Promising Practices

Good cooperation and coordination relations between LEAs and local actors, from both the public and private sectors has been shown to increase the effectiveness and stability of community policing initiatives, by strengthening public engagement. Depending on the topic and partners the cooperation and coordination activities can take multiple forms, ranging from full-scale networks for the exchange of information and best practices to operational coordination or project-related partnerships.

It is important for the cooperation to have a solid foundation, taking into considering both material and cultural factors (e.g. level of trust in police) and to address areas of direct interest for all parties involved. The Internet, social networks and apps can help foster and strengthen such networking activities, by promoting greater ease of interaction and a less bureaucratic mode of communication.

Examples of cooperation/coordination activities:

• in Utrecht, Netherlands, the Mobile Safety Watch project is the result of collaboration involving the University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht Police department, Dutch Centre for Innovation and Safety, Dutch television program "Opsporing verzocht", and various neighbourhood watches (Verhoeven et al., 2011).
• In Albania, the "Digital Commissioner" initiative (see above) arose from collaboration involving the Ministry of Interior, Vodafone Foundation and the Protik ICT Resource Center53.

Mode of implementation

• Creating dedicated services inside LEAs for local actor networking/partnerships
• Improving public relations services
• Promoting structured partnerships with stakeholders
• Adopting technological solutions which facilitate networking and collaborative work
• Guaranteeing privacy and data protection to all activities

Before and during the implementation of community policing programs, law enforcement agencies should aim to improve the way they collect and manage information on the physical, economic and social of the area, the local actors and the problems they are confronting with. Good knowledge collection and management skills can significantly improve the efficiency of the community policing program and increase the level of citizens’ participation. In this case, citizens act as both sources of and interpreters of information, assisting the police in developing community policing strategies and programmes. The involvement of the citizens can be facilitated using social media and apps.

Mode of implementation

• Define pragmatic goals for the knowledge collection and knowledge management practices
• Use tried and tested platforms and apps for the collection and management of information
• Involve stakeholders who can act as sources of information on local problems
• Provision of human resources for research and knowledge management
• Provision of financial resources for research and knowledge management
• Provision of technical resources for research and knowledge management
• Inform citizens on how they can contribute to community policing programs

Raising public awareness of local security issues, as well as of the initiatives and programs implemented by law enforcement authorities contributes to fostering trust between citizens and LEAs. Police should continue to inform citizens about the objective risk they might face, using different educational programs, including the distribution of booklets containing concise and relevant information about crime rates, the criminal justice system and the activity of the police in general.

The Internet, social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) and and different apps can support police in raising public awareness on security issues.

Mode of implementation

• Information included in public awareness campaigns should be clear and should focus on local problems;
• Information should be provided in a reliable and regular manner;
• Police officers should always display a friendly attitude towards the public
• Police officers should also be made aware of the value to policing of increasing public trust.
• If apps are used for public awareness purposes, they should be specifically created for this purpose
• Continuous provision of digital information nodes, linking to other government and social services;

Increased citizens’ participation in community policing programs increases their efficiency and efficacy. Because local communities are not homogenous units, increased participation in community policing is very important as it enables the inclusion of that different points of view, sensibilities, and problems. A wide participation also ensures a better pooling of resources among different types of actors.

The concrete ways in which citizens are invited to participate in community policing program should be tailored in accordance with the security needs for that local area to ensure the program’s relevance and effectiveness.

Neighbourhood Watch Groups (NWGs) have been proven to be useful instruments for increasing citizens participation in community policing programs by assisting individuals, who may have previously felt isolated or unknown in their respective communities to form social relations. These increased interactions between residents of a certain community foster, in turn, social cohesion in communities previously characterized by alienation and community apathy.

It is important to remember that community actions connected to community policing should not solely focus on crime, as crime per se is not a major motivation for long-term collective actions. Research indicates that community organizations which have multiple goals, among which crime control, are more likely to be successful.

Examples:

• The Community Policing Model implemented in Portugal by the Lisbon Municipal Police since 2009, which was founded on the assumption that to be able to communicate with citizens and establish a trusting relationship in diverse cultural contexts, it is important to first implement a training-action strategy. The strategy focused on intercultural and mediation learning skills targeting jointly police officers, community mediators and local partners on intercultural competences and mediation skills, promoting an exchange of visions and perspectives.
• “The ’Vigilant Neighbours’ platform, in France, is a community website supporting residents of a neighbourhood to join together in fighting against the dangers of burglaries.
• The NW Alert Notification System in the UK which allows co-ordinating bodies for the UK Neighbourhood Watch to send out email alerts to all of their registered contact persons, allowing national dissemination to potentially thousands of neighbourhood watch members in a very short period of time.
• The Community Speedwatch is a method of traffic speed control involves trained volunteers pointing a speed gun at vehicles driving through an area known in the past for speeding, and has generated mixed responses from the general public, both positive and negative.
• San Jose: CityConnect smartphone application – allowing the Police department to inform, connect and engage with the community.

Mode of implementation:

• Keep in mind that communities like to engage with police officers and police staff;
• Assist communities to create Neighbourhood Watch Groups in which residents watch out for suspicious behaviour in their neighbourhoods and transmit the information to the police;
• Provide training to the citizens who join Neighbourhood Watch Groups;
• Set-up an efficient reporting system between the NWGs and the police;
• Respond efficiently to the reports made by the NWGs;
• Be open and transparent about any expenses, fees and costs relating to Neighbourhood Watch matters;
• Have a good awareness of social needs and problems in that community;
• Use a mix of communicative approaches (face-to-face and online);
• Encourage the active involvement of local opinion leaders;
• Use adequate ICT equipment and access for citizens’ participation as well as adequate apps;
• Use data collected in a confidential and careful manner;
• Re-organization of LEAs, especially at local level focusing on the way offices function, logistics and investment in human and material resources.

