Social Networks for Police and Residents in India: Exploring Online Communication for Crime Prevention

Social Networks for Police and Residents in India: Exploring Online Communication for Crime Prevention Niharika Sachdeva, Ponnurangam Kumaraguru Cybersecurity Education and Research Center (CERC), IIIT-Delhi {niharikas,pk}@iiitd.ac.in ABSTRACT responding to residents’ calls, creating awareness and resolving Safety is a concern for most urban communities; residents inter- residents’ queries. Police are often considered to be the most rep- act in multiple ways with the police to address their safety con- resentative and perpetual government service. Positive experiences cerns. Positive interactions with police help residents to feel safe. (e.g. addressing the complaints) can help generate feeling of safety In developing countries, residents have started to use Online So- among the people; whereas a negative experience (e.g., misconduct cial Networks (OSN) such as Facebook to share concerns and seek by police) leads to sense of insecurity among residents [28]. Neg- solutions. In this study, we investigate whether residents’ post on ative encounters isolate residents and result in crime going uniden- OSN contain actionable information that police can use to address tified and unreported. However, resident’s experiences are often safety concerns and how residents use OSN to communicate with not shared with police, considering their image of “coercive arm police. For this, we analyze residents’ posts and comments on the of the state” [7]. In lack of the information about resident’s ex- Facebook page of Bangalore City Police, India, over a period of perience with police and crime incidences, there is a little oppor- one month. Our results show that residents post information (in- tunity for police to change the crime landscape, explain their ac- cluding location) about various crimes such as neighborhood issues tions, and involve residents in crime prevention activities. For po- (drunkards, illegal construction), financial frauds, property crime, lice, understanding the community perceptions are helpful to know and thefts. In addition to crime, Facebook page gives information the effectiveness of safety measures and improve the organization’s on residents’ satisfaction and police performance. Majority of res- plan to address crime [17]. Police explore effective communication idents use police Facebook page to appreciate the good work of strategy to obtain timely information from residents and understand police. Police response to residents’ post vary from ignore, ac- their concerns [6, 7, 10, 18]. knowledge, reply, and follow-up. We find that police respond to OSN such as Twitter and Facebook have become part of com- most residents’ post and help residents to reach the authority who munity interaction strategies with their increasing popularity [12]. can help solve the issue. Police adopt a formal communication style Police departments in developed nations are using OSN to iden- to interact with residents. We find that in addition to actionable in- tify crime with the help of residents and understand safety con- formation, OSN can help understand fear of crime among residents cerns of the residents. Research in developed countries shows that and develop mutual accountability between police and residents. OSN plays a crucial role in community policing for improving public relation and encourages diversity of content (i.e. photos, text, videos) [7, 12, 19]. Most of this experience about how police can Keywords use of OSN for trust building and online communication is de- Community safety; Police accountability; Actionable information; rived from OSN use during crisis events, such as hurricane and Online social networks; fires. Police in developing countries such as India have also turned to OSN for improving interaction with residents and understand- Categories and Subject Descriptors ing residents’ concern. However, it is unclear if the knowledge of OSN use in event-driven safety campaigns (that last for specific H.5.3 [Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI)]: Group time period) in developed countries can be helpful for police in de- and Organization Interfaces—Collaborative computing, Computer- veloping countries to strategize policing through OSN. Unlike de- supported cooperative work veloped world, police organizations in developing countries have a lack of police personnel and limited exposure to technology; these 1. INTRODUCTION limitations make it difficult to adopt OSN theories from the devel- Police officers interact with residents in multiple ways to address oped world to developing world. Our study focuses to understand the day-to-day safety and crime issues. These interactions include a) what actionable information (i.e. necessary information to deal with the situation at hand) is available on OSN for police and b) Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not how residents use OSN to express fear of being victimized, polic- made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear ing needs, and police performance in developing countries such as this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components India. We study Facebook as it is considerably popular and most of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with used OSN in comparison to other social networks in India [23]. In credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to this study, we analyze 255 posts and 1,600 comments from resi- redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request dents on Facebook page of Bangalore City Police (BCP) in India. permissions from [email protected]. dg.o 2015, May 27 - 30, 2015, Phoenix, AZ, USA Bangalore City Police was stabilized in 1963 and is responsi- c 2015 ACM. ISBN 978-1-4503-3600-0/15/05$15.00 ble for the overall policing in the Bangalore city. Bangalore police DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2757401.2757420 countability among residents and police for keeping city safe, in developing nations. Our work makes following contributions: it develops an understanding of how OSN can be used in urban cities of developing countries like India to build community policing and accountability for policing. Our work focuses on understanding technology like OSN for addressing fear of crime and community policing. Our contributions illustrate that in developing countries, OSN can sup- Figure 1: Bangalore City Police’s Facebook page with 100,672 likes. https://www. port policing through community crime prevention theory called facebook.com/blrcitypolice. Victimization theory [17]. Using the findings of our study, police can evaluate the sense of safety among residents and police performance in urban cities of developing countries. department supports 107 Police Stations [2]. BCP established its Facebook Page in 2011 to encourage community participation in crime prevention, maintenance of law and order, and traffic man- 2. RELATED WORK agement (See Figure 1). BCP Facebook page has more than 100, OSN contributes to the improved tradition of participation, re- 000 likes and is actively used to engage with residents. A trained sponsiveness, and openness to different government organizations team of six people manages the page on OSN [25]. This team is [22, 32]. It provides a mechanism to develop personal relationships responsible for collaborating with the residents and responding to with residents by disseminating information about performance and the resident’s posts for resolving issues. Bangalore city is an ideal government agency’s actions followed by inputs from citizens on place to study community crime response as the city has developed these actions. Developing personal relationships can increase the the most prominent policing program on OSN in last few years [2]. trust residents place on the government agencies [16]. Research shows that unlike other organizations, police departments repre- 1.1 Research Objective sent the most omnipresent and ubiquitous body of a society. The In this work, we explore whether OSN can support police to get competing demands of residents lead to greater expectations that actionable information about crime and residents’ opinion about government agencies like police must be “leaner” and “do more policing activities in urban cities of India. We identify following with less” than other organizations [15]. supporting aspects to examine our research goal – a) analysing if Research in developed countries shows that OSN extends two in- residents use the police Facebook page to report a crime and ex- herent benefits for police: a) it can support primary policing roles press concerns, b) identifying the different kind of crimes reported such as crime investigations and prevention, and b) it can offer a through Facebook Page, and c) analysing if residents’ post contain swift, direct platform of communication with the public [11]. Po- enough information for the police to take action. We also analyze lice in developed countries have rigorously used OSN as a direct whether the complaints made through Facebook page are answered platform for public communication during critical events such as by the police and to what extent.This information helps to assess if crisis. Many studies have shown how OSN played a useful role to OSN like Facebook is becoming a passive repository of complaints. provide critical real-time information and reduce the spread of mis- To answer the above-mentioned

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