Under Government Decree No. 72/2010/ND-CP of July 8, effective on September 1, for performing regular, constant, swift and effective, prevention and combat of environmental crimes and other environment-related violations, specialized environment, agencies, which would be set up in the Ministry of Public Security and provincial- and district-level police departments, are allowed to use modern scientific and technological advances and technical devices to monitor, supervise and collect information to canvas entities suspected of violating environmental regulations and detecting tools and means for and ways of committing violations.
Particularly, they may assign undercover investigators to intrude into and spy on operations of polluting establishments in order to uncover environmental crimes and criminals as well as gather information and evidence of, and objects and tools involved in, these crimes for examination. To serve the investigation, they have the right to search residences, working places and vehicles of people showing elements of environment crime.
They may also request involved parties to supply information, documents, assets and objects suspected to be involved in environmental crimes or other violations of environmental regulations; inspect or suspect operations they believe on sufficient grounds to be related to these crimes or violations.
Police officers engaged in combating environmental crimes and violations are entitled to toxic and hazardous job allowance and equipped with contamination protection devices while on duty. Those with special merits will be entitled to early rank promotion.