Week 9_IT Use by the Police_Xue Guo

Pang and Pavlou (2016) studies the role of IT in preventing violence against police officers. Specifically, it examines the relationship between IT use by the police and number of police officers killed and assaulted.

The study theorizes that IT use by police helps to develop two kinds of capabilities—intelligence-led policing and community-oriented policing. First, the intelligence-led policing capabilities can help police to identify and solve crime, reduce the chance of violent encounters, and enable control crimes more proactively. Second, a cooperative relationship with the community can effectively control crime, and ensure police officers’ safety. Thus, both the intelligence-led policing and community-oriented policing leads to a reduction in violence against police officers. Then the paper proposes that the use of analytics technology, real-time response technology, and the Internet helps police to develop these IT capabilities.

Empirically, this study used panel data set collected from multi sources (such as LEMAS and UCR). The estimated model uses each functionality of the technology as a variable. The paper estimates the model with random-effects and uses negative binomial regression and spatial autocorrelation models for robustness checks. Also, the paper examines the moderating effects of income inequality and racial disparity. The results show that IT use for crime analysis, dispatch, and the Internet is associated with lower killings of police officers. At the same time, dispatch and in-filed report are associated with fewer assaults of police officers.

This paper provides innovative ideas to combine IT capabilities in organizations with criminology. It empirically demonstrates how different technologies are associated with the safety of the police officers. Also, it expands the current IS literature of IT business value in the public sector.