Bavarian Police


The Bavarian Police is the state police force of the German state of Bavaria under the umbrella of the Bavarian [Ministry of the Interior]. 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 hierarchy structures 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.
In 2021 the official name was changed from Bayerische Staatliche Polizei to Bayerische Polizei.

State Police Units

Bavarian Border Police

Due to the European migrant crisis in 2015, the Bavarian State Government re-established the Bavarian Border Police in 2018 to support the Federal Police to protect the border to Austria, to the Czech Republic and at the Nuremberg Airport.

Bereitschaftspolizei

The Police Support Group HQ in Bamberg employs 6,000 officers and civilian staff at seven Bereitschaftspolizeiabteilungen, the police schools, the police orchestra and the police helicopter squadron. The BPAs are situated in Munich, Eichstätt, Würzburg, Nuremberg, Königsbrunn, Dachau and Sulzbach-Rosenberg and have 10 companies as the state’s mobile police reserve. The helicopter squadron has nine modern choppers stationed at Munich Airport and Roth Airfield near Nuremberg. Bavaria has two basic training schools, one professional development school and a police dog school.

Special Units

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
  • an Alpine Einsatzzug, based in Rosenheim.

    Bavarian Security Watch

Citizens in Bavaria have been participating in public safety since 1994. This commitment to civic action is seen in the Sicherheitswacht, an auxiliary state police program, where approx. 800 citizens in 125 Bavarian towns voluntarily assist their local police. They have very limited powers under the principle of proportionality. The only armament is a Pepper spray

Water Police

The Bavarian Water police is directly subordinate to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior. The headquarters is located 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 major lakes in Bavaria.

State Investigation Bureau

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 submachine guns 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