Resources:

• Wisler, D. and Onwudiwe, I. D. (eds.) (2009), Community Policing: International Patterns and Comparative Perspectives (Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press).
• Williams, M. L., Edwards, A., Housley, W., Burnap, W., Rana, O., Avis, N., Morgan, J. and Sloan, L. (2013), "Policing cyber-neighbourhoods: tension monitoring and social media networks", Policing & society, 23(4): 461-481.
• Diniz M. and Santa Cruz C. (2015), Lisbon Community Policing – The challenge of the intercultural and mediation approach. Paper at the Conference “Evidence-based policing: New perspectives of cooperation between practice, education and police science”. CEPOL, Escola de Policia Judiciaria, 5-8 October 2015, Lisboa.
• https://www.voisinsvigilants.org/voisin
• http://www.hampshire.police.uk/internet/advice-and-information/crimeprevention/community-speedwatch

Serious games are useful tool to foster citizen’s engagement in making their community safer. While some games can actually teach citizens’ useful skills for community policing activities (e.g. facial and/or object recognition) the main aim of serious games is to given citizens’ positive feedback about their abilities and encourage them that they have the skills to engage with LEAs.

Examples:

• Facesketch - an avatar creation and similarity game;
• Identiface - face-recognition and memory game.

Mode of implementation:

• Citizen engagement games need to support choices and agency;
• The design of the engagement game should focus on competence as the primary motivational intervention. The ability remember more clearly the face of a person of interest, or a vehicle could increase people’s confidence in engaging with the police. By rewarding the player for becoming better at recognising faces we are also connecting with the need for competence;
• The game must provide both relatedness and preserve the privacy of the player, which can be achieved by developing a privacy preserving high score system.
• The design of the game should focus on finding a hook for the player to continue to play the game, and to associate playing the game with some other motivating activity (e.g. becoming better observers of human faces);
• Given the ethical concerns associated with this issue, any serious game designed at increasing citizens’ engagement with community policing programs should be aligned to the following set of principles for the gamification:
• The game must never encourage citizens to falsely report a crime or provide false information;
• The game must not re-enforce, or appear to re-enforce, stereotypes about race, socioeconomic status, gender, or cultures;
• The game must not encourage citizens to engage in policing activities, particularly in countries where this is explicitly prohibited;
• The game must not include recognizable human characters which could be associated with either criminal activity or antisocial behaviour;
• The game must not exclude people based on technology or previous gaming experience.

Resources:

• David J. Robertson, Eilidh Noyes, Andrew J. Dowsett, Rob Jenkins, and A. Mike Burton. Face recognition by metropolitan police super-recognisers. PLoS ONE, 11(2):1–8, 02 2016.
• Gary L Wells, Elizabeth A Olson, and Steve D Charman. The confidence of eyewitnesses in their identifications from lineups. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(5):151–154, 2002.
• Aditya Khosla, Wilma A. Bainbridge, Antonio Torralba, and Aude Oliva. Modifying the memorability of face photographs. In The IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2013.
• Maleknaz Nayebi, Bram Adams, and Guenther Ruhe. Release practices for mobile apps–what do users and developers think? In 2016 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER), volume 1, pages 552–562. IEEE, 2016.

A culture of openness and accountability builds trust between the police and the community, while also enabling community policing programs to work more effectively. The public relates to public bodies through trust and confidence in their performance and the quality of the service they provide, which are communicated transparently and comprehensibly. To gain the public’s trust the police as a public body is therefore tasked with providing the public with relevant and accurate information on all issues under their responsibility, and of keeping communication channels open for interaction with the public. Trust-building should also be carried out in the opposite direction, by fostering police trust in citizens and recognizing them as credible and valuable interlocutors.

The use of ICT, and social media in particular, may help create this climate of trust and also greater accountability in the police in its attitude towards the public.

Community policing programs must have clear and transparent procedures to prevent, detect and punish the community policing personnel violating their legal or ethical obligations.

Examples:

• The UK Neighbourhood Watch Network ethics and standards guidelines for members and groups are an example of police ethical guidelines which transparency in the police– citizens’ relationship.
• Boston Police Department community policing and social media strategy

Mode of implementation

• Trust-building tools should always be developed by taking into account the local situation and needs;
• A key aspect of trust is the need to guarantee citizens’ privacy;
• Always be accurate, open, fair, honest and transparent in what you communicate to the public;
• Enable public access to information to achieve transparency. This can be achieved by creating points of contact with the community, such as specially designated and trained communication officers;
• Continuous provision of general information on police services and activities;
• Continuous provision of digital information nodes, linking to other government and social services;
• Add a “human side” to policing, e.g. by reporting on daily police activities in the community;
• Document and report unlawful police actions;
• Using ICT to provide an exchange information and/or to publicize success stories in the fight against crime;
• Display a friendly attitude to the public;
• Create win-win situations for all stakeholders;
• Seek to achieve a good balance between individual rights and community security needs;
• Promote strong senior leaders who provide clear direction to the organisation about the value of securing public trust;
• Raise awareness, throughout the organization, of the value to policing of increasing public trust.

Resources:

• Chainey, Spencer, Tompson, Lisa: “Engagement, Empowerment and Transparency: Publishing Crime Statistics using Online Crime Mapping”, 2012, p.228.
• Ben Tran, “The Evolution of Business Ethics to Business Law” in Management Association: Information Resources, ed, Human Rights and Ethics: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 2015) 145.
• Cyndi Banks, Criminal Justice Ethics: Theory and Practice, 2nd ed (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2009).
• Hyon Kang, “Participation in the Community Social Control, the Neighborhood Watch Groups: Individual and Neighborhood Related Factors, Crime & Delinquency” (2015) 61(2) 188 –212.

An important component of community policing is reducing fear of crime within the community. Since risk perceptions is considered to be the best predictor of fear of crime, decreasing the level of perceived risk is a possible way of reducing fear of crime. The level of perceived risk should be kept close to the level of actual risk. Avoid activities that aim to eliminate fear entirely as a certain amount of fear serves as an important survival and defence mechanism.

