In an eight nation survey carried out by Accenture, 88 percent of citizens believe expanded use of digital technologies can aid crime investigation and criminal apprehension. Specifically, they are comfortable with police officers using: predictive technologies (88 percent), security cameras (83 percent), wearable technologies, such as body-worn cameras, (80 percent) and mobile devices (89 percent). The survey of citizens in Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, the UK and the USA also found that 96 percent of the respondents believe the public has a role to play in police services, and 78 percent see crime reporting as a key responsibility for citizens. The Accenture Citizen Pulse Survey on Policing 2014 was conducted in August 2014. Its results show that the public want police to use more digital technologies but that national police forces are lagging in meeting the demands of local citizenry. For instance, more than three-quarters of those surveyed believe digital technology can help prevent crime and want police to use digital channels to communicate with them, but only 42 percent report their police actually doing so. Nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of respondents in the current survey said today they are more willing to engage with their local police via social media than they were a year ago. For citizens willing to engage with police via social media, Facebook remains the preferred channel (85 percent), followed by Twitter, (42 percent) and YouTube (26 percent). The survey responses identified several perception gaps:
* Twenty percent of citizen respondents assert that the police currently use websites or Web portals to communicate, but 46 percent of them believe police should be using the Web; * Thirteen percent said their local police are using smartphones or apps, but 34 percent think the police should be using those tools; and
* Twenty-four percent of respondents said the police use social media – such as Twitter, Facebook or YouTube – but 42 percent believe they should.
The public still prefers traditional methods of reporting crime, but their enthusiasm for the traditional methods is decreasing. If they had to choose one form of interaction with police, over half of the respondents said they prefer to interact with police via the telephone. Further, the preference of interacting with police in person was just 19 percent. Interestingly, nine percent of those surveyed would prefer to report crimes and other incidents via the Internet and a website. And all this desire for digital interaction doesn't mean that the public is no longer enthusiastic about a real police presence. In the survey, 63 percent of those polled would like a neighborhood police contact.
