Center Police
Riga 1st Police Department of Central area is sharing the same building with Fire Department.
First department is one of the oldest in Riga. The building itself was built in 1886 on Matisa street.
History of Riga police dates from the beginning of 1880s, when policemen started to patrol busy streets and places like markets, stations, hotels.
Initially policemen were only Germans, who very rarely could speak Latvian or Russian, therefore their efficiency was extremely low. After some years Riga council began to draft into police the retired soldiers, who were able to speak language of the common people.
Nowadays there are 15 Police departments in Riga.
Labels: buildings, cars, center, first, history, jobs, people, police, snow, winter
People Reaction (6)
but no hot Latvian cops?
very interesting history. I LOVE to learn on these daily photo sites!
Jan
GDP
This pic seems like sephia effect;) Interesting light!
I did not know that Riga was such a beautiful city. Very nice blog.
I recently went in December 2009, and was mugged at 9 P.M. in "old town". I lost 340$ in cash and my security pass.
I went to a police station, and the police were no help to me and I was thinking of legal action because they were quite rude.
Can you explain this to me? is this normal?
Stefan Wilson
-> konflikt
It is not uncommon here for the cops to be uninterested and not sufficiently polite. Though if you do not provoke them then they do not normally get rude. The problem is - often they can do nothing when people expect them to help. But still - they are underpaid, many of them are undereducated (recently there was a scandal, that some of them even do not speak Latvian and have used fake documents to get the job) and of low cultural level, I would say. Though it varies greatly between individuals - I have met very professional, enthusiastic and extremely polite officers. There are also hot blond babes in police uniforms, so not everything is that bad.