To reduce fear of crime it is important first to measure it.  It is recommended to use questions that are more crime-specific, as these allow for better quantification of fear. Thus, people should be asked about their sources of worry, specific crime events etc. It is also recommended to use both crime-related fear as well as the perceived risk of being victimized, sine these are distinct but related constructs.

Experience sampling method (ESM) enables researchers to measure fear of crime in near-real time. Anonymity should be guaranteed when collecting data on risk perception. Even though Internet surveys tend to provide low response rate, they are especially recommended.

Examples:

• Intelligence-led directed patrols at hot spot locations, hot times, or for specific criminal activities (such as gun seizures);
• Intentional, non-enforcement, face-to-face contact between officers and citizens in the neighbourhoods of greatest need;
• Community meetings with a problem-focused orientation, such as neighbourhood watch meetings;
• The implementation of a police substation within a strip mall, housing project, or community centre;

 Mode of implementation:

• Create opportunities for police-citizens interaction;
• Inform people about crime rates in the community, as these helps citizens estimate the level of actual risk more objectively (e.g. booklets about crime rates, criminal justice and police);
• Consult experts from other areas, such as mental health when designing community policing programs;
• Use Social media tools in order to assess the perception of risk and fear of citizens;
• When aiming to reduce fear of crime, not only focus on decreasing victimization but also target other factors influencing crime-related fear;
• Encourage citizen’s to engage in crime protective behaviour, such as involvement in Neighbourhood Watch Groups or clean-up programs;
• Use internet platforms to facilitate interaction between citizens and the police. This can be used as a way of increasing social cohesion and consequently feelings of security amongst people.

Resources:

• Duprez, V. Christophe, B. Rimé, A. Congard and P. Antoine (2015). Motives for the social sharing of an emotional experience. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 32, 757-787. doi: 10.1177/0265407514548393.
• Choi and C.L. Toma (2014). Social sharing through interpersonal media: Patterns and effects on emotional well-being. Computers in Human Behavior, 36, 530-541. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2014.04.026.
• Johnson, R. (2015), Reducing fear of crime and increasing citizen support for police. PATC Legal and Liability Risk Management Institute.
• Worrall, J. (2014). Crime Control in America. Boston, MA: Pearson.
• Kim, M., & de Guzman, M. (2012). Police paradigm shift after the 9/11 terrorist attacks: the empirical evidence from the United States municipal police departments. Criminal Justice Studies, 25(4), 323-342.

To increase their effectiveness and efficiency, community-policing programs should meet certain criteria, such as:

• be accessible to all citizens – Community policing programs should address the needs of all residents of an area and not employ an “elite-driven” approach;
• be carried out in good faith and respect the spirit of the law;
• measures should be taken to ensure confidentiality, when circumstances requires it;
• be non-profit;
• be focused on the role of the police as duty bearer to respect and protect human rights;
• enforce the principles of good governance: transparency, accountability, responsibility, participation and responsiveness;
• employ innovative, proactive, collaborative and strategic approaches to crime prevention. Research has shown that the increase in police presence by itself was less effective than proactive and/or community policing interventions in reducing the fear of crime.

The implementation of community policing strategies and programs requires a more or less substantial re-organisation of the police at the level, in terms of material and human resources, working culture and methods as well as leadership style (e.g. decentralized decision-making, restructuring of internal communicational processes and tools).

Technology can be seen as an important tool for changing traditional policing practice. Community policing programs should employ, whenever possible, different technological means to address security, communication and problem-solving issues.

Examples:

• The use of foot patrols;
• The creation of storefronts police substations;
• The creation of community consultative groups;
• Decentralized decision-making;
• Restructuring of internal communicational processes and tools.

Mode of implementation:

• Individuals must be treated in an open, respectful and fair manner;
• No discrimination should be made against one individual (or group) on any grounds or personal biases;
• Set-up clear and transparent procedures to prevent, detect and punish community policing personnel violating their legal and/or ethical obligations;
• Community police personnel must not take any advantage of any member in the communities they serve and must always act in the best interest of the community as a whole;
• Organize community consultative groups, for a better and closer dialogue with citizens.
• Strengthen police capacities to reach out with their services to the “hard-to-reach” groups, by creating opportunities for “positive interaction”;
• Strengthen language proficiency of officers in the languages spoken in a specific area, including main minority or immigrant languages;
• Engage all actors in a community in local safety and security committees, as a means of solving underlying tensions;
• Establish partnerships with social services and civil society organisations to provide rapid and pertinent services to victims of crime;
• Services on the police’s behalf should be provided in all required languages, but also pro-actively brought to the attention of minority or other underrepresented groups;
• Increase the number of foot patrols or bicycle patrols, which offer citizens the feeling of security;
• Careful analyse and plan the organisational change;
• Use modern management approaches such as the police as a “learning organization”, which sees change as a positive process;
• Decentralize and deconcentrate management structures with a view to placing higher responsibility on mid-management levels and devolving competences and autonomy in decision taking to the “front-line” officer;
• Set-up community-based crime prevention projects;
• Identify and employ suitable technological means for making policing practice more proactive (e.g. technological tools for connecting to crime and control databases, cameras, mobile phones, and being closer to the citizens in general);
• Carry-out training programs for community policing personnel (e.g. webinars, e-learning);
• Communicate in a comprehensive and detailed manner the strategies being employed at all organisational levels;
• Check availability of competent ICT personnel;
• Allocate an adequate number of staff members to the programme;
• Consider the political/financial/legal/technical support that the programme requires and plan for ways to achieve it.

Resources:

• Zhao, J., Scheider, M., & Thurman, Q. (2002). The effect of police presence on public fear reduction and satisfaction: A review of the literature. The Justice Professional, 15, 273‒299.
• Skogan, W. (2009). Concern about crime and confidence in the police: Reassurance or accountability? Police Quarterly, 12, 301−318.
• Scheider, M. C., Chapman, R., & Schapiro, A. (2009).Towards the unification of policing innovations under community policing. Policing: An international journal of police strategies & management, 32, 694‒718.
• Russo, S., & Roccato, M. (2010). How long does victimization foster fear of crime? A longitudinal study. Journal of Community Psychology, 38, 960‒974.

