CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1 Background

The term ‘Police’ broadly connotes the purposeful maintenance of public order and

protection of persons and properties from the hazards of public accidents and the commission

of unlawful acts. The popular belief is that the Indian Police system is a creation of the British

rule in India but a study of the ancient Indian history shows the origin and development of the

law enforcement institutions since Vedic period. Kautilya during Mourya Empire established

an elaborate system of policing and laid down several grades of bureaucracy, could rightly be

called the father of the modern concept of police. Manu who wrote Manu Sanhita is the

oldest code of laws, cited the employment of Guptacharas by King for apprehending miscreants.

The police as a department had become a well established administrative institution during the

Mourya Empire. With passage of time, the responsibility of the police expanded and different

form of organisations created in order to effectively implement the law and enforce order and

bring the criminals to justice. Principles of internal security, the moral and ethical responsiblities

of the state and the system of policing developed in towns and villages were effectively followed

and improved by the successive years. With the advent of the Mughals, policing became a

subsidiary aspect of the conqueror’s strategic, military and revenue collection requirement.

The age-old community based policing was largely replaced by mercenary and exotic group

of people with official patronage. Even then, community policing, either through the landlords

or through village level panchayats and analogous bodies persisted to a certain extent. What

so ever it might be, it was only during Moghuls some kind of organised police was initiated.

When the British occupied the country they found that the indigenous systems of policing

differed from place to place. Realising the need for a unified system all over the country by a

process of experimentation, they ultimately evolved a pattern of police which was embodied

in then the Indian Police Act, (Act V of 1861). Infact it had instituted a system of police which

was basic to all police forces in India even today.

Police during Preindependence : The first hundred years of British rule in India saw a

number of remarkable changes in the system of criminal justice administration with the East

India Company’s interference in the country’s administration, laws were revised to suit the

imperial needs. Warren Hastings suggested the major ammendments in 1772, when he prepared

a detailed note indicating the remedial measures necessary to maintain law and order in Bengal.

His report was later amended from time to time but the basic features still remained discernible.

The report of the first Police Commission appointed on 17th August 1860, contained detailed

guideline for the desired system of police in India. The second Police Commission (1902-

1903) went into details of organisational structure of Police at district level, functioning as

railway police and river police, recruitment, training and pay structure of different subordinate

ranks of police were also introduced. The British contribution was to put the system of policing

on professional footing and to bring about a large measure of uniformity in its laws, procedures

and practices. The present policing system in the country is based on the police Act 1861.

Police after Independence : An important event in the history of Independent India, was

that in 1952, the General Elections to Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies held all

over the country. The police force for the first time acquitted itself very creditably in the

maintenance of law and order and in safeguard of the public tranquility during the elections. In

performance of the difficult and delicate duty, it displayed not only firmness and impartiality

but also a great deal of tact. A number of agitations which were launched in different part of

the country on several occasions on various accounts entailed a great deal of strain on police

but they have come with all credits to the policing system. Thereafter number of commissions

and their recommendations had been considered by both the Central and the State Governments

in number of aspects like their performance, training in crimnology, juvenile delinquency and

correctional ability, maintenance of internal security during wide spread disturbances, main

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features of some recommendations are the allocation of strength in police stations according

to the approved yard sticks used on the changing political, judicial and nature of crime etc.

basic feature remained maintenance of law & order more efficient and effectively, accelerate

the process of investigation of crime in scientific manner. Of the various duties enjoined upon

the state, the foremost duty is to maintain public order and preserve the rule of law. It is one of

the most important pillars of good governance as the collapse of public order and rule of law

can erode the faith of the citizens in their government and erode legitimacy. IT(Information

Technology) can play a pivotal role in transforming the police force from being an oppressive

agency of the government to an agency which first and foremost exists to protect the lives and

liberty of the common citizens. Keeping its importance in mind the National e-Governance

Programme (NeGP) has two mission mode projects one for police eCOPS (electronically

computerized operations for police services), it is also called ePol and the other eCourts for

Judiciary.

e-Computerized Operations for Police Services (eCops) : The police have always been

recognised as vital arm of the state whether in ancient times, during the British rule and even

today in Independence India. Earlier job of police was to maintenance law and order to

establish the sovereignty of the state. In recent times accelerating economic and social changes

accompanied by increasing globalisation and communication revolution have put enormous

pressure on peace and social harmony threatening to disrupt the social fabric. In such time the

police force has to take unprecedented challenges. As India tansitions into new world economy,

a number of factors are operating to make traditional ways of policing obsolete. In addition to

traditional societal problems like crime, mob violence, civil disturbances, terrorism, insurgency

etc. new forms cyber crime, internationally funded terrorism spanning continents international

crime syndicates etc. are emerging. Criminals are steps ahead of the police in making use of

the latest technology including IT in implementing their nefarions designs. This makes it necessary

that the police should also evolve to keep pace with the changing times. Some of the newer

challenges which are faced by the police are rapid urbanisation, rising population combined

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with continued urbanisation creating new challenges like conflict over land, competition for

jobs, pressure on infrastructure and resources, explosive growth of vehicle movement and

religions and political tensions. With increased urbanisation and increasing number of vehicles

on the road traffic control management that includes reduction in road accidents, facilitating

orderly traffic flow and enforcement of traffic discipline will emerge as priority area for the

police.

New challenges to eCops : Growing economic and social inequalities are caused by the

combined forces of globalisation, modernisation and urbanisation. The spiralling economic

inequalities and its impact is widening the rich-poor gap. They include environmental destruction,

migration and conflict wealthier individuals fight to keep what they have while those suffering

lack of resources fight to obtain them. Because poorer groups typically lack the assets and

technology to conduct large-scale conventional war to obtain their goals, they often resort to

low-intensity conflict and terrorism. Expansion of IT and the proliferation of IT in all sphere of

life including the ever-growing Internet and mobile phone subscriber base create opportunities

for significant economic development. Some of the challenges posed by electronic crime are

its global reach, speed, unpredictability of evidence for investigators, anonymity, and potential

for deliberate exploration of sovereignty and jurisdictional issues. It is widely expected that as

technology becomes even more pervasive, traditional threats will increasingly involve aspects

of technology and electronics crime. Globalisation allows multinational criminals syndicates to

broaden their range of operations from drugs and arms trafficking to money laundering,

counterfeit currency, piracy and human trafficking. Role of the police will increasingly be

related to ‘mapping’ and predicting risk within the population. Given the fact that police will

have to face newer challenges in the coming decades, it is imperative that IT must become an

integral part of the police force. The greater emphasis on accountability and transparency in

the police functioning will only increase the load on the police force. The police are also bound

to face increasing pressure from all the stakeholders, not only from the public/media for better

detection, investigation and prevention of crime but also from its employees for better working

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conditions. As a result, the reliance on IT will be necessiating the department to recruit/develop

specialists in the collection and analysis of information.

