The State Office for Central Police Services (LZPD NRW) is the central competence center for police IT, police technology and equipment as well as for the daily operations of the police in North Rhine-Westphalia. Vehicles, weapons, equipment, uniforms, equipment and operational technology are tested, procured, developed and maintained by the LZPD NRW as a service and technology authority and made available to all district police authorities. Through central administration at the LZPD NRW, we achieve the greatest possible synergy effect in the standardized procurement of operational technology and equipment.
We guarantee a functioning communications infrastructure for the police and for authorities and organizations with security tasks, such as the fire department. One of the most modern police control centers in Europe, based at the LZPD NRW, supports the district police authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia around the clock, 365 days a year. From here, we coordinate emergency forces throughout NRW, from the riot police to the police aviation squadron to special units in special situations.
In total, more than 1600 employees work at the LZPD NRW at ten locations. In addition to police officers, around two thirds of our employees have completely different professional backgrounds. They work in the fields of: Aircraft or weapons mechanics, automotive mechatronics, administration, law and economics, communications technology, IT, mechanical engineering, engineering, electrical engineering, communications technology and in many other professions. Our main location is in Duisburg's inner harbor. We also have locations in Bochum, Brühl, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Linnich, Lünen, Selm and Wuppertal.
The division of tasks into departments with different divisions, sub-departments and specialist areas ensures that all inquiries and orders submitted to our authority are processed professionally and competently. Criminal Police Office.
The LZPD NRW is involved in various areas of the digital strategy for the future and is investigating, researching and testing its impact on day-to-day police work. The spectrum of in-house possibilities ranges from technology radar and scouting to the independent development of new prototypes and special developments, which can be measured, tested and evaluated in our own EMC hall.
In the field of mobility transition and autonomous driving, the LZPD NRW has worked as an associated partner in the KoMoD-Polizei (Cooperative Mobility in the Digital Test Field Düsseldorf) project in the past and gained experience in the field of networked and autonomous driving. The “Automotive IT” coordination unit continues to monitor technical developments from industry and research and examines and evaluates possible effects on police work at an early stage. To this end, various vehicles can be converted for their specific purpose and equipped with technical devices in the in-house vehicle workshop. If required, these can also be examined in the EMC hall. The “patrol car of the future” was presented as a concept vehicle in cooperation with the Innovation Lab of the LZPD NRW. This serves as a carrier platform for testing new deployment technologies and concepts. The “sensor-based blue light” with integrated video surveillance is currently being tested. The video data will then be computerized in the patrol car.
The Innovation Lab of the LZPD NRW was opened as part of the digital strategy in 2022 to research and support the future of the NRW police. In addition to the technical evaluations and developments that are carried out and implemented there, the lab is a platform for cooperation and the exchange of experience with business and science as well as other security authorities.
One major field of research is robotics, which is being researched in the lab in the form of the dog-like walking robot called “Spot”. Further potential and areas of application for police work are to be identified and tested here. The use of artificial intelligence in the police context will also be analyzed and tested. In addition to the theoretical examination of ethical principles, definitions and compatibilities, the focus is on prototypes that represent concrete areas of application. The freely scalable high-end GPU cluster “Nvidia H100” enables training and interference phases for a wide range of AI models. One of these prototypes is the company's own AI assistant “Ilai”, in which the underlying AI models can be interactively exchanged and their potential usability explored. Due to the wide range of requirements for police tasks, the processing of audio and video signals is also included in the investigation.
