50 years of special units of the Bavarian Police – Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann congratulates on the anniversary: Indispensable for particularly dangerous operations – Highly professional and excellently equipped

+++ At an anniversary event in Munich today, Bavaria’s Minister of the Interior Joachim Herrmann praised the excellent work of the special units of the Bavarian Police: “50 years of special units in the Bavarian Police – that is half a century of the highest professionalism in the most dangerous operations. Our special units stand up for our safety around the clock, seven days a week!” The Minister of the Interior described the special units as indispensable in fighting the most serious crimes such as extortion, kidnapping, hostage-taking and organised crime. This includes, for example, the direct fight against violent terrorist offenders or support in raids, controls and searches of highly dangerous groups of offenders. “The skills of our special units are appreciated far beyond the borders of Bavaria and Germany,” Herrmann summarised. “We will continue to strengthen the special units of the Bavarian Police in the coming years.” +++

The Bavarian special units were founded in 1973 to deal with outstanding operational situations. The reason for this was the first bank robbery with hostage-taking in Munich’s Prinzregentenstrasse in 1971 and the Olympic attack in 1972. “Since then, we have massively expanded our special units,” Herrmann explained. Currently, the Bavarian special units consist of the police inspectorates ‘Special Units Northern Bavaria’ and ‘Special Units Southern Bavaria’, each with a Special Operations Command (SEK), a Mobile Operations Command (MEK), a Technical Operations Command (TEK) and a Negotiation Group (VG). In addition, there are the MEK of the Swabia North Police Headquarters and the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office. While the SEK are mainly used for access measures, the MEK are primarily used for observation tasks. The TEK support the other units with special technical equipment such as tracking and tracing technology. The VG conducts negotiations in special situations such as hostage-taking and extortion. According to Herrmann, a total of more than 400 employees work for the Bavarian special units. In the past five years alone, about 860,000 hours of service and about 333,000 hours of standby time were spent on a total of almost 3,600 missions.

In addition to elaborate and demanding training and further education, the Minister of the Interior described the excellent equipment of the special units as very important. This includes, among other things, ultra-modern special vehicles. “A major investment in recent years has been our two specially protected offensive vehicles for particularly dangerous missions,” Herrmann clarified. “We put them into service in 2020.” The vehicles in question are two ‘ENOK 6.2’ from the company ‘Armoured Car Systems’. “Thanks to the effective armouring, our special units are thus protected in the best possible way, especially in terrorist or rampage situations,” Herrmann explained. “With the help of our special vehicles, we can also rescue people from danger zones.” In addition, according to Herrmann, the ENOK have special armament to be able to take action against dangerous perpetrators. “The approximately 2.4 million euros for both vehicles are an excellent investment,” said the Interior Minister.