It has been pointed out in the fourth report of the second administration reforms committee

entitled “Ethics in Governance”. “The relationship of the Government with its constituents,

citizens and business, and also between its own organs can be transformed through the use of

the tools of modern technology such as Information Technology (IT). The digital revolution

has the potential to transform and redefine the processes and system of governance. The most

visible impact has been in access to information and data, in building management information

systems and with the field of electronic service delivery. e-Governance “ecops” is the logical

next step in the use of IT in systems of governance in order to ensure wide participation and

deeper involvement of citizens, institutions, civil society groups and private sector in the decision

making process of governance.

1.2 The Police and Information Technology

Law enforcement along with the entire criminal justice system has been thrust into the

public spotlight over the last few years along with the political figures clamor for law and

order. Although reaction has often been heightened through exaggeration and excess publicity

by media yet citizen concern is widespread. The number of surveys conducted in this regard

showed that a large and growing majority of citizens in the country were doubtful especially

post Mumbai attacks with regards to working of the criminal justice system. This increased

attention has been met with calls for a wide variety of reform. There is a growing pressure on

the Ministry of Home affairs, Government of India, to allocate more and more funds for

modernization of police forces in the states. Within this framework, the application of Information

technology (IT) has been heralded as one of the potential methods by which to improve the

criminal justice system. It is increasingly felt that criminal justice could benefit dramatically

from computer based information systems.

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1.2.1 Use of IT by Police

The growth in computer use by the police seems related to a recent surge in the overall

application of technology to law enforcement. In recent years computers, helicopters,

surveillance cameras, GPS based vehicle tracking systems and modern arms and elaborate

riot-control equipment have become common in the equipment inventories of police

departments in all states. Industrial sources estimated that the budgets for these equipment in

all states would get doubled in the coming years in view of growing terrorist attacks and

armed struggles by separatist movements.

This research study will focus on the use of IT by the police. The purpose of the study

has been threefold :

(i) To determine the state of usage of InformationTechnology by police department.

(ii) To examine the implementation of eCops application closely and to evaluate the positive

and negative aspects of IT use and

(iii) To begin to examine and hypothesize regarding the actual impact the eCops application

on police structure and task results and impact on public and society at large.

In order to achieve such purposes, it is important to provide at least an introductory

understanding of police work and how it relates to the use of the IT.

IT Usage in Police Department :The nature of police work will be discussed and a summary

will be made of the basic issues which are currently faced by the law enforcement community.

With this as a setting, the methods and extent of the research for the study will be outlined.

Throughout the chapter, hypotheses regarding the magnitude and impact of computer use will

be postulated.

In order to explain police departments and the environment which they provide for the

implementation of IT, three topics will be covered :

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1) the nature of police work,

2) the basic issues faced by the police, and

3) styles of police operation.

1.2.2 The Nature of Police Work

As a background in examining the nature of policeactivity, imagine for a moment what

it might be like to serve as a law enforcement officer. In theory, the police have almost no

discretion; officers are to enforce, not interpret, the law whenever an infraction is committed.

In reality, discretion is inevitable. The disparity between law and accepted social behavior, the

inability of police officers to personally observe every public infraction, the lack of factual

information, the need for police to overlook minor crimes in order to obtain information about

more serious offenses, and the intolerance of the public towards a policy of strict enforcement

of every law without exception, all merge together to necessitate the exercise of police judgement.

Discretion is a common ingredient in most publicbureaucracies. However, there is something

uniqueness about the police. In most organizations as a person moves to higher level, movement

is accompanied by a greater freedom of choice and decision making. Complexity increases

with responsibility. This is not the case in police bureaucracies. The lowest ranking officer i.e

Sub Inspector is often given the greatest discretion. In the daily tasks of his work he is continually

forced to make decisions that involve ambiguous conflicts among citizens, or that require

intervention without witnesses or mandates regarding action. Further, this means that the police

administrator is often limited in his ability to control and influence police behavior and public

image. The nature of police work is further complicated by the fact that the police often

consider their job to be an unpopular one and their behavior to be disliked by the public.

Further, police feel that the public is basically hostile towards them. This in turn seemed to

stimulate an “inward movement” among the police. In fact, social cohesion in the department

was derived from this perceived rejection and hostility of the public coupled with the contrasting

warmth, cohesion, and security of the police force itself.” With the focus turned within, the

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potential for corruption seemed to increase. Secrecy became the rule, and there was a suspicion

of change, particularly change introduced from the outside. Within such an environment, one

would expect potential difficulty to accompany the introduction of a computer in a police

department. When relationships and organization structures are formed, people learn to be

comfortable with them and to use them. Security is derived from stability and cohesion. The

result in such a setting is often to defend against change......change such as that imposed by

the IT. The IT is an “innovation,” a new approach to operation, a potential controller and

revealer of valuable information. At least in some departments resistance should be anticipated

and success achieved only if other factors necessary to introduce change into organizations

are taken into consideration and sought out. However, the police process large amounts of

information. Whenever a call for help is requested, it is noted; if an arrest is made, a record is

kept; if an officer in the field is about to stop a car which he suspects to be stolen, basic

information is needed to help confirm or reject his intuition. Such information requests create

a demand to process large quantities of information, capabilities and this demand is ideally

suited to the usage of IT. It will work in favour of utilizing automation in police departments,

particularly if it is introduced with care and tact. One of the greatest abilities of the computer

is to repeat itself precisely, rapidly, and without fatigue. Once programmed to perform a set of

clerical tasks, it can process and retrieve masses of individual transactions in a formal, pre

established manner without error and with great speed and precision. As a consequence, it

should be expected that the computer will take over a large number of the routine information

processing activities which have in the past been carried out on manual basis. A certain

improvement in police effectiveness should be expected as a result of this takeover. In fact,

there is the potential that by utilizing automation to make information instantly available to the

policeman on the street some of the burdens of discretion may be lifted. If a policeman knows

that a person is wanted or that a car is stolen, he may behave in an entirely different manner

than if such facts are unknown and unsuspected.

