Highly Conspicuous Uniform: Most notably, the Watch Constabulary’s fluorescent/illuminated bright-yellow trim on their black-and-shiny-white armor, but that’s because – in their multiple roles as law enforcement, paramedics, and disaster-response crew – they’re supposed to stand out because when you need one, you want to be able to spot him easily.
Not quite played straight by the actual Imperial Legions and other military forces, but in many parts of them outside special operations, recon, and such, there is quite a bit of Bling of War going on; given how very, very difficult it is to hide the thermodynamic and in many cases neutrino signature of modern battlefield equipment, especially when that includes combat exoskeletons, a lot of forces trade in the de minimis increase in stealth passive camouflage gets you in exchange for looking properly gorgeous on the battlefield. The loss is rarely noticeable in the statistics.
I feel that the Constabulary would have exoskeletons available at the koban, though probably more the industrial type with significantly enhanced strength than the “carry the weight of armor and gear” levels of Legion combat armor.
For purposes of lifting fallen beams etc in mass-casualty disasters. So I think they’d have full internal atmospheric seal/reprocessing like Legion armor.
Firefighting is the other time you want a good sealed power-assisting suit. I say this as someone who has done volunteer firefighting: it’s hot, it’s hard to breathe sometimes, and the hoses are HEAVY. Running 200m while dragging a hose is legit one of the requirements on the physical test you do for it. I passed it as a teen, but there’s no way I could do so now with my myriad of health issues.
…come to think of it, I think our volunteer bush firefighting service is one of the ones that the Imperials would approve of. Ditto for our SES, the State Emergency Services, who are the ones you call when a tree falls on your house/your roof blows off etc etc. All the weather-related disasters where there is no longer an imminent risk to life (those are the firefighter’s remit) but the average soph isn’t expected to have the tools to handle the immediate crisis, like helping you get a tarpaulin over the gaping hole in your building that’s letting all the rain in.
Back in the original post, I did mention that there’re a couple of exceptions to the regular uniform: special tactical teams, and the Disaster Instant Response Teams (“since they have specialized outfits for their duties”).
The former make use of the N45e Réyneri scout armor, the N45se Sapper combat engineer/EOD armor, and the N45d Defender guardian armor, all variants of the common N45 Garrex which are differentiated from the military versions primarily by a default color scheme of bright constabular scarlet and appropriate unit markings.
The latter have, by way of those outfits, access to a variety of appropriate garb, including things like the EMA’s Bídalin Rescue Exosuit, the Quenchers’ refractory anti-fire armor, hazmat gear, second-level¹ paramedic chic (including those special medical-kit-in-a-PackVest™ rigs), quarantine suits, and all the assorted specific-to-the-disaster gear you might imagine.
They don’t forward-deploy any of these at regular Watch facilities, though. Regional DIRT facilities are designed to be able to drop² an appropriately configured response team at the emergency location within minutes, at most. If it’s a sufficiently big disaster to make it time to call in EMA, they can have an Emergency Operations Center, a disaster pod, and/or a FSH on site in not that much more time.
Every constable has first-level paramedical training.
When it comes to volunteering, actually, another thing may be worth mentioning. Both the Watch Constabulary and the Emergency Management Authority publish parapersonalities for download (“Constable Pursuivant” and “Zeroth Responder“, respectively) which can be run by anyone who wishes to donate time to public service. The parapersonalities come with appropriate ethics, skills, protocols, and experience.
There’s also the basic crisis management parapersonality that just about everyone has installed and sitting in background which is designed to activate when the shit hits the fan: it doesn’t come with all the above, just some basic crisis-relevant mnemonetics (“First Aid”, “Extinguishing Fires”, “Locating Emergency Shut-Offs”, “How Not To Make Things Worse”, that sort of thing), but does come with optimal crisis-handling motivation, moods biased towards practical optimism, and a psychology capable of setting aside anger, fear, or grief unhelpful in the current situation until things are stabilized.
So when the shit hits the fan, the Constabulary and the EMA have the luxury of a population that can be relied on to keep it together and behave sensibly, and plenty of volunteers who can be deputized and who, while admittedly unpracticed, will at least be familiar with the kit you may issue them out of the disaster pod and know how to use it properly.