The State Criminal Police Office Baden-Württemberg (LKA BW) is the central office for special tasks in the fight against crime in Baden-Württemberg. It also carries out technical supervision in the area of crime prevention. The LKA BW's primary responsibility is to investigate politically motivated crimes and cases of nuclear crime. In particularly significant cases, the LKA BW conducts investigations in the areas of organised crime, money laundering, narcotics trafficking, organised smuggling, economic and weapons crime, as well as in the area of cybercrime.
The Centre for Security Research (ZfS), a staff department of the LKA BW, is the state-wide point of contact for all departments and institutions of the Baden-Württemberg Police (Polizei BW) in the field of security research. The ZfS was given a service role for the Baden-Württemberg Police and a coordination role for all its research needs. The ZfS itself is not a research centre, but rather assumes the task of a central point of initiation, coordination, mediation and consultation for the field of security research. It also brings together representatives from academia, industry and safety authorities at national and European level.
The ZfS is not itself a research agency and does not have its own research funds. In the area of security research, it assumes the task of a central initiation, coordination, mediation and advisory office for all departments and institutions of the Baden-Württemberg Police. In this way, it picks up on the research needs of the Baden-Württemberg Police, bundles them and forwards them via the respective responsible offices to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the European Commission for consideration within the framework of the invitations to tender or calls in the context of the respective security research framework programmes. It also offers support within the Baden-Württemberg Police in finding and forming consortia for new research projects. External partners from academia, industry and security authorities, in turn, are brought together with suitable partners from the Baden-Württemberg Police for existing project ideas. The involvement of the Baden-Württemberg Police in security research projects has steadily increased in recent years, so that the Baden-Württemberg Police has often been active as an associated partner, a full partner and even as a consortium leader for calls for proposals from the BMBF and the European Commission.