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However, though the advantages are substantial, the use of IT still presents certain weaknesses.

Two of the most important are the difficulty of programming the machine to perceive behavioral

relationships and to handle human languages. Both limit the application of computers in settings

where human relations are vital, and necessitate the translation and interpretation of information

before and after it is processed. This also means that when computer use by the police moves

from those areas which are simply a replication of routine processing activities towards more

“creative” applications to automate such endeavors as the control and dispatch of police

officers, and the application of advanced techniques to allocate patrol resources, the potential

for difficulty will most likely increase. Communication between those who design computer

programs and those who are to use them will be essential. If results are promised too rapidly,

it is possible that implementation will take longer than expected and disillusionment will be the

result.

In summary, the nature of police work has both positive and negative aspects when

coupled with the potential for computer use. On the one hand, the police task is highly

discretionary and requires large amounts of information to be processed and handled. The

capability of the computer to manipulate such data and to provide information with speed and

precision complements these basic needs of police work. On the other hand, the police have

a tendency to perceive their job to be an unpopular one in the eyes of the public, to seek

privacy in their work, and to resist change. These characteristics coupled with the inability to

program the computer to perceive behavioral relations and to understand and reproduce

human language begin to point to potential problems which may occur in implementing computer

use, particularly in areas where the machine is being used for more than simply automating the

routine processing and retrieving of specific data.

Basic Police Issues : The next few years will be a time of pressure and possible change

within the law enforcement community. The inadequacies of the present system have been

characterized from all sides. On the one hand, publicity rages regarding ‘rising crime rates”

and the need for greater safety on the streets of country. On the other hand, there is a cry for

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a more responsive and personal police force, one that is more fully controlled or at least

influenced by the community and the needs of citizens within the community. It seems that

public and private pressure will result in some change, but it is still unclear as to how much or

in what direction.

There are a number of issues around which discussion seems to focus, but no ultimate

consensus exists. Those questions which seem most basic to the dilemmas of police

administration evolve around three areas: task, structure and people.

- What should comprise the principal task of the police?

- What should be the organization and management structure of police departments ?

- And who should serve as a policeman and what standards should be employed in the

recruitment and training of people?

It is not the claim of this researcher that IT will have a major influence on changing or

resolving these issues, at least in the short run. The conditions of the police are to a large

extent determined by the conditions of our society. As a consequence, IT at best, will have

only a marginal impact. Still, IT is here to stay as an aid in the law enforcement field. It is

therefore, important to begin to ask what influence, if any, this relatively new tool will have on

the basic issues that are faced. Even if the influence to date has been small which by the way

was one of the hypotheses at the outset of this study. It may be possible to start to isolate

trends and to point to future or potential impacts. In order to begin this examination of influence,

the three basic issues facing the police regarding task, structure and people will be briefly

outlined along with hypotheses regarding what the influence of the computer might be in each

area.

The task of Police although the popular image would lead one to believe that the bulk of

a policeman’s time is devoted to crime fighting, such is far from being the case. In fact, a

comparatively small part of a policeman’s time is devoted to crime control and law enforcement.

Instead, service activities and maintaining order occupy the largest portion of police effort.

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Policemen are essentially involved in three types of work: service, order maintenance,

and law enforcement. Regarding the first, service, police are often asked to provide emergency

medical aid, respond to traffic accidents and other emergency needs, escort vehicles, direct

traffic, Bandobast etc. In essence, such activities are intended to please the recipient of the

service. It is only a matter of historical tradition and community convenience that they are

provided by the police. Theoretically, if society chose to do so, such services could be provided

by a private firm perhaps for less expense.

Order maintenance activities invest the police with the responsibility of maintaining peace

in the community. Providing a solution to gang fights, disorderly conduct family trouble, and

neighborhood disturbances are illustrative situations in which the police are called upon to

maintain order. It is in the order maintenance activity that the police find their greatest difficulties

because it is in this area the greatest amount of discretion is required. In disturbance situations

tempers are often on edge, and the wrong action will only bring aggravation. If the situation is

volatile enough a riot may even result. The risk of physical harm is always present. An officer

must often choose between making an arrest or in resolving the situation in another way.

Training for these situations is not in good marksmanship or investigation, but in human

psychology and group behavior.

The third police activity, law enforcement, is the one most commonly publicized, but the

one where the least time is usually spent. It includes such actions as responding to burglary

calls, catching a person in the act of stealing a car while on patrol, apprehending a prowler,

and making a crime related arrest

Given these three areas of police service and thecurrent distribution of police activities,

the basic question is what should be the mission of the police?

Should more time be spent fighting crime or in providing service and maintaining order ?

Some argue that police should be freed from the routine service tasks, and be allowed to

focus on the mission of fighting crime. Others feel that since police actually spend a majority of

their time providing service and maintaining order in highly discretionary and judgement oriented

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situations, training should be altered to reflect this reality (for example, expansion of police

training in areas of social work, family counselling training, etc.).

The basic question for this research study, though, is what influence, if any, will the IT

have on the performance of police task and the resolution of this issue ? In developing the

study the first potential impact that was expected was improved efficiency in carrying out the

activities of the police. In addition, since IT is so good at manipulating quantified information,

it was felt that the computer would lead to a greater emphasis on quantitative data; and

although the influence to date would not be overwhelming, there would be some indication

that the computer would put pressure to define the task of the police in more quantitative

terms. Of the three basic police tasks — law enforcement, order maintenance, and service—

the first, law enforcement, seems to lend itself best to quantification, so if anything, it was

expected that the computer would lead to an increased emphasis on the law enforcement

activities of the police, thus reinforcing what seems to be at least the popular image in defining

police task.

Naturally there are certain risks involved in utilizing a computer and in stressing the

quantitative. In keeping with this it was expected at the outset of the study that the use of the

computer in the performance of police task would raise serious questions regarding privacy

and the maintenance of individual rights. It was also felt that some evidence would be found in

at least some cities which would show that computer use could have a somewhat

depersonalizing effect on police activity (e.g., shifting people around based on needs identified

through quantitative analysis, and as a consequence not leaving a man in an area long enough

to really get to know the people and places so that he would be able to carry out police work

in a cordial and personal manner) if special care was not taken to avoid such influence. Further,

it was hypothesized that the use of the IT and the analysis which it makes possible might

eventually lead to alterations in the way police work was performed . If such was the case it

was expected that some evidence along those lines would be found.