For technology to improve community-policing practices, it is essential that both citizens and community police authorities hold positive attitudes towards its usage. To achieve both the police and citizens should be educated about the advantages of technology usage in police practice, targeting those individuals/groups that hold less favourable views.

Serious games can be a useful instrument in training community police personnel, by using specific scenarios adapted to their job requirements.

Example:

• OneCity, the interactive city simulation game (ICSG) is a platform for experimentation with various forms of community policing. It is not a single standalone game, but rather a platform with a set of tools that allow Police departments to instantiate multiple situations and scenarios in order to demonstrate principles of community policing. The game scenarios will be primarily designed for law enforcement officers, however, the game can be customized and simplified to be used by generic public. The game will communicate the principles of community policing and various strategies associated with the concepts of community and community policing. The game scenarios are tailor-built for cultural and urban environments of particular nation. Initially, Spain and Portugal are being used as the primary targets.

Mode of implementation:

• Given the ethical concerns associated with this issue, any serious game designed for community policing personnel should be aligned to the following set of principles:
• the game must never encourage citizens to falsely report a crime or provide false information;
• the game must not re-enforce, or appear to re-enforce, stereotypes about race, socioeconomic status, gender, or cultures;
• the game must not encourage citizens to engage in policing activities, particularly in countries where this is explicitly prohibited;
• the game must not include recognizable human characters which could be associated with either criminal activity or antisocial behaviour;
• the game must not exclude people based on technology or previous gaming experience.
• It is recommended that the game platform provide easy means of customization and allow various law enforcement agencies to import scenarios that are typical for their own circumstances;
• Police personnel should be directly involved in the design of the specific scenarios, to make them relevant for their work;
• Include police personnel in the planning for technology usage and provide pilot testing and organization of proper level training for each new technology introduced;
• Communicate clearly how the new technology will make improve their work (e.g. save time or other resources).

Resources:

• Wilma Alice Bainbridge, Phillip Isola, Idan Blank, and Aude Oliva. Establishing a database for studying human face photograph memory. In Proc. 34th Annu. Meeting Cognit. Sci. Soc, 2012.
• Anna K. Bobak, Peter J. B. Hancock, and Sarah Bate. Super-recognisers in action: Evidence from face-matching and face memory tasks. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 30(1):81–91, 2016.
• Maleknaz Nayebi, Bram Adams, and Guenther Ruhe. Release practices for mobile apps–what do users and developers think? In 2016 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution, and Reengineering (SANER), volume 1. IEEE, 2016.
• Gary Cordner. Community policing. The Oxford handbook of police and policing, 2014.

Community police programs should always adopt a rule of law approach to policing, following several fundamental principles, such as:

• Strict legality of police action;
• Accountability towards the law and towards the general public;
• Non-discrimination and fairness in carrying out police functions;
• Transparency of policing priorities and strategies;
• Strict necessity and proportionality of its activities, particularly with regard to interferences with individual rights and freedoms.

Community policing programs must comply with human rights law (non-discrimination, indivisibility and interdependence) and should adopt technical and organizational measures that ensures the authenticity and reliability of the records it collects, stores, or transmits in order to preserve their evidentiary value and adopt technical and organizational measures to deter its misuse in prejudice to individuals’ reputation. This practice should also extend to police officers, whose needs and rights should be identified and protected.

Examples:

• OSCE manual of “Good practices in building police-public partnership”;
• UNODC Training Manual on Policing Urban Space;
• OHCHR “Good Governance Practices for the protection of Human Rights”;
• The John Jay College’s Human Dignity/Human Rights and Police Course has been adapted, following specific needs assessment and curriculum development. It uses student-centred teaching and learning approaches, such as role-play, simulations, case studies and structured exercises, to encourage full participation of students. In particular, the course promotes self-awareness and empathy, to help participants think about the impact of their behaviour as authority figures, and on other participants on the course, and the cumulative social impact of behaviours and decisions that undermine human dignity.

Mode of implementation:

• Refrain from arbitrary interference with individual rights and freedoms;
• Contribute directly to the protection of individual human rights throughout all the functions of democratic policing;
• Adopt ethical standards and codes of conducts that encompass the fundamental principles mentioned above;
• Carry out training programs aimed at fostering compliance with professional and ethical standards;
• Carefully consider the way the police shows its presence in the public space (e.g. threatening/non-threating posture) – as this influences whether they are perceived as primary imposing law and order or as a “guarantor” of rights and freedoms;
• Implement efficient management and oversight mechanisms, such as ethical performance measurement systems frameworks and anti-corruption;
• Professional and ethical standards should inform these oversight mechanism;
• Design and implement strategies for effective interaction and communication with individuals from all segments of society;
• Ensure and protect the equal exercise of rights and freedoms by minority groups or other underrepresented groups in the public space, where the interests of dominant societal groups may otherwise threaten such exercise;
• Proper planning of operations including deployment of a sufficient number of officers when faced with civil unrest or unclear crowd management situations;
• Adequate salaries, a transparent management structure and culture, fair and transparent review and performance measurement systems, integrity monitoring systems, and clear operational standards and guidelines are necessary preconditions to police management respecting human rights;
• “The right to “organise” (that is, to join trade unions) has in the European Social Charter (Article 5) a special interpretation when it comes to the police, as the Charter in this respect leaves a margin of appreciation to individual States. However, the case-law under the Charter has established that, even if there is no unlimited right for the police to “organise”, it would be a violation of the Charter to forbid police officers to set up their own representative associations;
• Similar to civil servants, special protection for whistle-blowers must be ensured;
• The same commitment to non-discrimination, equality and diversity must be reflected within the police force itself, where the chances for recruitment, retention and promotion must be fair and equitable to all.

