The Bavarian State Police is the state police force of the German state of Bavaria. It has approximately 33,500 armed officers and roughly 8,500 other civilian employees.
Organization
The 10 regional police authorities in Bavaria are:
Bavaria reorganised its police structure between 2005 and 2008 to reduce bureaucracy, changing from a four-tier hierarchy to three levels. The seven Polizeipräsidien in Würzburg, Bayreuth, Regensburg, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Munich and Oberbayern gave way to the 10 new areas and the Polizeidirektionen disappeared. The reorganisation required the rewiring of all police radio and emergency notification networks which are not located only at each regional police authority.
State Police Units
Auxiliary State Police
Citizens in Bavaria have been participating in public safety since 1994. This commitment to civic action is seen in the Sicherheitswachtauxiliary state police program, where approx. 800 citizens in 125 Bavarian towns voluntarily assist their local police.
Bavaria has different special units, which are the
two Spezialeinsatzkommandos , one is stationed in Nuremberg for use in the north of the state and one is attached to the Munich Police Department to cover the south of Bavaria. The SEK of South Bavaria has a mountain detachment for operations in the Alps.
three Mobile Einsatzkommandos , one of which is attached to the SEK based in Nuremberg and the other two to the Munich SEK,
two Technische Einsatzkommandos , one at Nuremberg and the other at Munich,
four Unterstützungskommandos attached to the Police Support Group and based in Dachau, Munich, Nuremberg and Würzburg
The Bavarian River Police is directly subordinate to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior. The headquarters is in Nuremberg and has 10 river police stations along the Main and Danube rivers and the Main-Danube Canal. It also supports 14 police stations that cover the major lakes in Bavaria.
The Bavarian Landeskriminalamt is directly supervised by the Bavarian Interior State Ministry situated in Munich and employs 1,800 officers and civilian staff. Its missions are: witness protection, state security, undercover investigations, statistics, monitoring the development of crime, crime prevention, criminal investigations analysis, exchange of information with foreign countries and forensic science.
Equipment
The most used car brand is BMW. On duty, officers carry their duty handgun and many other tools, such as handcuffs, pepper spray, a flashlight, an expandable baton and Axon 2 bodycameras. There are Heckler & Koch MP5 machine pistols for high risk calls in all patrol cars. On top of that, some patrol officers are trained as specialized tactical officers and are skilled in the use of their issued Heckler & Koch G3 and FN SCAR rifles.
Notable cases
12 May 1972: Bomb attack on the main building of the Bavarian State Investigation Bureau in Munich by the Red Army Faction, 3 people were injured and 60 police cars were damaged.
5 September 1972: Palestinian terrorists attacked the Israeli team during the Olympic Games in Munich, known as the Munich massacre.
July 1998: Giorgio Basile who killed 30 people was arrested in Kempten and turned state witness providing testimony for the arrest of 50 Mafia members in Germany.