Finally, it was anticipated that the use of the IT would lead to a greater sharing of

information among various police jurisdictions at all levels (local, regional, state and national).

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Before undertaking the study it was clear that “networks” of computer users among various

law enforcement jurisdictions already existed and it was hoped that the research would at

least be helpful in documenting “networks.” the extent. It was the feeling at the outset of the

study that the use of the computer would have had little impact to data on police tasks, but

that there would be evidence of more subtle shifts to come in the future. The issue surrounding

police task are the most significant faced by the law enforcement community, even such subtle

shifts may be of real importance If a resolution is ever made regarding the task of the police,

it will have a major impact on the other two basic law enforcement issues, structure and

people.

The Organization and Management Structure of the Police, are of the basic concerns

regarding police structure today’ is the question of centralization vs. decentralization.

In fact this has stemmed from the almost unquestioned emphasis until the last few years

on the “professional” model of police work as the primary key to police reform. Leaving aside

the “professionalization”, some of the basic tenets which have been at the heart of the system

include highly centralized responsibility (greater power for the chief of police and other

administrative heads of the police department), an effort to eliminate political interference and

corruption both at the precinct and central headquarters level, and an attempt to reduce

discretion by laying down standards and guidelines for behavior and performance. In recent

years, though, there has been a renewed emphasis on at least the rhetoric of returning greater

control to “the people” and on personalizing government through more decentralized forms of

control. With this movement has come varying and sometimes conflicting suggestions for

decentralizing the police.

These range from programs for administrative decentralization within the police

bureaucracy, to proposals for citizen advisory boards to plans for placing the police under

various forms of direct “community control.” At the one end is a call for the administrative

decentralization of the functions of the police. This would give component units of police

departments greater freedom and would result in a shift in decision making power from

centralized control at city headquarters to a greater role at the precinct and district level. At

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the other end of the various decentralization proposals, though, is a call for a dispersal of the

authority of the police, and this is a highly different matter. The objective here is not to merely

pass the power down the line within the police bureaucracy, the purpose is to pass the power

from the police to “the community”, and more specifically that would mean to the various

groupings of political forces which might be found within the community.

On the surface, the basic principles of the proposition seemed straight forward :

1) to form smaller police departments for what appeared to be some what homogeneous

neighborhoods,

2) to make these departments subject to the control of neighborhood councils, and

3) to require policemen to live within the boundary of the police department for which they

work.

Regarding the impact of IT on police structure, it is not supposed that automation will

have much to do, at least in the short run, with proposals to disperse the authority of the police

to “the community” .The resolution of these issues will be primarily political. On the other

hand, it is proposed that the use of the computer by the police will have some impact on the

question of administrative decentralization or movements of control or influence within police

departments. Specifically, two hypotheses were proposed at the beginning of the study :

1. A movement towards greater centralization of power for those at the top level. (although

few people at the top will have taken advantage of the potential gain in control because

of their lack of understanding of the new systems and the inability of computer people

to bridge the gap between computer terminology and police management.) and

2. An increase in influence and importance of those who have technical backgrounds

related to quantitative and IT skills.

Regarding the influence of the IT on police personnel it is hypothesized that technically

educated people will gain in power and influence in police departments. In keeping with this,

there is also the potential that as the information technology and the type of analysis it may

bring increases in importance in police departments, there will be an increase in the quality of

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people who are holding positions of responsibility within the department, at least an increase

in the quality of educational backgrounds of those people.

Finally, it is hypothesized that although the computer will bring a shift in the work activities

of those doing routine and recording tasks in police departments, it will not bring about a loss

of jobs.

Perhaps the most important impact related to people, though, will not be the impact of

the IT on police personnel, but the reverse the impact that police personnel will have on IT

usage. Right from the start of the study it has been anticipated that the actions and reactions of

various people involved in the implementation of electronic data processing in police departments

would have a significant influence on the “success” or “failure” of any given computer

application.

Primarily due to this fact, it is further expected that the “success” and “influence” of IT

use will vary widely from police department to police department throughout the country.

Styles of Police Operation : Police work in India is mainly fragmented and local in character.

When we refer to police, we usually speak of separate police forces in each of the states in the

country. Certainly there are central police forces and networks of state police in each of the

states in the country. However, the guiding principle in the country is that police work is almost

entirely a state function, and that recruiting, training, and levels of compensation are determined

and provided under local state government control.

Even given the fact that police departments are basically different, it is still possible to

identify common groupings or styles of police work. Generally, the identified styles are:

1) The legalistic or professional style

2) The watchman or traditional style

3) The service style

This classification system is useful both in understanding the operations of various police

departments and in hypothesizing regarding the potential of computer use in various police

departments depending upon their style of operation.

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The first, the legalistic or professional style, is characterized by a strict interpretation

and enforcement of the law. The administrator tries to influence patrolmen to handle discretionary

situations in a professional manner and to treat every case in an identical way. If a person is

speeding more than the prescribed limit, for example, he gets a ticket, no matter what the

circumstances. Legalistic or professional departments are usually further characterized by a

centralized organization structure, formal lines of authority, specified standards for recruitment

and training, continuous evaluation, technical efficiency, and good record keeping.

In the second style of department, the watchman or traditional style, the authority structure

is weaker and each patrolman handles situations more or less as he feels best. The focus is

primarily that of maintaining order rather than of strictly enforcing of the law.

Small violation are ignored, patrolmen are encouraged not to create too much publicity, more

home guards are hired, formal training is at a minimum, and in general there is a smaller staff/

population of civilian and technical employees than in professional police departments.

The third style, service style, is oriented towards service to the small homogeneous

community. In fact it is unlikely that this style could exist or be effective in any large urban

community. Law enforcement and the maintenance of order are taken seriously, but police

avoid making arrests or imposing formal sanctions where possible. The police are there to

maintain law and order, but they know most of the citizens personally, and their existence is

primarily to provide service and security.

It is interesting to postulate what relationship if any, the type of police department (whether

legalistic, watchman, or service oriented) will have on the use and application of the computer.

At first examination it seems that IT application would be particularly well-suited for the

legalistic department. The tendency towards technical efficiency is illustrative of the basic

desire in such a department to move towards the more precise enforcement of the law. As a

consequence it can be hypothesized that the IT will be well received in a legalistic department

to the extent that it can aid in this task, both through helping to make performance more

efficient and through providing for more accurate reporting, record keeping, and ultimately

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better evaluation. On the other hand, it can be hypothesized that the IT would be of less utility

in a police department with a traditional or service style of operation where improved efficiency

or the ability to measure strict enforcement may not be considered major benefits.

