Federal Police Special Units

Directorate of the special units of the federal police
(Dutch: Directie van de speciale eenheden;
French: Direction des unités spéciales)

Former SIE/ESI logo, featuring Diana. The current logo is identical, apart from the unit name: the abbreviation "DSU" atthe top and "POLICE FEDERALE POLITIE" at the bottom.
Country  Belgium
Branch Belgian Federal Police
Type Paramilitary force
Role Counter-Terrorism, high-risk emergency response, specialized operations and tactics
Size 540 operators (50 in the intervention unit)

The Directorate of the special units (DSU) (Dutch: Directie van de speciale eenheden; French: Direction des unités spéciales; German: Direktion der Sondereinheiten) is the Belgian Federal Police's Counter-Terrorism and SWAT unit. In total, DSU consists of about 500 highly trained police officers. The DSU is deployed in cases of terrorism, kidnappings, hostage taking and other forms of serious crime. DSU performs emergency responses, high-risk arrests and searches, obeservation operations, undercover operations and more.

The unit's commander, chief commissioner Eric Liévin, states that "a criminal dealing with the DSU, has a better chance of surviving than another; they try to use a minimal level of violence/force, and yet try to attain a maximum level of efficiency.".

Organisation

The DSU is one of the four central directorates of the General directorate of the judicial police (DGJ), which is responsible for criminal investigations and anti-crime operations. The DSU consists of centralised units and decentralised units. The centralised units are called the "special units" and consist of:

These are all stationed in a police caserne in Etterbeek.

There are four decentralised units, called "Protection, observation, support & arrest platoons" (POSA), spread over the country:

Overall control of the DSU lies with the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but depending on circumstances the unit can be deployed under operational control of the Ministry of Justice. Prior to 1994 the unit was commanded by the Ministry of Defense.

Two more specialised units also exist, one team has six trained police dogs for detecting the presence of explosive materials or ammunition, the other one is the Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) team, which was created in 1978 after the Los Alfaques Disaster.

Tasks

DSU provides ongoing support to the federal and local levels in the areas of:

Weapons

Weapons in use include, among others:

History

The original DSU was created within the former Rijkswacht/Gendarmerie in the aftermath of the Munich massacre and was called Group Diane.

In 1974 the name was changed from Diane to SIE (also outside Belgium, Dutch: Speciaal Interventie Eskadron) or ESI (French: Escadron spécial d'intervention, also known as Groupe interforces antiterroriste).

In 2001 all Belgian police forces (municipal, judicial and Rijkswacht/Gendarmerie) were reformed into the integrated police structured on two levels, the local police and the federal police. The SIE/ESI took the form of the Directorate of special units (DSU), which was part of the newly created federal police. In 2007 the DSU was integrated into the Office of the General Commissioner (CG) and its name was changed to CGSU. Due to an optimization reform within the federal police that started in 2014, the special units were moved from the Office of the General Commissioner to the General directorate of the judicial police (DGJ), one of the three general directorates resorting under the Office of the General Commissioner. This was deemed more logical because of the operational and judicial nature of the assignments of the federal police's special units. Subsequently, the name and abbreviation was changed (back) to "Directorate of the special units (DSU)".

External links

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