in the Wujek Coal Mine (where nine people were killed and 21 wounded when Katowice's Special Platoon opened fire on the striking miners in 1981 in the bloodiest incident of the martial law era). Personnel and equipment From the mid-1970s ZOMO was reputed to be one of the best trained and equipped police formations in the Eastern Bloc. A candidate for ZOMO had to have a height of at least 180 cm and a weight of at least 90 kg. After the 1968 expansion, people conscripted to the military could optionally serve their draft in ZOMO (during the martial law, the military reservists who had served in ZOMO were called up to the squads of ORMO, reserve units of MO). The formation numbered nearly 13,000 members in the late 1980s (twice the original designation of 6,600), quartered in barracks in the major cities across the country. The martial-law-era ZOMO members were equipped with various police and military vehicles (including BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers in the Special Platoons) and various firearms (including shotguns, submachine guns and automatic rifles) as well as various types of riot equipment (such as batons, tear gas grenades, water cannon trucks, rubber bullets, metal and plastic riot shields and visored helmets). From 1968 they wore military-style uniforms with a very similar camouflage pattern to the one used by the Polish People's Army. Legacy The ZOMO's last action took place on July 3, 1989, when they dispersed a demonstration against the presidential candidature of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, former First Secretary and head of the Military Council of National Salvation (WRON). The units were disbanded on September 7, 1989, following the fall of the communist system, and replaced with the OPP (riot control) and SPAP (rapid response and counter-terrorism) units of Policja (the Polish police). In contemporary Poland the word "ZOMO" (or zomowiec, the ZOMO-man) is a pejorative term used by protesters to denote all kinds of riot police (just as the word Gestapo is sometimes used to describe police brutality). See also Volkspolizei-Bereitschaft, East German counterpart Kasernierte Volkspolizei Lidové milice OMON Eastern Bloc politics Internal Troops Notes and references Zomoza Historia ZOMO Defunct law enforcement agencies of Poland Polish People's Republic Law enforcement in communist states Eastern Bloc Defunct gendarmeries