1.3 Technology of Policing and its ways

Information technology in the narrow sense is not the fundamental technology, or

means of accomplishing work of policing. The primary technology of policing is interpersonal

skills. Considerable research shows that policing works best when deciding is combined with

restrained, respectful listening and talk by Mastrofski [19].

The legitimacy of policing based on the appearance of fairness and procedural

adherence. Policing is about establishing and maintaining trust, and assessingtrustworthiness.

This in turn is envisaged in the fundamental interpersonal realities of our differentiated, mediated

life. The technological infrastructure of policing, the speed and efficiency of information

technologies, is in every way a tertiary with respect to the quality of police work because it

does not foreordain what is done but creates a number of channels for rationalizing it. The

speed and efficiency of policing are in every way ambiguous properties of the practices. The

practices that both shape and are shaped by IT are of interest in that they may alter the

contours of the job, and add to the appearance of modern management techniques.

The features of policing, the contingency, mandate, focus, and responsiveness theme,

shaped by the professionalizing movement and by some innovations, are quite resistant to

change, yet the last thirty years have been dynamic in reshaping society’s modes of

communication, and informationtechnology has been in the forefront of police presentational

rhetoric—the way the police explain their work to others —since computer-assisted dispatch

was introduced in the early 1970s. In order to asses technologically induced change in policing,

it is necessary to define and characterize an organization and its relationship to technology,

especially information technologies. Technology is a chameleon: it simulates its environment.

The literature on information technology and organizational change is extensive.Several

important limits are encountered when the relevant studies of information technology is reviewed.

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The literature seeks to summarize and compare very difference organizational contexts in

reference to their structure, features, external and internal pressures, and the resultant

organisational problems. The technology assisted practices through which work is accomplished.

When these are considered in detail, it is clear that the practices are the levers through which

change takes place.

As it is the role of technologies in organizational change, the rules and routines of

policing, and the limits of the present police information-processing systems are addressed.

The most prominent element in police information processing is that it is not properly a system

because the various databases are not linked to form an integrated, bounded whole. They are

a hidden heap of disparate and unconnected, layered facts. Policing is demand led in the

sense that responsiveness to calls is emphasized, even though more than half the time in random

patrol is spent simply driving around. Calls for service trump virtually all other forms of data

for management and supervision. Intelligence gathering and analysis is virtually nonexistent.

Technology becomes a mode of relating and working that little modifies the actual practices of

policing.

The Information Problem : Normally policing’s mandate, including the theme of demand

production, responsiveness, and the management of calls for service, continues to constrain

efforts to adopt and adapt to new information technologies. The information problem is that

while police store abundant facts, they have little interest in converting, or capacity to convert,

these facts into useful, actionable information in the future. They have virtually no intelligence

or facts gathered in advance of their current utility. The organization locates itself in the here

and now almost exclusively. It is awash with facts and stores its information in many places,

most of them inaccessible by standardized means—written records, electronic files, or archival

repositories. IT works within an organization to convert facts or “raw data,” into information,

or facts placed in a context. Facts, raw data, once placed in some context with a purpose, can

be stored, distilled, elaborated, analyzed, and retrieved in new forms. In a context, information

becomes something, a distinction that makes a difference. It can be used to decide. A fact

must be placed in a context if it is to be understood and acted upon. A call for service is a fact;

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a series of calls for service may be a pattern such as a spatial location with disorderly character.

When a series of facts is converted into a pattern, it becomes information. As long as it is not

put in any underlying set of processes and outcomes, it has little utility. One might say, to push

the matter a bit further, that the present policing style of aimless wandering, followed by

running after one call after another, is fact-based, not information-based, policing. Intelligence

or information-based policing requires another step back to examine problems in advance of

their occurrence. To do this, police are largely unwilling, if not incompetent. If and in so far as

the organization can store, retrieve, and alter its practices in the future as a result of this

information,- it is beginning to be knowledge based, or able to apply generalized information

to recurrent problems.

The abiding focus of country’s policing and its basis in local knowledge, personal

insights, past experiences, anecdotes, semipublic rumours, and gossips, means that any

abstract system of deciding without immediate and transparent utility will be opposed.

Information technology is a multisided mirror. It ingests data, shapes and stores it, transforms

it via coding, formats, software, and hardware, and then produces the texts, screens, files,

images, and sounds used to interpret the work and the nature of the “outside world.” It is

reflexive —it is the primary way in which the organization sees itself, speaks to itself, and

stores its memories. Its very reflexivity is an engima because while it is a way an organization

talks to itself about itself, it is also a conduit of new information. All information must be

repeatedly reframed and recontextualized or else it is not information.

The country’s police have accepted publicly the ostensible capacity of IT and have

framed many processes as instrumental, rather than exploring its inherently problematic features.

They have promoted control rooms/call centres and calls for service without modifying the

nature of the response to these calls. Increased calls have not led to changes in what police do

on the ground. When IT is used rationally to enhance police work, it is brought to bear on the

work as a result of a stimulus, and is contingently relevant or occasioned. Like violence or

coercion in policing, it is used when an occasion or situation requires it. In the sense, it produces

and reflects situational rationality, rather than long-term rationality directed to transcendental

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or formally defined objectives. When IT is combined with the demand-management-incident

focus, the cloying idea persists that policing is only about clearing the present call by whatever

means necessary and returning fairly quickly to service and that investigative work is about

clearing the current case. There are as a result strong sources of tacit and unrecognized resistance

to an integrated system of information processing and deployment of resources.

Technologies and Change : Technologies are a background for imagining. This is glaringly

obvious in the case of information technologies, which work silently, invisibly, and magically.

Work practices need be watched and displayed, shown and learned, and then repeated so

that imagery remains of the work, sedimentation of how the thing (work) is done here. This

demonstrable aspect is particularly powerful in policing because it is a cohort-based, apprentice

like craft learned by watching and emulating and reinforced by story telling by Shearing and

Ericson [36] tools of the trade shift in and out of importance, and are rectified in the oral

culture of policing, vehicles, weapons, communications equipment, strategies, and tactical

lines by Bayley [1] vary in utility. IT lurks, emerging from time to time, but is obscured by the

obvious and traditional means by which the craft is carried out.

