Munich police monitor with mobile video towers

New surveillance systems have been in place at Munich's Karlsplatz, also known as Stachus, and in the old botanical garden in the Bavarian capital for several weeks now. The Munich police and the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior call them “video towers,” and that is exactly what the devices do: they film the surroundings and themselves with three cameras. The authorities unveiled the installations last week.

Two of the cameras on each tower are PTZ (pan/tilt/zoom) devices from the German supplier Dallmeier and are not located in the typical domes of surveillance cameras. However, the uniform black color of the PTZ mechanism makes it almost impossible to see where the cameras are looking from below with the naked eye. A third camera always films vertically downwards from the tower with a fisheye lens.

As Munich police chief Thomas Hampel told the local TV station München TV, this camera also keeps an eye on the other two devices and is intended to document vandalism at the video tower. In addition, according to a statement from the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior, the cars on which the towers are mounted also have an unspecified "alarm trigger," so they should not be tampered with.

21-day storage period

The images from the cameras end up as a live feed with a rewind option at Inspektion 11, Munich-Altstadt, as well as at the police operations center. They are stored there in encrypted form and deleted after 21 days, as the authorities told the German Press Agency. The Munich police have purchased a total of three of the towers at a unit price of 70,000 euros. Two of them also run on fuel cells in the absence of an external power supply. Only two have been set up temporarily so far; the police also want to use the systems flexibly at major events. This is unlikely to apply to the Oktoberfest, where video surveillance with fixed cameras has been part of the security concept for years.

According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the two video towers installed so far will remain at Stachus and in the old botanical garden, while the third will monitor the park from other angles. The long neglected garden had become a hotspot for the drug scene in recent years. In the fall of 2024, the Munich public was shocked by a homicide in this park, and the suspected perpetrator was arrested. Extensive renovation work had already begun on the park, which is now slowly being transformed back into a family-friendly oasis in the middle of the city.

Cameras remain at Stachus and the botanical garden

Karlsplatz/Stachus is an almost unmanageable focal point, at least by Munich standards, especially in summer, where a large ground-level fountain offers cooling. Located at the end of the pedestrian zone with its numerous stores and above an underground and S-Bahn station, the square is always very busy, also with tourists. Crimes such as pickpocketing and, according to the police chief, sexual harassment are frequent.

During a visit last weekend, the video tower at Stachus was barely noticed by passersby. It is not yet possible to say whether it is an effective deterrent. Results from this location are not yet available. According to the authorities, the situation in the old botanical garden has eased since the video surveillance was installed. The state of Bavaria plans to invest a total of 3.8 million euros in the expansion of video surveillance in the coming years. That would be more than 50 additional video towers, although these are unlikely to be the only means.

(nie)