So last Thursday a “confused” man entered the Kinopolis in the Rhein-Neckar-Zentrum shopping center located in the town of Viernheim around armed with an unidentified weapon from which he fired at least four shots in the air. This initiated a response from Hessian state police Spezialeinsatzkommando (SEK) members from nearby Frankfurt who ended the hostage situation (four workers and 14 visitors held against their will) with judicious use of chemicals (CS) and surgical use of small arms.
At the end of the incident, the gunman was expired but all the movie-goers were fine with the exception of a whiff of CS.
Post-shooting analysis show the 19-year old German at the root of the incident to be a disturbed young man armed with blank firing alarm guns and fake grenades, which is sad and seems leaning towards suicide by cop.
Not to be confused with the smaller and more counter-terror focused federal GSG9, SEKs are more akin to special response/SWAT teams and by looking at the imagery coming from the incident, there are a few uniquely German take-aways.
Beards are definitely in with German LE– something that is frowned upon in the States. Also, check out the Heckler and Koch MP5A5. Very nice. Further, Mechanix and Motorola aren’t just for Yanks…
Turnout gear is tactical need based– grab it and go– as noted by this officer’s drop leg rig, which is obviously optimized for the use of hard-plate armor if you note the drop leg holsters. As for the extra handguns (note all the HKs), it looks like the Blackhawk SREPA was there before he threw the balaclava and other gear on and he just hasn’t taken it off yet. Still the balaclava and shorts combo is suspect…
Finally, it looks like SEK is perfectly fine rolling in short pants and sneaks in the interest of saving time. The team came from Frankfurt which is about an hour away so they likely just grabbed and ran. Again we have an MP5, what looks to be a very chopped HK33, and HK pistols along with dropleg rigs and beards. Also note the abbreviated expandable baton on the officer to the left, worn cross draw at about the 11 o’clock on an officer that is obviously right-hand dominant.
On a semi-related note, HK is bringing their newest civilian-legal version of the MP5K to the U.S. in coming days.
I fooled around with one last month in Louisville and have to admit it is kinda sweet.
The good news is, the SP5K is still made at the HK Oberndorf factory in Germany and comes with a STANAG 4694 Profile mounting rail.
Bad news is it’s $2,699 MSRP and if you add the optional folding buttstock you are still looking at the stamp. Still, the closest competition, the Zenith MKE Z-5 series, runs close to that and no matter how nice they are, still don’t say HK on them…