1.3.1 Basic Concepts of Technology

“Technology,” like most concepts in the social sciences, is a sponge word that soaks

up meaning as it is used. It is often rectified, or given a concrete reality independent of the

context” or the cues and gestalts that surround its uses. This is misleading. Let us begin with a

basic definition and work “outward” to more complex shading “Technology” is defined in

Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (ninth edition) as “a particular means for achieving

ends.” This is a denotative definition glossed as the totality of means employed to provide

objects necessary for human sustenance and comfort. It is the means of converting “raw

materials” into “processed outputs.” It connectes instrumentality, a focused, direct, and visible

end or product. However, what is “raw” and what is “processed” remains complicated when

both are human beings in complex social relationships. Academic definitions, taking into account

that much technology is information based and involves manipulation of symbols or people,

deemphasizing the material, range widely in their focus and detail.

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Framing technology in a narrow instrumental sense avoids the larger question of its

values and purposes, the hopes and dreams of those who use it, and the connotations of its

workings. Technology must be imagined, and is therefore always more than what is seen,

more than the material, and more than the routines it requires: Information technology, as a

type of technology or means of accomplishing work, is perhaps the most difficult technology

to evaluate because the input and output are both symbolic, and it reverberates and affects

social relationships subtly as well as altering structures via feedback loops by Orlikowski [32].

IT is also shaped and affected by organizational change of other kinds: downsizing,

reducing middle management, altering production processes. Technology causes, facilities or

merely reflects change is perhaps not remarkable, given the great flexibility and adaptability of

formal organizations, and the ambiguity that surrounds the concept “technology” by

Orlikowski [31]. These ambiguous generalizations hold for studies of IT in policing by

Dunworth’s review and Manning [10 , 26].

To put this in positivistic terms, technology in every case is the dependent variable,

not the independent variable. It is in some ways a rational overlay upon the messiness of

human interactions, decisions, and preferences.While organizations try to structure uncertainty

by routine and rule, they are also fluid, meanings-generating, and meanings-based systems.

That is, the collective actions that take place must be interpreted. Formal organizations are

authoritatively coordinated systems of interaction in which the density of interaction is greater

within than between members and other organizations, and they typically occupy an identified

spatial-ecological niche.

One must recall that rational organizations are developed to cope with abiding social

uncertainties. The center of an organization is sense making, or the ongoing, social, plausible

extracting of cues that order experience retrospectively and serve to enact a sensible environment

by Weick [46]. The enduring ground of the work is moral and political, As noted above, work

within police bureaucracies is embedded in processes of moral exchange and reciprocity that

may be disturbed but never totally effaced by technological innovations by Thomas [41].

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Technologies are multivocal they speak with many voices. As Weick [46] writes,

almost in passing, “running the technology is an art form.” He means that responses to events

cannot be fully predicted, that new responses emerge from crises, that events must be

connected to formal goals and rules, and that the more complex and covert the workings of a

technology, the more creative the working be. Yet, dealing with unpredictable departures

from plan and routine, common in every organization except a high-reliability one by Roberts

and Weick [33 , 46], requires collective imagination. What is unseen is the necessary. Departures

from routine, events and responses to them, are particularly indicative in IT because they

induce what might be called the invisibility paradox. As work is more shaped and structured

by technologies, especially information technologies, what is done is out of sight, and what is

required is to orient practices to abstract concepts.

As Weick [46] notes, two invisible processes are at work— that beneath the surface

of the machine and that beneath the surface of the human actor (body and mind) . This implies,

of course, that all work is collective, social, and, in some sense, rooted in sentiments and

practices that must be displayed. The meaning of technologies within this framework takes its

contours through the vocabularies of talk used in the work-ideologies (beliefs about the work),

work-talk (talk about how to do the work), and specific machine talk (talk about how to use

a particular machine). What is not seen (for example, what is indicated by error messages and

failures of computer-based machinery) must be input and interpreted collectively by

Suchman [38]

1.3.2 Information Data of the Police

While many police departments have acquired new Information Technologies, and

most departments typically possess many of them, they remain un-integrated, scarcely used

beyond daily needs, and marginal to the core work as seen by officers. Consider these features

of modern information systems in policing by Sullivan[37].

There are many non linked databanks: national, state, district, sub-divisional, circle

and police station. Many non linked databases are locally sourced ACAD [computer assisted

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dispatching], jail booking system, criminal records, other management data, fingerprints, visual

images such as “mug shots,” records management systems, in most large departments a

Geographical Information System (GIS) that charts data points spatially, and many paper

files. The range of these national, accessible, but non linked databases is large and growing.

These include significantly the basic managerial records-management systems (budgets,

personnel, workload, payroll, leaves and holidays) and various investigative records (detectives’

work, case records, statements, evidence, and court decisions, if any, that are kept either in

paper files or in separate databases) by Sullivan[37]. The latter are not integrated with patrol-

generated data.

Evolution of Computer Use : The scope of computer use in police departments over the

last ten years has evolved and expanded significantly. The earliest computer applications reported

in the I.C.M.A. survey were traffic accident files established in two police departments in

1960. From such an initial use for statistical tabulation and “housekeeping” administrative

tasks, the computer has advanced to a number of applications related to operations,

management, and program planning. Specifically, there seem to be three distinct areas in the

evolution of computer use by the police:

1) 1960 to 1967, when traffic and crime reporting applications were most prominent;

2) 1967 to 1971, highlighted by the rapid expansion of systems for police patrol and

inquiry; and

3) 1971 to a more hazy future, with an increasing focus on the more difficult and perhaps

potentially more beneficial applications related to resource allocation, criminal

investigation, and command and control.

1960 to 1967 , this was the initial era of computer use by the police. First applications

began in the traffic area, and were closely followed by the development of crime-related files

so that the Computer could be used as a tool in filling out local, state, and national crime

reports (e.g., the FBI Uniform Crime report). spreadsheets for accounting and noncriminal

records maintenance by Sullivan[37].

• Large departments have diverse work stations, running software of various generations

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(several versions of Microsoft) and a sprinkling of MACS and IBM clones that do not

speak to each other. Research suggests that they are rarely and poorly utilized Dunworth

[10] and that data transfer is awkward and flawed.

