On information technology and the safety of police officers

Abstract

Police officers perform their duties every day under the constant threat of violence, and each year, more than 50,000 police officers in the United States suffer assaults. In this paper, we examine the relationship between IT use by the police and the number of police officers killed or assaulted in the line of duty. To do so, we theorize how IT use helps organizations identify, predict, and avoid risks to its personnel and put forth that IT use for crime intelligence, prediction, and investigation reduces violence against police officers. We also conducted an interview with a police captain, who provided first-accounts of how IT use helps police officers on the ground. Our empirical analysis of a panel dataset from 4325 U.S. local police departments shows that IT use by the police is associated with a significant decrease in the number of police officers killed or assaulted in the line of duty. We seek to expand the scope of the IS literature by theorizing and empirically demonstrating the role of IT in the occupational safety of personnel in organizations that operate in unpredictable, risky, and life-threatening environments.