A mobile field force (MFF), within the context of

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

law enforcement, is a large element of

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 specially organized to support

anti-riot Riot police are police who are organized, deployed, trained or equipped to confront crowds, protests or riots. Riot police may be regular police who act in the role of riot police in particular situations or they may be separate units organize ...

operations through the use of maneuver tactics aimed at dispersing crowds during their embryonic phase or extracting agitators and leaders from larger groups. The mobile field force concept was created by the Miami-Dade Police Department in the 1980s.

History

The mobile field force concept originated with the Miami-Dade Police Department in the 1980s. Use of the mobile field force concept gained popularity among police departments due to the realization that traditional riot control tactics involving large echelons of police recapturing entire streets from protesters only served to move the unrest from one area to the next. By contrast, the mobile field force is a smaller group of police which identifies agitators and leaders of the crowd and targets them for extraction from the main group, or confronts and disperses a crowd during its embryonic phase.

Role and organization

The mobile field force is either a dedicated group of law enforcement officers, or a group of law enforcement officers with non-MFF duties who can be rapidly mobilized into the mobile field force in anticipation of an exigent event. Its primary responsibility is to operate in support of an agency's regular police during periods of

civil unrest Civil disorder, also known as civil disturbance, civil unrest, or social unrest is a situation arising from a mass act of civil disobedience (such as a demonstration, riot, strike, or unlawful assembly) in which law enforcement has difficulty ...

by disrupting and dispersing crowds that are in the process of forming, or identifying and arresting leaders of crowds that have already formed. In addition, the mobile field force can be used for protection of large crime scenes,

saturation patrol A saturation patrol is a police or military patrol tactic wherein a large number of officers are concentrated into a small geographic area.

Territorial Support Group The Territorial Support Group (TSG) is a Met Operations unit of London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) which specialises in public order policing, amongst other specialist areas. In 2012 it consisted of 793 officers and 29 support staff. Th ...

Units for the Reinstatement of Order The Units for the Reinstatement of Order ( el, Μονάδες Αποκατάστασης Τάξης, ''Monades Apokatastasis Taksis'', MAT) are a special division of the Hellenic Police, whose primary and most famous role is that of riot control. ...

References

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External links

Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System (ILEAS) Mobile Field Force video
Law enforcement techniques Law enforcement in the United States