Resources:

• Chêne, Marie: “Transparency International: Community policing as a tool against corruption”, U4 Expert Answers, 2012.
• DCAF: “International Police Standards: Guidebook on Democratic Policing“, 2009, para. 9.
• Hatchard, John: “Adopting a human rights approach towards combating corruption”, in: Boersma, Martine, Hand Nelen: Corruption and Human Rights. Inter-Disciplinary Perspectives”, 2009.
• Hope, Dunstan Allison: “Protecting Human Rights in a Digital Age”, 2011.
• International Centre for the Prevention of Crime (ICPC): “International Report on Crime Prevention and Community Safety: Trends and Perspectives”, 2010.
• European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights: “Fundamental rights-based Police Training – a manual for police trainers”, 2014.

Law enforcement agencies should have clear instructions and effective procedures on privacy and data protection, including procedures for data retention, accessibility and data subject right management.

Thus, community police programs should handle personal data in accordance with the main principles of data protection:

• Lawful processing;
• Purpose limitation;
• Data minimisation;
• Storage limitation;
• Data accuracy;
• Integrity and confidentiality;
• Transparency;
• Enablement;

The community-policing program must enable data subjects to exercise their rights, such as the right to correct personal data.

It is important to communicate to both the police officers and citizens the data protection procedures, as well as the relevant parts of data protection impact assessments that do not compromise the security of the system.

Examples:

• There should be a reference to the users right to access information, to rectify or erase personal data, e.g. in a menu point "User Info" or a link to an information site within any functionality or application processing personal data.
• One of the central guidelines to be followed is the principle of data avoidance or “Datensparsamkeit”. Originating in German privacy legislation (§ 3a Bundesdatenschutzgesetz - BDSG Federal Act on Data Protection) and mentioned in Art. 43 (2) lit d GDPR, data avoidance refers to the idea of limiting the collection of personal information to the minimum absolutely required for data processing regarding a specific purpose.

Mode of implementation:

• Informed consent and transparency are two fundamental conditions upon which the data protection framework is built;
• As a general rule, personal data may therefore only be processed if the data subject has unambiguously consented. Exceptions to the requirement of informed consent can however be justified if processing of personal data is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party, for compliance with a legal obligation, for the performance of a government task, to protect the vital interests of the data subject, or to protect the legitimate interests of the controller, except where such interests are overridden by the interests of the data subject;
• Informing the citizen as to what purpose the personal data is being collected. Specification of the purpose is a pre-requisite for applying other data quality requirements, including the adequacy, relevance, proportionality and accuracy of the data collected and the requirements regarding the period of data retention.

Resources:

• Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, Opinion 01/2014 on the application of necessity and proportionality concepts and data protection within the law enforcement sector, 27 February 2014.
• Hope, Dunstan Allison: “Protecting Human Rights in a Digital Age”, 2011.
• Njeri, Mutheki Tropister, “Citizens on Patrol: Mobile technology in enhancing community policing“, May 2013.
• Potere, Michael: “Who will watch the watchmen? Citizens recording police conduct”, Northwestern University Law Review Vol. 106, No. 1, 2012.

Community policing programs should comply with the privacy by design principle and should have clear instructions and effective procedures on privacy.

Information regarding the privacy procedures as well as the relevant part of privacy audits that do not compromise the security of the system should be made publicly available.

Examples:

• Privacy by default is included in Art. 23 (2) GDPR and likewise ensures a privacy-compliant technology design. However, the GDPR has not only given Privacy by Design a direct legal effect by articulating it in article 25 but also unfolded some of its main principles, such as data minimisation and data security. Article 25, titled “Data protection by design and by default”, provides that the controller shall, both at the time of the determination of the means for processing and at the time of the processing itself, implement appropriate technical and organisational measures, such as pseudonymisation, which are designed to implement data-protection principles, such as data minimisation, in an effective manner and to integrate the necessary safeguards into the processing.
• Moreover, Article 25 (2) GDPR provides that the controller shall implement appropriate technical and organisational measures for ensuring that, by default, only personal data which are necessary for each specific purpose of the processing are processed. That obligation applies to the amount of personal data collected, the extent of their processing, the period of their storage and their accessibility. In particular, such measures shall ensure that by default personal data are not made accessible without the individual's intervention to an indefinite number of natural persons.

Mode of implementation:

• Products are set by default to privacy-friendly settings (e.g., use of cookies is illicit without the consent of the persons concerned). The aim is data reduction, or at least data minimisation;
• As both a data protection standard and a legal principle, Privacy by Design requires the designers of IT systems or business operations to integrate in the design the necessary measures to meet the following well-established privacy and personal data protection requirements:
• lawful processing of personal data: by enabling the collection of the informed consent of the data subjects through a clear affirmative action and only after providing them with the details of the processing of their personal data;
• purpose limitation: by informing the data subjects in a clear, precise, and accessible manner about the specific purpose(s), context, and scope of the data processing and by discouraging the processing of personal data for purposes incompatible with the system functions;
• data minimisation: by processing the minimum, relevant, and necessary personal information to achieve the system functions;
• storage limitation: by storing the personal data of the data subjects only for the minimum amount of time necessary for achieving its functions;
• data accuracy: by enabling the data subjects to correct and update their personal data stored by the system and to erase the data that are no longer accurate in light of its functions;
• integrity and confidentiality: by providing the personal data processed with a high level of security against any breach such as unauthorised or unlawful access, disclosure or processing, accidental loss, destruction, alteration, or damage;
• transparency: by communicating to the data subjects in an accessible language and format the information about the processing of their personal data, specifically the identity of the data controllers, the purpose(s) of the processing, the legal basis of the processing, and the recipient(s) of the personal data;
• enablement: by enabling the data subjects to exercise their right to access, rectify, erase, and block personal data; right to object to the processing of personal data; right to be notified in the case of a data breach resulting in violating their human rights; and right to withdraw consent; and
• accountability: by conducting a privacy impact assessment identifying the privacy risks involved in the processing of personal data by the ICT system and identifying the design features and other measures necessary for addressing these risks.

