The barking of the shepherd dogs can be heard from afar. Excitedly, they walk along the fence, at the edge of the forest in the extreme north-west of Munich, surrounded by trees and fields. A parking lot with a few VW buses separates them from the entrance gate. Only when Franziska Hönnige steps out of the office building and walks towards the gate with a smile does the barking slowly subside.
Hönnige is one of 50 service dog handlers in Munich. The dog unit is part of the city’s police headquarters. So the employees there are police officers. But that’s not all: their four-legged colleagues, the service dogs, work with them. These are also employed by the police to a certain extent, and they too have to complete training. Instead of a permanent strip partner, Hönnige has a disco with him. The four-year-old Belgian shepherd accompanies her every day on her assignments – and then also home.
Ever since she was in school, Hönnige wanted to be a police officer. And she’s not alone: Many children dream of working for the police one day. According to opinion poll by the opinion research institute Forsa, the profession of police officer is still very well respected. He is in fifth place behind firefighters, nurses, doctors and geriatric nurses. Gave last winter 82 percent of the Germans surveyed assume they would trust the police. But there is also criticism of the way the police work. Incidents of racism and police violence contribute to the negative image of this profession. Added to this is the criticism that police officers are often not trained on these issues and that there are no sufficiently independent police complaints offices. But what does the day-to-day work of a police officer actually look like? What challenges does she face? What tasks does she have to do?
Searching for drugs in the park
Franziska Hönnige puts a black blanket in the trunk of the van. Next to it she places a drinking bowl. Two dog boxes are installed in the rear part of the car. Disco will sit in the left one during the patrol and wait for his turn. The shepherd dog is her patrol partner, but unlike in the police series “Kommissar Rex”, the dog is not allowed to ride in the passenger seat. Hönnige throws a handful of treats into the box, the dog jumps after them. Close the flap and then you can start your first mission.
Sniffer dog Disco has to wait in the trunk to be deployed.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
Service dog handlers are usually used in a supportive capacity. If a patrol team needs help, for example with a house search, they call in their barking colleagues. In this case, a woman fled from a drug check in the park and dropped something on the lawn. Where the human eye fails, disco’s nose comes into play. He is a drug sniffer dog and trained to find drugs such as hashish, marijuana, heroin, cocaine or amphetamines. There are also explosives detection dogs, person detection dogs, corpse detection dogs or data carrier detection dogs.
Arriving at the park, Hönnige makes her dog sit. She looks at him and motions to him. Now he knows that he is on duty, that he has to work. Attentively, Disco runs across the meadow with pricked ears, sniffing at leaves, grass and branches. Hönnige repeatedly points to the floor with two fingers. In doing so, she marks areas in which disco should search particularly carefully. He searches for more than 20 minutes without any result. It seems as if rain and wind have covered the tracks. Then the dog suddenly becomes very calm. He slowly lies down on the floor and remains there, staring straight ahead. “That’s the sign,” calls Hönnige. It’s called “passive display.” She immediately rewards her dog. Disco is happy, and so is his owner. The find: a walnut-sized chunk of hashish. The operation, including travel and consultation with colleagues, took two hours. The policewoman shrugs. “It’s been a long time now,” she says. But it was still worth it.
Franziska Hönnige still remembers the moment when she told her family about her dream job. “They fell out of nowhere,” she says and laughs. Only her father could imagine her there. “Especially the women in my family were actually all against it,” says the 27-year-old. Many feared for their safety. “There’s always exaggeration on TV,” she says, rolling her eyes. Of course her job is also dangerous, but not like in the movies.
Police officers are civil servants. Depending on your school qualifications, there are different ways of entering the profession. For the middle service, a secondary school diploma or an equivalent level of education is sufficient. In order to get into the higher service, you usually need a vocational diploma or high school diploma. But it is still a bit more complicated: Police training is a matter for the federal states and differs from federal state to federal state. North Rhine-Westphalia, for example, has only been offering entry into the middle service since this year. Previously there was only entry into the higher or higher service. Interested parties were able to apply to eleven vocational colleges for the middle service for the 2022/23 school year for the first time. The training for the higher service is more like a dual study program. At the Lower Saxony Police Academy, for example, high school graduates can study the “Police Enforcement Service” course, leading to a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Hönnige has chosen the path to middle service. She went to school in Holzkirchen, Upper Bavaria. Immediately after graduating from technical college, she took the police recruitment test, together with a friend. “But she didn’t manage the medical part. Because she doesn’t have spatial vision,” explains Hönnige. Applicants must meet a number of requirements: Among other things, they must have German or another EU citizenship and, depending on the federal state, be at least 1.60 to 1.65 meters tall. A doctor will also check your endurance and body mass index. In Bavaria, trainees earn about 1240 euros net in the first year. Hönnige started her apprenticeship in 2014. Now she earns around 2900 euros gross, plus allowances. For example, the conurbation allowance because she lives in Munich, or the so-called DUZ allowance for working at inconvenient times. “In the end I have about 2,000 to 2,100 euros in cash on hand,” she says.
Still a man’s job
Hönnige feels very comfortable in her team, she says. This is due to the fact that the police in Munich are comparatively young. As a woman, she also feels that she is in good hands there. When her service group leader Christoph Lipp calculates that the proportion of men in the dog squadron is 70 percent, Hönnige is amazed. “Oh really? I thought we women were in the majority,” she says. More than twice as many men work there: 35 police officers and only 15 policewomen. The result of Lipp’s quick calculation also reflects the national average. According to the German Police Union (DPolG), the proportion of women in the police force was around 30 percent in 2020. Of the 341,375 employees, 103,095 were women and 238,280 men.
The proportion of women is particularly small in the higher service, says Angélique Yumuşak, Federal Women’s Representative at the police union. Yumuşak has been with the Berlin police since 1994. Women are still less represented in management positions, she says. Promotions are linked to assessments by superiors. And these are worse, especially for women on parental leave or part-time work: “They are accused of having less flexibility in terms of time. This is often seen as a limitation in performance,” explains Yumuşak. Women would have to meet the same requirements if they wanted to be accepted into the higher service or into special units. “The fact that they bear the lion’s share in order to reconcile family and career is not included in the assessment,” says the women’s representative.
During training: Franziska Hönnige and Disco are a well-established team.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
After the assignment, Franziska Hönnige and Disco return to the office. “Today is a very quiet day,” she says. Sometimes she doesn’t have a single bet, sometimes there are a lot. Then she has to ask for breaks herself. Especially for disco. “A mission like this is like running a marathon for the dogs. It’s extremely exhausting,” explains Hönnige. At the end of the day, she is not only responsible for herself, but also for her colleague with the light brown coat. Neither of them can do their job without each other. “We’re a good team,” says the police officer and smiles.