Commercial field service
The Berlin Business Field Service ( GAD ) is a law enforcement department that is unique in Germany and is now part of the Berlin State Criminal Police Office . The main task is the prosecution of criminal offenses and administrative offenses with a commercial connection.
In Bremen there was also a commercial field service, which was based in the Commercial Affairs Division (Division 20), Department 2 Commercial and Regulatory Affairs of the now dissolved city office and carried out "controls of commercial operations in the field of youth protection, non-smoker protection, noise complaints, etc."
The surveillance of commercial enterprises in Berlin
In Berlin, the monitoring of commercial operations for compliance with the legal provisions that apply to them is largely the responsibility of the commercial field service of the criminal police (GAD). The central and local commissariats inspect businesses with specially trained employees who are given extensive powers to do this without prior notice. Criminal offenses and administrative offenses identified in the process are finally processed and sent to the public prosecutor's office or the public prosecutor's office or the regulatory authorities for punishment. It is not uncommon for GAD's investigations to lead to business bans or the withdrawal of special business licenses. In addition to monitoring commercial operations and tracking down illegal commercial activities, the commercial field service is also responsible for processing special environmental and economic property crimes, such as cross-regional goods fraud, fraudulent door-to-door sales, pyramid schemes, gambling offenses, illegal waste disposal or violations of copyright and competition law. The trade field service is a police investigative authority - not to be confused with the services of the economic or trade offices or public order offices of the city districts, which are responsible for the permits and trade notifications of traders, for fines and for trade bans - or the consumer associations, whose task is to provide information and Enforcement of civil legal claims of consumers is.
The tax offices are still responsible for tax audits in companies . Import trade audits and foreign trade audits are carried out by auditors from the responsible main customs office . These tests are not the responsibility of the state police authority.
The development of commercial surveillance in Berlin
Commercial police
The first legally standardized controls under trade law on the working and commercial classes of the urban and rural population took place from 1848 onwards by the "trade police", which at that time was already monitoring industrial establishments in the interests of the general public. The controls of the then prevailing market life were carried out by the protection teams and concentrated on the grocers and slaughterhouses, tobacco and alcohol dealers, entrepreneurs of dance and fencing schools, gymnastics and bathing establishments, acting companies, pawnbrokers and second-hand dealers, restaurants and pubs and musicians as well as public transportation .
The police president of Berlin, Karl Ludwig Friedrich von Hinckeldey (1848-1856), known as a local political reformer, founded the trade police in 1848 after he was tired of having to be held up to many faulty official visits of his hard-working policeman in the field of market surveillance. The officers of the trade police have since been specially prepared for their tasks. The trade police were initially subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior , but only a short time later became subordinate to the newly established Ministry of Trade, Industry and Public Works. However, this restructuring did not achieve the expected success, because the political aim of the ministry to promote economic life could not even then be combined with the drastic police and judicial interventions in the commercial areas. In 1858, a public scandal, triggered by a high official of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, who tolerated the sale of spoiled pork through his grandson's business, caused the trade police to be referred back to the Ministry by a “very high decree” by the Prince of Prussia of the interior. From 1858 onwards, the trade police were divided into four supra-local specialist teams. The market police supervised the large number of different markets in Berlin, checked foodstuffs and the liquor trade, inspected the warehouses and checked weights and measures. The newly established moral police supervise the " prostitution- ravaged women", their 22 sleeping places in the city and gave them stand permits for a fee. In addition to the shipping traffic, the river and shipping police checked the almost 400 unloading points and warehouses on the city's waterways and the public haulage, as the fourth specialist team, issued carriage authorizations for coachmen, inspected the stopping places and checked the 1,000 cabs, 45 horse-drawn buses, 495 gate wagons and 140 night cabs, which at that time were commercially driving Berlin's traffic routes. The supervision of the trade police was exercised by a colonel of the protection team as a commander. At the turn of the century, a "field service" developed at the Berlin police district offices, which from 1918 mainly performed its service in bourgeois clothing. The tasks of the former four main teams were now carried out in the individual districts.