Resources:

• Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), L 119/1, 4.5.2016 (GDPR).
• Ann Cavoukian & Mark Dixon, Privacy and Security by Design: An Enterprise Architecture Approach (Information and Privacy Commissioner Ontario, Canada: September 2013).
• Edith Ramirez, Remarks, Privacy By Design and the New Privacy Framework of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (Hong Kong, Privacy by Design Conference 13 June 2012).
• Handbook on European Data Protection Law (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights & 2014 Council of Europe, 2014) at 36.
• Peter Schaar. “Privacy by Design” (2010) 3 Identity in the Information Society 267.
• GDPR, art. 35(1). The supervisory authorities have the duty to prepare a public list of the types of data processing operations that will require data protection impact assessment. See GDPR, art. 35(4).
• Ira S. Rubenstein & Nathaniel Good, “Privacy by design: A counterfactual Analysis of Google and Facebook Privacy Incidents” (2013) 28 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 1333.
• Inga Kroener and David Wright, "A Strategy for Operationalizing Privacy by Design" (2014) 30 The Information Society 355.
• Dirk van Rooy & Jacques Bus, “Trust and Privacy in the Future Internet—a Research Perspective” (2010) 3 Identity in the Information Society 397.
• Alessandro Acquisti, Curtis Taylor & Liad Wagman, “The Economics of Privacy” (2016) 54:2 Journal of Economic Literature 442.
• Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, Opinion 03/2013 on Purpose Limitation, Doc. 00569/13/EN, WP 203 (2 April 2013).

Accountability is the principle that requires data controllers to implement the necessary internal measures and procedures to effectively apply, and demonstrate their compliance with, the data protection principles such as the principles of lawfulness of processing, purpose limitation, storage limitation, data minimisation, transparency, integrity and confidentiality, and data accuracy.

Complying with the accountability principle involves measures and procedures that may vary in light of the risks involved in the processing and the nature of the data processed. However, the GDPR specifies 3 accountability requirements: the first is data protection impact assessment, the second is prior consultation, and finally the third accountability requirement is the designation of a data protection officer.

Example:

• In accordance with data protection law, a data protection officer should be appointed if:
• data processing is carried out by a public authority, except courts;
• the main activity of the data controller or processor is processing operations that regularly involve extensive and systematic monitoring of the data subjects;
• or the main activity of the data controller or processor is the processing of special categories of data, such as personal information relating to criminal records and other types of sensitive data listed in articles 9-10 of the GDPR, on a large scale.

Mode of implementation:

• The data protection officer will carry out a number of duties to ensure the compliance with the data protection principles including the duty:
• to inform and advise the controller or the processor and the employees who carry out processing of their obligations pursuant to this Regulation and to other Union or Member State data protection provisions;
• to monitor compliance with this Regulation, with other Union or Member State data protection provisions and with the policies of the controller or processor in relation to the protection of personal data, including the assignment of responsibilities, awareness-raising and training of staff involved in processing operations, and the related audits;
• to provide advice where requested as regards the data protection impact assessment and monitor its performance pursuant to Article 35;
• to cooperate with the supervisory authority;
• to act as the contact point for the supervisory authority on issues relating to processing, including the prior consultation referred to in Article 36, and to consult, where appropriate, with regard to any other matter.
• In carrying out these duties, the data protection officer must give due regard to the risks associated with the operations of personal data processing and, at the same time, take into consideration the specifics of the processing: its nature, scope, context and purpose.

Resources:

• Alexander Dix, “EU Data Protection Reform: Opportunities and Concerns” (2013) 48:5 Intereconomics 268.
• Ann Cavoukian, Scott Taylor & Martin E. Abrams, "Privacy by Design: Essential for Organizational Accountability and Strong Business Practices" (2010) 33 Identity in the Information Society 405.
• Daniel J. Solove, Marc Rotenberg, Paul M. Schwartz, “Privacy, Information, and Technology” (New York, Aspen, 2006).
• Dirk van Rooy & Jacques Bus, “Trust and Privacy in the Future Internet—a Research Perspective” (2010) 3 Identity in the Information Society 397.

When designing a community policing mobile application, keep in mind the following design features, which are considered important by citizens and police officers:

• build-in mechanisms to ensure the origin and integrity of submitted information by the users;
• include a “tip submissions” functionality and respective means for tip monitoring (e.g. follow-up, reminders) as well as timely alerts;
• avoid the usage of third-party services (or at least provide alternative to users) as they may result in privacy and personal data violations;
• limit the use of social media services to the provision of basic information to maintain control over the information shared;
• implement strong security and verification mechanisms that would act as a barrier against misuse of the application at stake;
• provide opportunities for bidirectional real-time communication as well as for precise geolocalisation, which is particularly important during emergencies;
• develop processing tools that are capable of distinguishing relevant from irrelevant information to avoid information overload;
• include an S.O.S. function. The S.O.S. function should be included in the promotion of the app in public awareness, media and social media campaigns. This function should be connected to the geolocation capability;
• include photo and video upload option;
• introduce ability to direct requests to the appropriate agency, thus reducing police workload.

In addition to this, consider that, in order, to be effective, information provided by online applications must be up-to-date and law enforcement officers have to be responsive, i.e. to respond timely and accurately to the reports received.

Any community policing application should also be in full compliance with privacy and data protection regulations. Consequently, the Data Protection Officer of the respective authority should be involved early and fully in the implementation and use of the IT application and system, together with the IT Security Officer, where such a position exists. After implementation and before running the system, authorities should conduct a comprehensive data protection impact assessment and privacy audit.

