Wasserschutzpolizei

[1] Germany has about 7,500 km[2] of navigable waterways that are responsible for about 30 percent of goods transported.

In case of shipwrecks, often involving hazardous materials, they are responsible for warning other shipping.

The Baden-Württemberg WSP is decentrally organized and attached to the police departments whose area of operations their stations are located in.

Besides the normal responsibilities of the water police, the Berlin WSP also has an important security role because of the many government and other capital city related buildings to be found alongside the River Spree and other inner-urban waterways.

It operates from nine bases, located at Brandenburg, Eisenhüttenstadt, Erkner, Hohensaaten, Lehnitz, Potsdam, Spreewald, Wittenberge and Zeuthen.

One is located at the mouth of the Elbe river in Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony, and another is a sub-station in Lauenburg, a town in Schleswig-Holstein.

The force has 24 boats and patrols the Rhine, Weser, Ems and Ruhr (as far as Essen) rivers and the North German canals.

The HQ is in Mainz and there are 10 river police stations along the Rhine, Lahn, Saar and Moselle in Rhineland-Palatinate.

The stations at Germersheim, Ludwigshafen, Mainz, Bingen, St. Goar and Andernach are responsible for the Rhine only.

[13] Water Protection Police Precincts are located in Kiel, Brunsbüttel and Lübeck, its subordinated stations in Flensburg, Kappeln, Husum, Heligoland and Fehmarn.