The date should have been entirely to Peter Beuth's taste.

Most recently, the Hessian interior minister had to answer uncomfortable questions.

Because elite police officers shared right-wing extremist content with one another in chats, the CDU politician even saw himself compelled to dissolve the entire Frankfurt Special Operations Command (SEK).

But now, in the “Innovation Hub 110” of the Hessian police force, Beuth was able to announce good news: The agency has made noticeable progress in digitization since last summer.

That was the message from the chief employer of the Hessian police on Thursday afternoon.

Alexander Juergs

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Since last August, the “Innovation Hub 110” has been working on the digital transformation of the police authorities; the facility in Frankfurt's Westhafen is known as an IT think tank.

She is housed in a modern office complex.

There is little reminiscent of a police station, more like a start-up.

"Think big, start small"

Bodo Koch, the head of the digitization department, is an eloquent speaker. “Think big, start small,” is how the detective director describes his approach. He has 30 employees in the “Innovation Hub 110”, most of whom are software developers. A newly developed query app was presented there, which is supposed to make the work of the Hessian patrolmen easier. Police officers from Frankfurt and Bad Schwalbach have already subjected it to a practical test in a pilot test.

In the case of traffic controls, for example, the police will in future be able to use the app to query the data of the person being checked directly via smartphone.

In the past, this usually required a radio call to the office, and that cost time.

Thanks to the app, the police officers know who they are dealing with during the inspection after just a few moments.

And they are warned more quickly if their counterpart is considered dangerous, has weapons or has an arrest warrant against him.

That also makes the work a little safer for the officers.

Scan via app

Another advantage of the app is that it can also be used to scan ID cards, passports and driver's licenses.

The police officers can compare the photos stored when the documents were created with those in the passport.

If a document was forged, they would notice it more quickly.

Another plus of the app: It makes the paperwork, which is usually still necessary for the police, superfluous.

Because what was once recorded via the app does not have to be re-entered into a police computer later.

"That is a huge relief," says one of the police officers from Bad Schwalbach who took part in the pilot test.

Interior Minister Beuth calls the new digital application “a milestone”. These and other apps will improve the quality of police work, which will save the officers a lot of time. “We will use digital technologies to become even better,” he says. Other apps would follow, for example one for the fight against the spread of child pornography.

So that the software developed in “Innovation Hub 110” can soon be used across the board, Hesse's police officers are to be equipped with new smartphones and tablets.

By the beginning of next year, all patrol officers on security and exchange duty will initially receive a service cell phone, and then all other police officers will have a cell phone by the end of 2022.

That's the plan.

A total of 17,600 new devices will be distributed, around 75 million euros will be invested in this by 2025.

Because part of it, namely five million euros, comes from the budget of the digital ministry, digital minister Kristina Sinemus (CDU) will also be there on Thursday.

"Identify the querying party very specifically"

From, as IT specialist Koch calls it, “rollout” of the new devices is also expected by the police to provide more data security. Because the use is linked to a verification of biometric features. If a police officer wants to use his device, he has to identify himself using face recognition or fingerprints. And even if he wants to query data on a computer in the office, he will have to identify himself with his office cell phone in the future. “In this way, we can identify the person making the query with every query,” says Beuth.

In this way, the police are also reacting to threatening letters signed “NSU2.0”, which for years have been sent to left-wing politicians, committed artists and civil rights activists, as well as to victim lawyers in the NSU trial. The Frankfurt lawyer Seda Basay-Yildiz, who represented the family of the first NSU victim Enver Simsek in the trial, received death threats several times containing personal, secret data such as her address. Investigations revealed that shortly before a death threat was sent, the lawyer’s data had been accessed by a computer in the First Frankfurt Police Station.

The new procedure, in which police officers have to identify themselves using fingerprints or facial recognition, is now intended to put a stop to such abuse. In this way, unnoticed queries on police computers are to be made impossible. But that is no guarantee that such incidents will never happen again, says Beuth. "Abuse can never be completely ruled out."