NCJ Number
194893
Journal
Law and Order Volume: 50 Issue: 3 Dated: March 2002 Pages: 30,32,34
Date Published
2002
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article focuses on police tactics instruction in Bavaria, Germany.
Abstract
Bavaria is the largest German State, occupying an area slightly smaller than Montana. The Bavarian police are ahead of their counterparts in the other 15 States in police tactics instruction. Bavarian police will soon be adding 6 dynamic shooting exercises to their standard 12 stationary-firing range drills. In dynamic shooting the officer, the target, or both the officer and the target move during firearms or simulation scenario training. The special riot or readiness police are called Bereitschaftspolizei (BEPO). This is composed of young police trainees, instructors, specialists such as divers, helicopter pilots and riot control specialists, and specialized officers trained to arrest drug dealers and search for armed criminals. In BEPO, officers begin their careers at age 16 or 17, and train with the handguns and shoulder weapons used by their respective agencies. Each of the Federal States has its own BEPO organization and the weapons of choice often vary with the police of each of these States. The police and BEPO of one State can be called upon to assist the police of another State. Instead of training to face a known threat, the basic patrol officer trains to confront the unknown. Officers assigned to Munich, Bavaria’s capital city, have been training with Simunition and protective gear since 1999. This annual training consists of a simple scenario involving a staged domestic fight in a second floor apartment. Eight officers were killed in 2000 and all of the Federal States improved their training programs, but not every State uses Simunition training. SEK, the German equivalent of SWAT, typically encounters and trains for known situations, such as drug raids and hostage takers. Bavaria spends more funding for its police than any other Federal State.