POLIZEI BERLIN

Their core work

Polizei Berlin is the official police force of the German capital, one of the largest metropolitan law enforcement agencies in Europe with over 25,000 personnel. In EU research, they participate not as a technology developer but as an operational end-user and practitioner partner — contributing real-world field expertise, serving as test environments for new methods, and validating research outcomes against actual policing conditions. Their H2020 involvement spans two distinct areas: improving how frontline officers respond to high-impact domestic violence cases, and developing VR-based training systems that improve officer decision-making under pressure. For research consortia, they offer something academics and tech firms cannot: access to active operational contexts, serving officers as test subjects, and institutional knowledge of what actually works in the field.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Polizei Berlin's first H2020 project (2018) focused on reactive frontline response — specifically how officers handle domestic violence situations once they arrive on scene. Their second project (2019) shifted toward proactive capability-building: using VR and human factors science to train officers before they face such situations. This is a meaningful directional change — from studying what goes wrong in real incidents to engineering better cognitive and behavioral performance in training environments. The trend suggests growing interest in simulation-based, data-driven training methodologies rather than purely procedural or policy-level interventions.

Polizei Berlin is moving toward immersive training technology and human performance science, suggesting future collaboration interest in simulation systems, cognitive training, and officer readiness assessment tools.

How they like to work

Polizei Berlin always joins as a participant, never as a coordinator — consistent with how large public authorities typically engage in EU research: as operational partners rather than project managers. With 28 unique partners across only 2 projects, they work in notably large, diverse consortia (roughly 14 partners per project), which reflects the multi-stakeholder nature of law enforcement research. They are a practitioner anchor in these consortia, providing the operational legitimacy and field-testing environment that justifies the research to funders and makes outputs deployable in real contexts.

Across 2 projects, Polizei Berlin has built connections with 28 unique partners spanning 12 countries — an unusually broad network for such a small H2020 footprint, reflecting the pan-European composition of security research consortia. Their geographic spread suggests comfort operating in EU-wide multi-partner environments despite having no coordinator experience.

What sets them apart

Polizei Berlin is one of Europe's largest city police forces, and that scale is precisely what makes them valuable as a research partner — they can run pilots at operational volume with real officers in real units, not simulated environments. Unlike smaller municipal forces or national police academies, they operate in a high-complexity urban environment that generates genuine edge cases in domestic violence response, crisis management, and training needs. For any consortium building a security research proposal that requires practitioner validation or end-user field deployment, a partner of this operational weight significantly strengthens the application's credibility with evaluators.

Highlights from their portfolio

• SHOTPROS
  The largest-funded project (€247,500) and the more technically distinctive one — applying VR and human factors science to police training, a combination that positions Polizei Berlin at the intersection of immersive technology and law enforcement practice.
• IMPRODOVA
  Addresses domestic violence as a law enforcement challenge rather than purely a social policy issue, making Polizei Berlin a rare practitioner voice in a research area that often lacks operational grounding.