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This article is about buses used by police. For purpose-built inmate coaches, see Prisoner transport vehicle. For vans used by police, see Police van.

Irisbus Agora in the livery of the French National Police

A police bus is a bus, minibus or coach used by a police force and not as public transport. Vehicles of the type are usually identifiable by police livery and emergency vehicle equipment. Independent coverage documents several recurring roles: moving large numbers of officers to public-order deployments, parking buses as barriers at demonstrations, testing drivers for alcohol and drugs at the roadside, serving as a temporary police station and carrying detainees or prisoners.

Public-order deployment

Buses of the South Korean National Police Agency parked as a barrier during protests in Seoul over the arrest of Yoon Suk Yeol

Police services use buses to put large numbers of officers at events and demonstrations. In South Korea that fleet is also used as a physical barrier. On October 3, 2020, the national police parked about 300 buses end to end around Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul, with more than 10,000 officers on the ground, to stop planned anti-government rallies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Diplomat and The Korea Herald described the tactic as a "police bus wall" or "wall of buses." Police called the 2020 deployment an "inevitable choice" to limit the spread of the virus. Critics called it an attack on the right of assembly.

The tactic is older than the pandemic. The Diplomat wrote that police bus walls were used at the same square in 2011 and on later occasions. In 2011 the Constitutional Court of Korea held that surrounding the public square in front of Seoul City Hall with police buses after the death of former president Roh Moo-hyun was unconstitutional, because it was not the minimum action needed and other measures could have been used against illegal rallies. The Seoul High Court later held, in a case arising from mass rallies in November 2015, that police had no option other than police buses to avert crimes by rally participants. As an opposition leader in 2015, Moon Jae-in called the barriers "anti-constitutional police bus walls." His government used the same method in 2020.

Buses used as barriers are not always police-owned. In Toronto, decommissioned Toronto Transit Commission buses have been parked as barricades at large public events at the request of the Toronto Police Service, including Remembrance Day services in 2018 and earlier deployments at Pride and Canada Day after vehicle-ramming attacks in Europe.

Alcohol and drug testing

Western Australia Police Force "booze bus" used for roadside alcohol and drug testing

In Australia and New Zealand a police coach fitted as a roadside testing station is commonly called a booze bus. Officers stop drivers at a highly visible checkpoint, take preliminary breath tests and, when a driver is over the limit, complete evidential testing and paperwork on the bus instead of taking every case to a station.

Victoria Police operates a purpose-built alcohol and drug testing fleet. In 2018 it began replacing older vehicles with ten new buses built in Ballarat, with LED floodlighting, one-step entry and a flat floor so the buses could be set up and moved more easily. Victoria's auditor-general later wrote that these large testing vehicles, "more commonly known as booze and drug buses," give a large and highly visible police presence that may discourage offending, while car-based testing detects a higher share of drug drivers.

The Western Australia Police Force has used large booze buses on major roads and smaller vehicles for back streets and regional roads. In 2019 the state signed off on two more compact booze and drug-testing buses, following similar moves in Victoria and New South Wales, because the four large buses usually had to sit on bigger roads.

New Zealand Police likewise use booze buses for high-volume compulsory breath-testing. A 2013 performance audit by the controller and auditor-general found that the buses were parked in view of approaching traffic, lit and signed as drunk-driving checkpoints and fitted so officers could complete evidential breath or blood-alcohol tests on board. Processing each driver who was over the legal limit still took about 45 to 60 minutes.

Mobile police stations

Some forces convert minibuses or coaches into a temporary police station. In Japan a vehicle of that kind is called an idō kōban-sha (移動交番車), a mobile kōban. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, prefectural police set up mobile police boxes that toured evacuation shelters, took lost-property and damage reports and handled requests from victims. Japanese motoring press has described Chiba Prefecture's police as running one of the largest such fleets, including both vans and minibuses fitted with desks and chairs so officers can take reports and talk with residents where they park.

Detainee and prisoner transport

Police buses are also used to hold and move people taken from demonstrations. During the 2020 protests in Hong Kong, news photographs and reporting showed detainees inside police buses after arrests, including people put on a bus after being taken from a shopping street. In Paris in 2019, France's rights ombudsman described police using a coach to take 43 people from a demonstration to a police station for identity checks.

Purpose-built inmate coaches overlap with this role but are usually a corrections asset rather than a city patrol vehicle. Trade coverage of Motor Coach Industries' Inmate Security Transportation Vehicle, based on the company's D-Series coach, describes a factory-built "prison on wheels" with cells, window bars, a rear officer position and seating for up to 69 inmates. The Federal Bureau of Prisons is the largest customer. Sheriff's offices and state corrections departments also operate the type. Some agencies adopted it after converted school buses proved expensive to maintain. The broader class is covered at prisoner transport vehicle.

Gallery

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  Bus used by the New York City Police Department
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  Bus used by the Police of Russia
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  Bus used by a tactical unit of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau
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  Minibus used by Chiba Prefecture police as a mobile kōban
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  Bus used by the municipal police of Prague

See also

• Police vehicle
• Police van
• Ambulance bus
• Armoured bus
• Police armored vehicle
• Prison bus
• Prisoner transport vehicle
• Random checkpoint
• Mobile command center
• Riot control
• List of buses