The term “trade outside service” (abbreviation “GAD”) originated in the 1920s, when around 200 officers were on duty under the command of the security police. And these officials got more and more to do: savings associations, fraudsters, pimps and other industrial rabble kept developing new ideas and found new opportunities to enrich themselves, to evade the tax burden and to put citizens on the cross. With uniformed officers you got no further, and so the number of operations increased and the information from the secret police became more and more useful.
Commercial field service
On October 20, 1934, the trade field service (GAD) was set up as a special service at the police headquarters. This was decided "[...] taking into account that the control activity requires not only precise knowledge of the relevant legal provisions, but also professional training and technical knowledge [...]". In addition to the GAD offices in the districts, a central office was set up at Magazinstrasse 3–5, which, in addition to a few investigations, was primarily responsible for information and coordination tasks. The head of the trade field service was a captain of the security police, and the district offices of the trade field service were given the status of trade police stations. The responsibilities had increased over time and so, in addition to the known controls, there were also controls of beer pressure lines, rinsing and drinking vessels in pubs, reviews of moving camps and auctioneers as well as tests on the weight and labeling of the bread in the manufacturing and sales points. In addition, the overland traffic with motor vehicles, the security companies, the tour operators were monitored. To combat undeclared work and to protect workers, checks were carried out on wage and employment contracts in commercial enterprises and checks were carried out to ensure compliance with maximum working hours. The GAD was also given the task of controlling arms dealers and explosives dealers as well as supervising the drawings of the private lotteries in Berlin. He also carried out the special investigations into illegal waste disposal and the protection of birds, game and nature.
During the period of National Socialism , the responsibilities of the Berlin police authority were severely restricted. The seizure of power by the National Socialists was followed by the disempowerment of the police headquarters and all supra-local functions were transferred to imperial institutions that were subordinate to the SS members. From the beginning of the war, the higher SS and Police Leader Spree, responsible for the area of military district III (state police district Berlin and the province of Brandenburg ), was able to intervene right up to the local police duties . For the trade sales force, the instructions and tasks that had existed to date were retained even after the political upheaval and they increased in scope. There were no cuts in the control functions of the GAD. It was no longer possible to do without the interdisciplinary specialist knowledge of the commercial field service - especially with regard to ensuring a functioning war economy - and there were initial considerations for the establishment of similar police facilities throughout the Reich. In the Reich capital , the GAD was gradually reinforced and reorganized. It has now been divided into several central and decentralized work areas. The commander of the GAD, who initially led 300 officials, determined the number of work areas according to the requirements of the service. The GAD central office formed several areas of work and an office. 7 GAD offices and 21 GAD bases were set up for regional monitoring.
The tasks of the GAD agencies included the punishment of commercial law violations, food monitoring , checking handguns for proof marks , monitoring security companies and arms dealers, checking the weight of bread and baked goods, processing price monitoring processes and processing war economic processes for the Police offices. The tasks of the GAD support points, which the GAD offices worked on, were limited to the receipt of complaints and the first investigations into violations of war economic regulations. During the Second World War, around 550 civil servants then served at GAD. The service was performed in civil clothing, unless the existing uniform was expressly ordered.
After the Second World War, in July 1945 the Berlin police were divided into protection, criminal and administrative police. The tasks of the administrative police, which employed a total of 1,386 women and men on September 15, 1945, were initially carried out in seven departments of the police headquarters, including the immigration police, the traffic police , the health police and the trade police with the external trade service. The GAD was incorporated into the administrative police and the officers still held administrative ranks until 1966, but had police enforcement powers. In December 1946, Berlin was divided into 20 police stations, to which administrative police departments were also assigned. In addition to a GAD headquarters with six subject areas, GAD offices have been set up in each police station. After the division of Berlin, the central offices and 12 GAD offices with a total of 120 civil servants remained. Since the mid-sixties, the GAD was gradually incorporated into the criminal police . With the gradual integration into the criminal police, the GAD now had the entire logistics of the police at its disposal, and the protective and criminal police benefited from the far-reaching commercial rights of the GAD for their tasks.