Examples:

• SecureU system
• Watch Over Me application
• Amber Alerts application
• bSafe – Personal Safety App
• Kenteken Opzoeken application
• Sinesp Cidadão application

Mode of implementation:

• Carry out focus groups and interviews with police officers and citizens to better understand what they expect from a community policing app;
• Carry out a benchmark analysis on existing community policing apps;
• Involve all category of stakeholders in the design of the community policing app.

Resources:

• Stevens, C. Appillionaires: Secrets from Developers Who Struck It Rich on the App Store, Wiley; 1 edition (September 30, 2011).
• Deliverable 2.2 - Report assessing success and failure stories of smartphone and tablet applications for crime reporting and other community policing activities; WP2 Functionality, success and failure in the market to date; CITYCoP project.

All community policing programs should be subject to careful and constant monitoring and evaluation so that actions can be adapted to changes in the needs and requirements of the respective community and the evolving relations between the actors involved. IT tools can greatly facilitate monitoring and evaluation, by reducing time and costs.

The introduction of measures for regular monitoring, evaluation and public reporting on the work of the police is necessary because it fosters police-public trust.

Examples:

• STEPPS project in which both police and public collaborated in analysing existing practices in identity controls and searches in four countries;
• John Jay College’s Human Dignity/Human Rights and Police Course has been adapted, following specific needs assessment and curriculum development. It uses student-centred teaching and learning approaches, such as role-play, simulations, case studies and structured exercises, to encourage full participation of students. In particular, the course promotes self-awareness and empathy, to help participants think about the impact of their behaviour as authority figures, and on other participants on the course, and the cumulative social impact of behaviours and decisions that undermine human dignity.

Mode of implementation:

• Check the availability of specific monitoring and evaluation tools and grids and wherever absent design and/or incomplete implement them;
• Check the availability of specific indicators to measure levels of citizen participation and the effects of this participation and wherever absent and/or incomplete design and implement them;
• Define a clear and comprehensive monitoring/evaluation strategy for all partners;
• Set-up independent and effective structures for supervision and monitoring which guarantee accountability for police action;
• Feed the internal monitoring system with data on police officers’ interactions with the public (be they in traffic control situations, pedestrian stop and searches or surveillance operations);
• Internal monitoring mechanisms need to go hand in hand with complaints mechanisms for the general public;
• Information about and access to complaints mechanisms includes marginalised and disadvantaged groups who might be hard to reach with conventional communication strategies;
• Any disciplinary measures against police officers are reviewed by an independent body or court in order to protect officers against unjust measures and, at the same time, to enhance the transparency of internal monitoring systems towards the public;
• Include in the monitoring an appraisal of the degree to which policing is undertaken in a non-discriminatory manner;
• Involve a senior leader in advocating objective evaluation;
• Allocate sufficient resources for monitoring and evaluation mechanisms;
• Develop necessary personnel skills through dedicated training programs.

Resources:

• Open Society Institute: “Addressing Ethnic Profiling by Police: A Report on the Strategies for Effective Police Stop and Search Project. Improving relations between police and minority communities by increasing the fairness, effectiveness, and accountability of police stops in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Spain”, 2009.
• ICPC’s “International Report on Crime Prevention and Community Safety: Trends and Perspectives”, loc. cit., p.116.

When seeking to spread the use of ICT in community policing while also fostering citizens participation, it is important to engage in a process of continuous innovation. A key role is played by ITC companies, which have the capacity to provide creative, flexible and effective answers to these needs.

To foster innovation, law enforcement agencies should initiate and strengthen research partnerships with public and private actors. To be effective such partnerships should enable not only the development of common strategies and the sharing of material resources, but, also, a positive exchange of information and views, which would enhance the vision of each actor.

A key role in the innovation process is played by privacy. Using “privacy by design” principles increases the attractiveness of an ICT tool.

Examples:

• In Utrecht, Netherlands, the Mobile Safety Watch project is the result of collaboration involving the University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht Police department, Dutch Centre for Innovation and Safety, Dutch television program "Opsporing verzocht", and various neighbourhood watches;
• In Albania, the "Digital Commissioner" initiative (see above) arose from collaboration involving the Ministry of Interior, Vodafone Foundation and the Protik ICT Resource Center.

Mode of implementation:

• Participate in EU funded research projects that provide exchanges of information, experience and foster synergies;
• Initiate forms of coordination or full scale partnerships with private entities that finance specific technological applications (or develop applications);
• Use IT tools which facilitate interaction between police and research institutions (e.g. social media, collaborative working environments);
• Clearly communicate inside the police organization the advantages and benefits of engaging in a process of continuous innovation using concrete examples;
• Ensure the availability of technological resources;
• Ensure increased access to new technologies in general use;
• Implement pilot initiatives in the field of innovation;
• Disseminate success stories involving innovation;
• Ensure continuous changes in technological features and design to meet user needs;
• Use a "privacy by design" approach to apps development;
• Make use of the Internet, social networks and apps.

Resources:

• Trojanowicz, R. and Bucqueroux, B. (1990), Community Policing (Cincinnati: Anderson Publishing); Stipak, B. (1994), "Are you really doing Community Policing?", The Police Chief, 61(10): 115, 117-118, 120, 122-123; Denney, L. and Jenkins, S. (2013), Security Communities. The what and the how of community policing. Background paper (London: ODI).
• COMPOSITE project, see: composite-project.eu.
• Verhoeven, F., Haring, A., van der Lugt, R., Vreekamp, L. and Zielhuis, M. (2011), Multifaceted Design for Persuasion: a Case Study about the Design of a Mobile Safety Watch, at:https://hbo-kennisbank.nl/en/record/oai:repository.samenmaken.nl:smpid:44153.
• http://www.govtech.com/social/Cops-Increasingly-Use-Social-Media-to-Connect-Crowdsource.html.
• Bijker, W.E., Hughes, T.P., and Pinch, T.J., eds. (1987), The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
• Korteland, E. and Bekkers, V. (2007), "Diffusion of E-government innovations in the Dutch public sector: The case of digital community policing", in Information Polity 12(3): 139-150.

