CITYCoP - Citizen Interaction Technologies Yield Community Policing

The project

Theories underlying community policing received new impetus with the recent advent of smartphones and social media and especially user-generated content (UGC) where citizens engage in closer interaction with their local community and law enforcement agency (LEA). The years 2010-2014 have seen a rapid upsurge of smartphone apps aimed at improving crime reporting and other forms of UGC and interaction associated with community policing. Yet these apps are characterised by a predominantly Anglo-Saxon approach with the largest number originating in the USA, a few in Canada, Australia and with the UK apparently the only major EU state where there has been some takeup of these technologies. CITYCoP sets out to find out why the EU appears to be lagging behind although Community Policing is nominally a policy which has been put into action in a number of EU countries. It then goes on to develop a solution including a new smartphone app and on-line portal which are capable of being deployed in any European city while still retaining “local flavour” and diversity. These ICT solutions will also be designed from scratch to be fully compliant with strict privacy and data protection laws. A training scheme, including use of serious games, will be developed to assist training of officers and citizens in use of the app and portal. CITYCoP will benefit from a multidisciplinary approach that will include the sociology of community policing as well as cognitive science perspectives of the citizen’s interaction with community and LEAs through technology. The partners in CITYCoP build on long years of successful collaboration in EU projects dealing with UGC, smart surveillance and privacy (CONSENT, SMART, RESPECT) positioning CITYCoP solutions to achieve integration into smart city eco-systems. CITYCoP will pilot deployments of multi-lingual smartphone apps, portals and serious games training packages in Bucharest (Romania), Lyon (France), Florence (Italy), Sheffield (UK).