service. Sir Mark Rowley was appointed to the post on 8 July 2022 after Dame Cressida Dick announced her resignation in February. The rank of Commission ...

, Sir Ian Blair, announced that Specialist Operations units were to be re-aligned. The plans included forming three new departments within Specialist Operations to carry out specific functions: # Protecting People, (Splitting the functions of both

SO14 The Protection Command is one of the commands within the Specialist Operations directorate of London's Metropolitan Police Service. The command specialises in protective security and has two branches: Royalty and Specialist Protection (RaSP), p ...

& SO16 and merging them with parts of

SO17 Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection (PaDP) is a branch of Protection Command within the Specialist Operations directorate of London's Metropolitan Police Service. Duties A unit of the Metropolitan Police Service, PaDP is responsible for p ...

, SO18 and

SO12 Special Branch was a unit in the Metropolitan Police in London, formed as a counter-terrorism unit in 1883 and merged with another unit to form Counter Terrorism Command (SO15) in 2006. It maintained contact with the Security Service and had re ...

) # Protecting Places, (Splitting the functions of both

& SO16 and merging them with parts of

and SO18) # Counter Terrorism Command (Merging

& SO13 together) Firearms commonly used for armed airport policing duties: *

Heckler & Koch MP5 The Heckler & Koch MP5 (german: Maschinenpistole 5) is a 9x19mm Parabellum submachine gun, developed in the 1960s by a team of engineers from the German small arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch. There are over 100 variants and clones of the MP5, ...

A3 (Semi-Automatic Carbine) *

Heckler & Koch G36 The Heckler & Koch G36 (Gewehr 36) is a 5.56×45mm assault rifle designed in the early 1990s by German weapons manufacturer Heckler & Koch as a replacement for the heavier 7.62×51mm G3 battle rifle. It was accepted into service with the ''Bu ...

C (Semi-Automatic Carbine) *

SIG Sauer Several brother companies that design and manufacture firearms use the brand name SIG Sauer . The original company, ''Schweizerische Waggon-Fabrik'' (SWF), later ''Schweizerische Industrie-Gesellschaft'' (SIG), went through several selloffs, ...

519 *

Glock 17 Glock is a brand of polymer- framed, short recoil-operated, locked-breech semi-automatic pistols designed and produced by Austrian manufacturer Glock Ges.m.b.H. The firearm entered Austrian military and police service by 1982 after it was th ...

(Pistol) * X2

Taser A taser is an electroshock weapon used to incapacitate people, allowing them to be approached and handled in an unresisting and thus safe manner. It is sold by Axon, formerly TASER International. It fires two small barbed darts intended t ...

Armed Response Airport Vehicles patrol the entry and exit points to the main terminal buildings, the perimeter roads and respond to firearms calls in local boroughs. There are also armed foot patrols inside.

Aviation and Roads Policing Unit (Traffic Unit)

One of the key operational units within SO18 is the Aviation and

Road Policing Unit A roads policing unit (RPU), or a similarly named unit in some forces, is the specialist road traffic police unit of a British police force. Responsibilities RPUs work with the National Police Chiefs' Council roads policing strategy, ''Policing ...

. The unit is manned by a small group of traffic officers, trained in Road Collision Investigation, Traffic Law Enforcement are experienced in dealing with collisions and incidents involving vehicles around the airport. They also work alongside the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) of the

Department for Transport The Department for Transport (DfT) is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that have not been devolved. The ...

where a vehicle may have been involved in an aircraft collision. The officers can be distinguished from their armed colleagues as they wear white caps, high visibility jackets and drive conventionally motorway marked battenburg liveried vehicles and are unarmed. They can be regularly seen on the strategic motorway network surrounding the airport, the perimeter roads and also on the terminal forecourts where, along with enforcing the road traffic regulations and assisting the free flow of vehicles, they undertake a highly visible public reassurance counter-terrorism role. This small group of highly specialised officers have led the implementation of new legislation, the Railway & Transport Safety Act to regulate drink flying offences in the UK. Seen as being particularly controversial, information about a suspected offence is normally received from either the airline or airport security personnel. Having informed police, there is a requirement that such allegations are investigated which is undertaken by these officers. Utilising special breath test devices, officers screen crews accused of having consumed alcohol to prove or disprove the allegation. These rules relate not only to pilots, air traffic controllers, cabin crews but also to ground engineers. Penalties imposed by Courts are particularly severe although the majority of individuals who have been convicted have been foreign members of crew working for foreign carriers.

References

External links

SO18 Homepage
{{Metropolitan Police Metropolitan Police units

History

Policing today

Aviation and Roads Policing Unit (Traffic Unit)

See also

References

External links