Using intelligence-led policing is a good way for improving the efficiency of community policing programs, which are in need of a systematic and fast gathering of relevant information. Intelligence can be collected from different sources such as police websites, social networks and various smartphone applications, texting and emailing and by using different technological instruments, such as electronic notebooks, autonomous crowd monitoring, sensor networks, and augmented reality.

The main idea behind using such technologies in policing is to turn large amounts of structured and less structured data into real-time intelligence, which also increases the likelihood of a largely positive outcome to for both citizens and the police.

Such communication channels can be used by citizens for reporting crime and disorder to the police, as well as by the police to communicate with citizens to keep them informed. This type of citizen-police interaction can also contribute to the strengthening of social ties and trust and the facilitation of social norms. Intelligence-led policing also enforces the proactive character of community policing programs and support a more effective co-ordination and use of policing resources.

Examples:

• OSCE Guidebook Intelligence-Led Policing;
• An Garda Siochana National model of Community Policing.

 Mode of implementation:

• Use as many channels as possible to collect information from the citizens, such as the organization’s official website, social media platforms (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) associated to it as well as from smartphone applications for community policing, through texting and emailing;
• Provide citizens with different communication channels to report crime and disorder to the police, which can also be used by the police to keep citizens’ informed on local security concerns;
• Train officers involved in community policing programs in intelligence awareness;
• Explore needs to adapt the organizational structure (e.g. responsibilities, communication channels) so as to integrate community police officers into the intelligence cycle (e.g. have access to information on the threat environment in their area of responsibility).

Resources:

• Tilly, N. (2008). Modern approach to policing, problem oriented and intelligence-led in the new burn handbook of policing (pp. 373-403). Willan: Cullompton, Devon.
• Scheider, M. C., Chapman, R., & Schapiro, A. (2009).Towards the unification of policing innovations under community policing. Policing: an international journal of police strategies & management, 32, 694‒718.
• Allen, D., Norman, A., Karanasios, S. (2013). Information sharing and interoperability: the case of major incident management. European Journal of Information Systems, 23, 418-432.
• Ratcliffe, Jerry. 2008. Intelligence-Led Policing. Willan Publishing.

Information acquired through different community policing applications can successfully complement information collected through surveillance means and thus increase the efficiency of police operations (e.g. by assisting practitioners in overcoming information overload). This can be achieved in three main ways:

• Data from community policing app and data from smart surveillance technologies complement each other;
• Data from the application verified against data from smart surveillance technologies;
• Data from the application triggered use of smart surveillance technologies for further investigation.

Examples:

• The SmartSantander project is a public-private partnership aimed at installing sensors around a number of European cities to gather data and to take advantage of what citizens are willing to contribute through their smartphones and specialised software. The project relies on ‘participatory sensing’ technology. This service aims to explore the use of citizens’ smartphones to make people become systematic observers and contributors of data. The project makes use of these devices’ capabilities of connecting to people as well as to the core network. It thus blends data analytics, Internet of Things, and some aspects of social media to find problems in real time and to convey them back to those who can fix them. BYTE researchers provide an example with a malfunctioning streetlamp that is reported to all the users that have previously subscribed to this type of event via their mobile phones. One of these users could be a municipality technician that after receiving the notification can log in a repair job;
• The NW Alert Notification System allows co-ordinating bodies for Neighbourhood Watch to send out alerts to all of their registered contact persons, allowing national dissemination to potentially thousands of neighbourhood watch members in a very short time;
• Community Speedwatch is a method of traffic speed control involves trained volunteers pointing a speed gun at vehicles driving through an area known in the past for speeding, and has generated mixed responses from the general public, both positive and negative.

Mode of implementation:

• Profiling and big data are the coming together of pre-emptive policing and surveillance policing. Profiling is seen as forensic evidence based, process-oriented, method of investigative reasoning about the behaviour patterns of a particular offender.
• CCTV and video surveillance can be combined with community policing techniques to identify criminal trends and practices in urban scenarios;
• The effectiveness of license plate recognition in the identification of vehicles on their way crossing borders can be increased by combining the use of established technologies (i.e. GPS tracking and automatic number plate recognition) with input provided from the citizen activity by means of community policing applications;
• Identification of individuals can be made easier and faster by crosschecking export to facial recognition, which involves using visual material (e.g. a photo or a video) obtained from social media with the input from community policing applications, and then export for comparison with existing database records.

Resources:

• Kamel Boulos et al. International Journal of Health Geographics 2011, 10:67.
• Chan, Lyria, Bennett Moses. 2014. “Using Big Data For Legal and Law Enforcement Decisions: Testing the New Tools.” Thematic: Using Big Data for Legal and Law Enforcement Decisions.
• Chávez, T. D., Pendleton, M. R., & Bueerman, J. 2005. Knowledge management in policing. Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Research Grant No. 1999C KW0097.
• Goodman-Delahunty, Douglas Edward Abrahamsoon and Jane. 2014. “Impediments to Information and Knowledge Sharing Within Policing: A Study of Three Canadian Policing Organizations.” SAGE Open 1-17.
• 2012. “SMART Deliverable D3.1: Identifying and Classifying Smart Surveillance Technologies in Law and Order and Counter-terrorism.” Deliverable D3.1.
• Keith Gierlack, Shara Williams, Tom LaTourrette, James M. Anderson, Lauren A. Mayer, Johanna Zmud. 2014. License Plate Readers for Law Enforcement Opportunities and Obstacles.
• Saed Tarapiah, Shadi Atalla, Rajaa AbuHania et al. 2013. “Smart On-Board Transportation Management System Using GPS/GSM/GPRS Technologies to Reduce Traffic Violation in Developing Countries.” International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X) (International Journal of Digital Information and Wireless Communications (IJDIWC) 3(4): 430-439, The Society of Digital Information and Wireless Communications, 2013 (ISSN: 2225-658X)) 430-439.