Sea and electricity service

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Police boat at the Danube Island Festival in Vienna
Maritime and Electricity Police Boats
Patrol duty on the Danube

The maritime and electricity service (also maritime and electricity police , in Vienna water police ) of the Austrian Federal Police is responsible for maintaining public safety and order on the waters of the Republic of Austria . In particular, the tasks of the maritime and electricity service also include hazard research and assistance on water as well as surveys after ship and boat accidents.

In the entire federal territory there are currently 33 federal police stations which, in addition to their general tasks, also handle shipping police tasks. Six of these offices are located on Austria's largest river, the Danube . In total, the police officers of the maritime and electricity services throughout Austria can fall back on around 50 different watercraft to cope with their operations.

organization

In principle, the officers of the maritime and electricity police perform their service on the water in addition to and in addition to their normal police duties in the police inspections .

In Vienna, the "PI Handelskai - Water Police" is part of the LVA (regional traffic department).

There are currently 44 police boats in use throughout Austria, and in 2014 they had to cope with 1,179 deployment trips. They are stationed on all larger Austrian lakes as well as on the rivers Drau and Danube .

History in Vienna

As early as the imperial era, the officials of the Austro-Hungarian security guard were tasked with handling incidents in the area of ​​the Danube and the Danube Canal . For this purpose, wooden barges were available to the officials , with which the majority of life-saving missions and assistance on water were carried out. It was not until the First Republic that the “Federal Police Electricity Inspection Vienna” was established in 1935 as the actual predecessor of today's sea and electricity service. In this, 15 nautically trained officers as so-called "electricity police" monitored ship traffic. For this purpose, they were equipped with modern motor boats and one machine gun per boat. After Austria was annexed to Germany in 1938, the Federal Police Power Inspection was assigned to the German water protection police , with the command for the Danube section between Regensburg and Brăila in Romania being in Vienna during the Nazi era .

After the end of the war and the regaining of Austrian sovereignty with the State Treaty of 1955 , a new electricity police called "Danube Service" was set up on October 1, 1957. At the two bases of the Danube service at Mexikoplatz 4 and at the Freudenau port, an officer and up to 52 officers in charge or assigned to different positions performed their duties. In 1967 the Danube Service had four radio boats made of light metal, two storm boats made of wood, a motor boat made of wood and two plastic boats. From 1984 onwards, 36 police officers were on duty day and night in four-group duty. In 1989 the Danube Service moved to a new office building at Handelskai 267. Six years later, in 1995, the guard room at Freudenau harbor was also closed and the office moved to a newly built building at 15 Seitenhafenstrasse.

Since Austria's accession to the Schengen Implementation Agreement in December 1997, the Danube Service, and subsequently also today's water police, have also been charged with the control of border police regulations. With the amalgamation of the police and gendarmerie in 2005 under Interior Minister Ernst Strasser , there was a nationwide standardization of the behavior of the Federal Police on water and the renaming of the Danube service to "Sea and Electricity Service", or SSD for short. This was incorporated into the Brigittenau City Police Command, where a coordination and service point for all sea and electricity services throughout Austria was run. The office was called Fachinspektion Handelskai / See- und Stromdienst . On October 1, 2019, the SSD was incorporated into the Vienna State Transport Department and renamed the Water Police .

In August 2012 another police boat, the 15.5 m long Vienna , was put into service.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Answer of the Federal Minister of the Interior on the subject of police boats in Austria from 7 July 2015.
  2. ↑ New police boat “Vienna” in use wien.orf.at
  3. ^ The Vienna is christened: The new police boat diepresse.com, accessed on August 27, 2012