• Changes in software are seldom done well “in house” and, when outsourced, lead to

confusion because training is not provided, new systems have new “bells and whistles,”

arid the oral culture may not exist. A parallel matter is that when federal or state funding

expires for a given software, it is abandoned in time because those who knew the

routines were transferred or retired, and no one knows how to run it.

• Some departments have websites. These websites display descriptive materials, some

data on calls for service or crime patterns, and hyperlinks to other websites. These tend

to be taken-as-read texts with no explication or guidance as to their significance by

Sullivan[37] .

• A variety of limited .and many non linked access points exist. While there are decentralized

terminals in neighborhoods allowing minimal data access to citizens and laptops to be

taken home by officers, few terminals permit direct access for officers or citizens to

detailed maps, selected print-out, or on-line data. The databases that can be accessed

are limited to recent data, and questions of privacy limit access to many databases.

• As described by Sullivan[37] multiple and incompatible channels of communication

connect the public to the police and units within the police department to each other.

These now include websites, e-mail, cell and land based phones, personal visits to

stations, face-to-face encounters, networked communication via fiber optic cables,

paper documents, and e-files sent as attachments. None of these channels of

communication is assembled or noted for overlap, inconsistency, validity, or utility.

Departments are awash with facts, and starved for information.

• Inconsistent user and backside technology interfaces are many by Sullivan[37] .

Departments may have several servers, diverse and uneven main frame access, and

terminals with varied memory and capacity. Perhaps as a result of the adhoc accretion

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of these via purchasing, the influence of grants, vendors, trends, and fads, and now-

abandoned, failed innovations, police have disparate information technology clusters

that are not additive or cumulative in their effects. The closets and tops of file cabinets

are decorated with abandoned user manuals, keyboards, and outdated computers.

• An in-use pragmatism about the IT includes a set of contradictory themes in action; on

the one hand, information is personal property of a kind, to be guarded and protected;

on the other hand, the most useful generally available technologies are those that have

visible, local, immediate, and consequential properties, enabling police to check on

drivers’ licenses and insurance; ownership and registration of vehicles; and prior stops,

arrests, and criminal records of drivers and passengers. These join other reliable and

trustworthy technologies such as vehicles, weapons, and everyday tools of the job

(logbooks, accident-scene equipment, cell phones, and the radio-computer when

help is needed) . Those technologies seen as functioning to surveillance technology,

track, and monitor (and perhaps to punish) workers, such as in-car videos, sound-

recording capacities, and traffic-stop records, are to be sabotaged, turned off or on as

need be in the situation, or used as self-protective devices.

It is clear that the present mode of policing shapes the data collected and used, not the

other way around. An engineer might think of the police in this regard as a kind of failed

information-processing system.

Technology has many ways, and combines in a deceptive waythe logical, the social,

the imaginative, and the instrumental aspects of its work.

Looking at policing and the police’s uses of technology, we see that even the most

advanced forms of communicative technologies have been back-fitted to the extant structure

and traditional processes of the police organization by Sullivan[37] . Police departments in

our country has not yet reached the state where information is refined and systematically

integrated with information technologies to facilitate problem solving, crime prevention, policy

analysis, or community interfaces.

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Dunworth’s review [10] suggests that in general none of these is operational in any

police department and that the fundamental dimensions of community policing—interface with

communities, inter organizational links, workgroup facilitation, environmental scanning, problem

orientation, area-based accountability, and strategic management—are nowhere to be found

in well-developed form.

Putting police work in this broader context is an attempt to see how technology in

policing is defined. Describing this context is meant by the enframing of technology. it is defined

in a way that obscures its unacceptable dark side, that which is not readily seen or to hand.

What are the negatives, the unanticipated, the consequential that are denied or not seen of a

rapid, mobile, impersonal set of units providing human services? The rapid rise of information

technology, coupled with computer-assisted dispatch, has increased the demand for policing,

and the perception that calls for service need be disposed of in some fashion.

The core of the resistance to change is not openly acknowledged as such, and change

is seen as a question of training or education. Resistance works indirectly to shape and alter

plans for transforming policing via information technologies such as crime mapping. As long as

policing is defined as doing the necessary at the time it is called for, major internal change will

not occur.

The material aspects of IT in respect to the space taken, size, capacity, and functions

of the technologies in use in crime mapping and crime analysis. In describing the social in

respect to the interactions that take place between the users and the machinery, and between

the users and the users, in connection with work. The logical aspects of the technology, what

can be produced, and how, are also considered in the case studies.

The most significant aspect of police technology is the imaginative or that which is

seen as possible, ready to hand, something one can do with it. In many respects, although the

material presence in departments is sometimes too modest (too little memory in the main

frame, too few powerful notebooks, dated hardware), the hard- and software and capacity

of the technologies is vast, under utilized, and far too elaborate for the actual uses to which it

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is put. In the case studies, the absence of imagination on the part of the users— the data

minders, the support staff, and the public—most restricts the innovative possibilities associated

with crime mapping and crime analysis. What is on the surface, visible, and the formal capacities

of the software and hardware obscure the deeper potentialities of the information technologies.

These things are not visible, ready to hand, or even manifested easily. In some ways, the

material and the logical are the instrumentalist side of technologies, while the social and

imaginative are the expressive or symbolizing sides. In policing, the craft focus, as discussed

above, limits the social and imaginative radically, whatever the enhanced capacity of the

machinery. The way these limits are played out is a function of the organizational context,

which we shall examine in detail in the case studies and the reflective materials.

1.3.3 Current Technology

Some of the properties of current police- used information technology are taken into

consideration. Technology in use, whether in the communications center, on patrol, or in

investigations, produces pressures to reduce the time available for deciding and reflection.

Operators are surveilled by several means to coerce them to rapid processing of calls for

service and to precise, categorical, by-the-numbers dispatching by Manning [23]. Patrol officers

are encouraged to keep up their numbers, to be productive, e.g., by running number plates,

making traffic stops, and returning to service by Meehan [27]. Detectives are pressured to

“produce” clearances and so focus on the few cases that can be cleared .

The greater the time constraints on action, given ambiguity in technological human

interaction, the greater the tendency for coping on the basis of collective cues and signals by

Janis and Mann [16]. Technology so used compresses deciding time, and simplifiescomplexity.

