Police-Community Cooperative Use of MAPADS

The technological advance represented by computerized mapping constitutes only part of the potential benefit of MAPADS. To be truly effective, MAPADS needs to work in an organizational and social context that permits the police and the community to interact while analyzing the data. This interaction requires trust and practice as well as an organizational and social infrastructure. We expected this infrastructure to be developed as the police and the community used MAPADS jointy in working on problems of crime and safety in the community. This did occur: the project made an important contribution to the development of this infrastructure. Cooperative working relations were established and information was exchanged regularly between the community and the police. This was an important achievement of this project.