In the GDR , the trading companies and restaurants ( Konsum and HO ), the service and production companies, as well as the few private companies were monitored by their own control bodies. Registration and monitoring took place exclusively at the municipal level (councils of the city districts) and the control body was the Workers and Farmers Inspection (ABI), which prosecuted offenses against applicable environmental law and criminal acts resulting from breaches of duty by farm managers. Many of the criminal offenses and administrative offenses connected with the economic development and the economic conditions in the Federal Republic of Germany were inconceivable in the GDR because of the socialist social order.
In the western part of Berlin, the management of the GAD was transferred to a fully qualified lawyer in 1971 (higher service) and the GAD position plan was fully aligned with that of the Kripo (70% A9 (S) and 30% A8). In 1974, as part of the police reform in the western part of the city, Section G of the Crime Prevention Directorate was set up at the police chief in Berlin. The career regulation for the external trade (GLVO) came into force on April 1, 1974. At that time, the GAD had 146 officials and 20 employees in the investigation service, who were distributed over a total of 17 commissioners in two inspections. By the way, the technical supervision of the trade field service has remained with the Senate Department for Economics to this day, while the Senator for the Interior has been given the supervision of this unique career in Germany. Since then, the trainee commissioners have been trained together with the trainees in the criminal investigation department at the University of Applied Sciences for Administration and Justice. The negative developments on the labor markets and increasing environmental awareness led to two other important areas of activity for GAD. The investigation of criminal offenses and administrative offenses in connection with the criminal phenomena of illegal employment and moonlighting as well as that of environmental crime . Because of the direct commercial connection, these areas of crime were transferred to the GAD, which from 1983 was named Directorate for Combating Crime, Department for Environmental and Commercial Offenses. In addition to the central investigation commissariats, there were local GAD commissariats in all 5 police departments. With the new tasks, the number of service staff at Dir VB U / G also grew, and it became increasingly necessary to use members of the protection and criminal police in the unit. After the fall of the wall and the unification of Germany, the areas of investigation carried out by the U / G department first had to be quickly transferred to the eastern part of the city. Members of the People's Police who were trained for their future tasks by members of the trade field service were assigned to the GAD. The joy of this necessary increase in staff did not last long, however, because a large number of the VP members assigned to the GAD had to quit their service in the following years because of their political or official past. The market economy developed rapidly in the eastern part of the city, and with it crime in the economic, labor and environmental sectors, which made new organizational structures necessary. The three pillars of Dir VB U / G have been separated. With the creation of the Berlin State Criminal Police Office (1994), the departments of environmental offenses, industrial offenses and labor offenses were initially merged into a single department, after most of the labor offenses were taken over by customs. Almost 200 (planned) positions (A9-A13S) are provided for in the Berlin budget for the commercial field service. In fact, however, only just under 40 career members and a further 40 detective officers and some collective bargaining employees work in the Commercial Offenses Department (2018).
Commercial field service today
Department of Environmental / Consumer Protection Offenses / Commercial Crime
Today the department is divided into seven commissariats and an evaluation unit . The department has retained the term “commercial field service” as a traditional addition. Since spring 2018, two commissariats of the department have been responsible for investigations in three local Berlin police departments and five other commissariats are investigating city-wide. These commissariats are responsible for the prosecution of criminal offenses and administrative offenses in the field of environmental and commercial criminal law and special regulatory and competition law. The focus is on a. the amusement arcades and play equipment display, the betting offices, taxi companies, café casinos, craft shops and the security industry of the city. The factual responsibilities cover around 150 offenses under criminal, ancillary criminal law and regulatory law. Controls of commercial enterprises are no longer carried out proactively, but only on the basis of suspicions at the request of the district or tax offices or on the basis of reports or tips.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Template for the meeting of the CITY Deputation for Interior and Sport on July 23, 2014. (No longer available online.) Senator for Home Affairs and Sports, July 4, 2014, archived from the original on December 6, 2017 ; Retrieved December 5, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