Police organizations shape their responses to technology. These responses suggest a continuing

response, and it is likely that organizations shift modalities from crisis to routine and from

logics of practice to rule-based definitions. Crisis and routine are fundamental conditions,

always implicit or shadowed, one by the other. Crises can arise internally as a result of a

succession crisis in an organization such as the naming of a new chief, or externally, when a

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fatal attack, chase, or accident involving police occurs. Work arises to fill the time available to

do it. In every police department, detectives claim they are overloaded regardless of the

workload; patrol officers complain of the same. As MDTs (mobile data terminals) are installed

in patrol cars, officers increase their .inquiries to databases by Meehan [27]. Technologies

touch off shifting modalities within organizations, not single, stable responses to a stable

environment. The police environment is fraught with uncertainty. The most important oscillation

is between routine and emergency. The influx of information about a riot, a disaster, or a flood

of calls for service may require changes in command authority (it moves up in emergencies),

resources available (assets), and deployment.

In an emergency mode, the organization communicates internally and externally quite

differently by Manning [25]—more quickly and with less reflection and anticipation of

outcomes. In other words, from a rhetorical perspective, organizations in crisis act differently

than organizations in a routine mode. They are almost two different organizations. As the

police organization increases its capacity to make short-term surveillances and interventions,

it increases the use of “high tech”- based activities, e.g., heavily armed and elaborately uniformed

strike teams or “dynamic entry” teams for relatively benign incidents. These encounters increase

the chances for a mistake in judgment, a bad shooting, a false entry, a response to an exaggerated

risk. Technologies stimulate and shape routines. While routines are malleable, subject to change

and reorganization by Feldman and Pentland [11], they persist. The segments of the

organizations, e.g., top management, middle management, and the lower participants, tend to

be loosely connected, one with the other, through routines that are occasioned. For example,

e-mails are typically monitored and suppressed, when sent to the top command, and

paperwork rarely rises to the top; routine change almost always occurs as a result of

communication from the top down.

While IT produces material constraints—it occupies space, has weight, and possesses

other physical properties—IT also produces symbolic verbal responses and counter responses

that are attempts by those in power to stabilize the organization. The time frame of introduction

and response to new technology will shape the types of responses the organization makes to

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and with technologies by Manning [25] . When IT violate the zone of indifference at the

bottom, that is, when monitoring and surveillance are seen as “big brother” activities, the

relevant IT will be sabotaged, damaged, turned off, not used at all, and resisted. This takes

place in connection with audio and video monitoring of patrol officers (installed in cars making

traffic stops), transponders, and GPS devices used to track the movements of unit by

Meehan [27].

Technologies dramatize differentially routines and practices. Rules in police

organizations, perhaps more than in other organizations because they are designed to reduce

temptation and corruption and provide a basis for punishment, are complex, opaque, and

seen as capricious in their application. Police organizations are “mock bureaucracies” designed

to provide flexibility in sanctioning and punishing workers, not give them prospective guidance

by Gouldner [15]. Technologies with features that decrease effort in respect to valued routines-

checking data from traffic stops, running field stops data, or running credit checks—are used

and praised; those that are associated with unwanted efforts or disvalued routines—with

“paperwork,” whether electronic, typed, or handwritten—are ignored, sabotaged, or seldom

used. Technology adds to uncertainties; it does not reduce them. The central uncertainties

remain because exceptions are omnipresent. Policing is a process designed to deal with

complexity and with exceptions. Rules for organizing are bureaucratic until such matters as

“exceptions” must be handled. Exceptions fall to the top management to define and resolve;

thus, what top management does is define into the routines those matters that are in fact

outside of their control.

In summary, while the managers of organizations struggle to produce orderly processes

through rules, routines, and procedures, and by adopting new technologies that are intended

to control the worker, they constantly fail to achieve their overt public aims. On the other

hand, the rationality of the worker, poised between work control and rate busting, persists

and determines production, e.g., responses to calls for service, clearance of crimes, and visits

to schools and neighborhood meetings.

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The workings of technologies, including information technologies, are best seen or

re-vealed by looking at how people use them. This is true because information technologies,

as noted above, are invisible in their interior workings. Think of interpreting messages

when using the internet: “HTTP error 5505”; “Network Timeout”; “browser error”; “not a

valid command”; “logging in”; “page not available or expired”; etc. At times, these messages

say that something is wrong and at other times they make positive statements. The source(s)

of the error are unspecified and remedies are not suggested. The way one makes sense of

these breaches suggests what the underlying order and ordering is. When action requires

reaction, it must be collective, and such sense making must be seen, shown, and communicated.

This view of technology means, as I argued above, that key and thematic situations must be

studied in an organization in order to set out the context of technology’s ways—much of it

imaginative and cognitive work.

Since new technology confronts old practices, ideas, and even instrumental functions,

it creates anomalies. Historically, the key situations in policing are defined by the uniformed

patrol officers’ practices —those “on the ground,” at the street level. Problems are best dealt

with, it is believed, by “street smarts” — practical, common sense decisions and actions (from

the perspective of the occupation’s practitioners, not the public they face) . The broadening of

police practices to include crime mapping and crime analysis moves not only the locus of

deciding, and the key situations, but also the level of abstraction required to deal with a

problematic situation. Consider the problem of a “burglary” for a patrol officer. For the street

officer, a burglary begins with a call from a dispatcher (or, rarely a person asking for assistance).

The facts of a “burglary” must first be processed at a communication center, then formatted,

passed on, and responded to by an officer. Others may hear the call on the radio and back up

the call. How else could the burglary be known to a patrolling officer? If the officer on the

scene decides to officialize” the job, he/she must put the facts in new contexts, for example,

make a note in the car’s logbook (a different format), write up a report, and pass this on to

investigators. Opening a case file i.e FIR means that it must be closed in some fashion; there

are strong reasons for not opening a new case file—it may mean more paperwork. The

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officer may provide feedback to the dispatcher about the disposition of the case and their

current location and status. Officers must put facts in new formats and new contexts. New

cues are attended to by detectives. They assess the salience and presence of needed facts

(e.g., any victims, witnesses, physical evidence, records of the property taken) . Now, given

format, and ranking of facts, there is a difference between the operators’ facts, the patrol

officers’ facts, and the investigators’ case. There is some information (facts, in this context)

present that may increase the possibility that the case will be cleared.

If the cases solved in this way have apparent similarities— e.g., they are burglaries of

small shops without security guards and/or alarms at night—and this information is made

available to other officers, there may be a repository of knowledge that can foreshadow

future “break-ins” in shops of this type. This concern for pattern moves toward the possibilities

represented by crime analysis because such events can be mapped temporally and spatially.