Current Trends That Are Impacting Policing

What trends are currently impacting policing? The biggest issues affecting policing trends are new technology. The rapid growth of technological advancements will continue to boost social weakness and fear, giving terrorist and criminal’s new methods and opportunities, and police new tools to stop them. In almost every area, technology is wiping away traditional working methods faster than people can adapt to the new possibilities becoming available to them. Since the 9/11 attack on the US people has become more concern about their safety than their privacy. Some states have provided their local law enforcements video cameras and other networking technology to make it possible to keep high crime areas under constant surveillance.
During my research on the surveillance cameras used by local police departments, IBM has discovered a way for artificial intelligence which enables computers to recognize a crime in progress and refer the video feed to a human colleague for handling. This system will first replace mobile officers for traffic enforcement; eventually they will be capable of keeping watch for almost any crime or any known criminal. At the same time, police officers must track the use of new technologies for fighting criminal organizations. The Internet has made it possible for a variety of financial crimes, global operations by close-knit gangs that police agencies are not equipped to meet.
Finally, new technology cost money and in a time of low public budgets, law enforcement agencies is forced to compete for funding with other government services, including the military. In order to deal with the new changes, police departments and other law enforcement agencies will need to be well prepared.
Reference: 55 Trends, The Proteus Trends Series (Volume 1, Issue 1 February 2008) By Dr. Marvin J. Cetron and Owen Davies. Retrieve: March