Law enforcement officers - The State Office of Criminal Investigation holds thousands of weapons for examining and comparing.
Bavarian Police Department boasts one of Germany's biggest arsenals with 8,000 weapons.
The Bavarian Criminal Investigation Department is home to Germany's largest collection of comparison weapons, housing an impressive 8,000 firearms, according to dpa. This is more than what's found in most other state departments, which usually have a couple hundred to 4,000 weapons at their disposal. The Lower Saxony department's collection even boasts an extra thousand pieces.
This sizable collection is used for various purposes, such as checking if spent cartridges found at a crime scene match a weapon believed to be owned by a suspect. While there are thousands of firearms, the collection also consists of unconventional weapons like shock, irritant, and signal guns, air, feather, and gas pressure weapons, as well as around 500 other objects.
In addition to these, the department stores hundreds of kilograms of ammunition and ammunition parts for training purposes and testing. These weapons are critical since they often serve as the foundation for forensic examinations of firearms and their parts. A Bavarian Police Department spokesperson describes the collection as "the basis for the forensic examination of weapons or weapon parts and therefore has a very high value." However, the spokesperson admits that they sometimes run out of essential tools for forensic examinations.
The department gathers these weapons from a variety of sources, primarily seizures made during legal proceedings. After a trial, if there's no need for these weapons, they are transferred to the Criminal Investigation Department, which then decides if they're suitable for the collection. This is a rare occurrence—in recent years, Bavaria has disposed of tens of thousands of weapons and dozens of tons of ammunition not just from criminal proceedings.
The recent focus on comparison weapon collections stems from the Saxony-Anhalt Interior Ministry's announcement in May that they'd found issues with the acceptance of objects like weapons and ammunition at their state's criminal investigation department. It was also revealed that the Saxony-Anhalt LKA had destroyed thousands of rounds of ammunition shortly before a review by the State Audit Office.
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The State Police of Bavaria, known as LKA Bavaria, maintains a significant share of Germany's weapons for investigation and comparison purposes.
Located in Bavaria, the LKA Criminal Investigation Department manages the country's largest collection of comparison weapons, with over 8,000 firearms.
The LKA Bavaria's extensive weapon collection includes not only traditional firearms but also various types of unconventional weapons.
Germany's Police Department in Munich, LKA Bavaria, utilizes this wealth of weapons for forensic examinations, often serving as the foundation for crime scene investigations.
