For £24, You Can Hire a Police Car for a Day

This article originally appeared in VICE Germany

If you plan on going away for a couple of days and you want to keep burglars at bay, one option is to have a security system set up around the house. If that's too much of a hassle for you and you happen to live in Berlin, the other option is to give Maximilian Kraft a call. For €29 (£24) a day, he'll park a police car in your driveway, and no right-minded burglar will want to come anywhere near your place.

Kraft used to rent fake police cars to film production companies, when he had the idea for this side-venture. One evening, one of his employees took a patrol car home after a day on set and parked it front of his house overnight. The next day, his neighbour came round to ask if he could borrow the car for a day – he thought it was the perfect way to scare off any burglars. When Kraft heard this, he decided he'd rent his cars out to anyone willing to pay €29 a day for one.

The cars in his fleet aren't registered as actual police cars, but because they look pretty convincing, driving around in them is illegal. "The blue lights are attached magnetically. When we drive to a client, we take them off," Kraft told VICE. "The police lettering is detachable too, so when we deliver one, it's just a silver car with a blue stripe. Driving around in that is not illegal. When we get to a client, we add the lights and the lettering."

"The police aren't necessarily happy that we're doing this, but what can they do?" Kraft says. "It's their job to make people feel safe, and that's what our enterprise does, too." Clients who leave their homes for a longer period of time get a set price per week, and the company's re-parking service is free. That service entails that the patrol car is parked with its front towards the entrance one day, and with its back towards it the next. There's also the option to have a Volkswagen Passat one day, and a Volkswagen Touran the next.

Business for the 29-year-old Kraft is booming during these darker months of the year. His fleet also includes a few ambulances, but he hasn't been able to come up with a side function for those yet. He is considering adding some cars labelled "Objektschutz" ("Security"), but that can also wait. "I think the notion of police will always work best to scare criminals away," Kraft says. "It's a word and a symbol that everyone understands, no matter where you're from or what language you speak."

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