Norwegian police training in the use of force: A preparation for facing the realities of street challenges?

The Norwegian police have a tradition for reticent use of force. Norway is one of the very few countries in the world with unarmed police on daily duty. The aim of this paper is to study the degree to which the Norwegian Police University College (NPUC), and the police districts, training in the use of force reflects the need for reliable handling of the various weapons at the disposal of the police officers and how experiences on the use of force gained by police officers in their daily duty is made available for police training. However, there is no national strategy on collection, dissemination, interpretation and integration of experiences from the streets of Norway. Even though experienced police officers lecture and supervise students and fellow police officers, the lack of systematic collection of experiences hampers the quality of the training, especially at the NPUC, but also in the police districts.