Loading AI tools
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Unité Spéciale de la Police (USP) (English: Special Police Unit) is the tier one police tactical unit of the Grand Ducal Police that was created in Luxembourg in 1999.[1] It is tasked with responding to especially dangerous situations such as hostage rescue operations, arrests of dangerous individuals, bomb threats, and dignitary protection duties.[3]
Special Police Unit | |
---|---|
Unité Spéciale de la Police (French) | |
![]() Emblem | |
Active | 1999 – present[1] |
Country | Luxembourg |
Agency | Grand Ducal Police[2] |
Type | Police tactical unit |
Role |
|
Operations jurisdiction | National |
Abbreviation | USP[2] |
Structure | |
Officers | 56[3] |
Commanders | |
Current commander | Christian Krettels |
The unit trains abroad with comparable units, in particular the Belgian DSU and German SEK.[4]
The USP was formed in 1999 as a merger of the Police Intervention Group (French: Groupe d’intervention de la police) counter-terrorist group and the Gendarmerie Mobile Brigade (French: Brigade mobile de la Gendarmerie).[1] By 2007, USP had conducted roughly 1,650 missions[5] with an average of 300 assignments annually. Two-thirds of these missions were police arrests or surveillance, and one third of these tasks was close protection or other escort duties.[5] Notable achievements of the formation include:
Applicants to the USP must be younger than 30 years-of-age with several years of experience in the Luxembourg police. Applicants undergo a selection test lasting one week. The applicants are tested for motivation, teamwork, thinking skills, and physical endurance. Once selected, candidates are trained over the course of six months in abseiling, basicing defuse and disposal of bombs, close protection, close-quarters battle, commando style raids, counter-ambushes, counterterrorism, fast tactical shooting, field intelligence gathering, hand-to-hand combat, infiltrate the area with a helicopter, intervention, living difficult to access terrain, hostage rescue, marksmanship, medevac, mountain warfare, observation, reconnaissance tactics, SERE, tactical emergency medical, and urban warfare.
When training is completed, the candidate is integrated into the USP,[9] and after that they go to advanced tactical training.
The Unité Spéciale de la Police uses an assortment of weapons and vehicles including:
Weapons:
Vehicles:
TM-170, Grand Ducal Police armored vehicle.
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.