9 Jul 2025
LMU linguist Jörg Roche and his team have developed an app for the police. Its aim? To help the police communicate clearly, with legal accuracy and in a way that de-escalates situations – even in foreign languages.
In collaboration with the Munich Police Department, Jörg Roche, Professor of German as a Foreign Language at LMU, has developed the innovative “FLAP” translation app for use by police working in the field. On 9 July 2025, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, Munich Police Commissioner Thomas Hampel and LMU Munich Vice President Professor Francesca Biagini together unveiled the app to the public. Reports on experience gained during pilot operation were also presented.
At the official presentation: Professor Jörg Roche, Vice President Francesca Biagini, Interior Minister Herrmann, and Munich police officials (from left).
The app is intended to help overcome language barriers, for example during police identity checks. | © Prof. Jörg Roche
LMU-Professor Jörg Roche is used to helping others with his expertise. When large numbers of migrants came to Germany in 2015, it was to him – the Professor of German as a Foreign Language (DaF) at LMU – and his institute that many interest groups and associations turned. They asked for help in mastering the challenge of teaching German efficiently and professionally – especially at schools and vocational colleges – to children and adults who had only just arrived in the country and were not yet able to understand much or express themselves. “Back then, we were already engaging intensively with the Ministry of Culture on the subject of German as an occupational language,” Roche recalls. “That is where teachers went who didn’t really know how to deal with some situations. They were told: Go to Roche, he’ll help you.” The professor smiles: “It was as simple as that.”
The university programme on German as a foreign language included students of many nationalities. Here, a number of students and staff had already taken the initiative and compiled initial materials to make life easier for refugees who need to find their way around in a foreign country and a foreign language.
Working together with a team from the Institute of German as a Foreign Language, Roche designed the project “Teach – Learn – Help” as a navigation aid for refugees: In simple language flanked by pictures, videos and audio sequences, the app explains the basics of living in Germany. It was initially financed out of the conservative party’s project budget at the state parliament level. Later, the money came from the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior. The project was followed by a second app providing guidance in social contexts – from looking for somewhere to live to issues around health, work and legal matters. Still later, yet another app using cartoon depictions supplied information about the corona rules in 15 languages.
In the process of constantly updating, developing and improving existing materials and during training courses for groups wanting to assist asylum seekers, the topic of communication with the police came up again and again. “The police are a separate entity in this context,” Roche says. “They have a lot of contact with refugees. Officers often face huge challenges when their interlocutor speaks neither English nor German, especially if their own English is not always sufficient to communicate effectively. Another issue is that, in many of the countries from which people have fled, the police serve a different function and are seen differently to the force in Germany. Especially for people from volatile countries of origin, police officers are often regarded as corrupt, unfair or violent.” This, Roche adds, leads to further communication problems as some refugees tend to run away from the police or become aggressive even in non-threatening contexts.
Roche and his team offered to develop a special language app for the Munich police. A long-term project with the Munich police department’s crime prevention unit was thus set in motion. Officers repeatedly came to the University to outline key issues, special challenges and communication problems in their everyday work. Important topics included identity checks, but also restraining orders and prohibited gatherings at soccer matches, for example, as well as incidents involving domestic violence. The officers described typical incidents to the DaF team, emphasizing the need to establish clarity and to de-escalate even heated encounters despite the language barrier.
The app developed by Roche and his team addresses a wide range of these situations. “In the case of an identity check, for example, it is useful if the person being checked knows exactly what is happening and what their rights and duties are: that they have to show their ID card, but that they will get it back; and that only their documents are being checked – that this does not involve a body search, for instance,” Roche explains. The app enables police officers to play a video explaining the legal situation and what happens next in many different languages, for example. Even the fact of briefly pausing to watch the video can sometimes have a de-escalating effect, Roche says.
When producing this material, the team first had to overcome two major challenges. The first was simplifying the language to such an extent that it was readily comprehensible to the target group. Yet at the same time, all formulations had to be legally accurate – and that both in German and in the many other languages programmed into the app. “Get that right and you’ve scored a hattrick,” Roche notes. “It is not always easy to reconcile comprehensibility to legally binding language. And the visuals have to be designed in such a way that they don’t look ridiculous but are also not too complicated.”
To square this circle, the team turned to what are known as warrantors: mostly students from the institute who are themselves native speakers of a given language. They in turn asked friends or relatives from their respective home countries to test the app and give them feedback. The finalized texts were then translated into other languages by court-approved translators.
The second challenge involved guaranteeing technical security. That is why the police need a special app, because officers are not allowed to use commercial services such as ChatGPT or DeepL on their work mobiles. The DaF team’s language app also had to comply with the strictest security standards. “Doing that and validating that on the technical side took a long time for the police app,” Roche explains. It was worth the effort, however: An initial pilot deployment during the Oktoberfest was extremely successful. Right now, the project is in a second, larger pilot phase. And once again, the feedback to date has been extremely positive. Starting in June, the app is to be rolled out as standard issue on the work mobiles of the Munich police force.