Police car with a tow bar?

[Jakg]

Saw a marked BMW 5-series traffic police car today with a tow bar.

Any idea what on earth it would be used for? There are much more suitable cars (vans and X5's) on the fleet for towing surely?

I always thought you could use a tow bar to ensure a car wasn't unmarked police, obviously not...

[Terzo123]

I would imagine the tow bar is used to tow stuff. HTH

[unsprung]

a) public outreach work and they towed a trailer that folds into a kiosk or display

b) for moving about a transient rig with speed camera

c) smoked barbecue trailer

[berlintaxi]

More time on patrol, less parked up.

[Darkslider]

It'd be dead handy for towing a broken down vehicle to a place of safety. Got to be preferable to leaving a carriageway shut for half hour while waiting for recovery to move a car 100 yards to the next slip road for example?

[SVTRick]

Till they smash their shins on it.
Then will be removed and only clipped in when required

[TheRainMaker]

Do they still use chalk guns? Could be for that if they do.

[Landshark]

All Surrey marked 5 series have tow bars. They are used to, well, tow!
Broken downs, crashed vehicles and stolen trailers/caravans. One was used once to strap to a car that was on the edge of the river Thames to stop it going in.

Yes the disco or one of the X5’s maybe better, but they might not be about. The disco is used if it an HGV. The X5 tow bars can fold away.

[revvingit]

Moving vehicles out of live running lanes if the police get there before Highways England and the route is extremely busy.

[loskie]

so they can do touch parking without damaging their bumpers.

[Greendubber]

As said, towing stuff

We tow our boats as well as other bits and bobs such as incident trailers etc.