Police officers' adoption of information technology: A case study of the Turkish POLNET system. Page: 2

                                
the systems designed with technology (Manning, 2003). Flanagin (2002) claimed that
these technological developments have improved the capabilities of contemporary
organizations and have made significant changes within and among these
organizations. In the law enforcement setting, the belief in technological success has
even been depicted in the entertainment media such as with the imagery of Robocop
and high tech crime scene investigation series, like CS.
Among large organizations using information technology systems, police
agencies can be mentioned as such groups that have high usage rates of information
technology systems (Nunn & Quinet, 2002). Moreover, this use is extremely crucial for
these agencies in terms of the negative consequences from wrong or inappropriate
implementations. Thus, most police agencies offer information technology as support
for their police officers (Gottschalk, 2006). In fact, Maltz, Freidman, and Gordon (1991)
maintain that "information is the lifeblood of the police" (p.12). The amount of
information that the police receive during enforcing the law is overwhelming
(Gottschalk, 2006). Police use information technology tools at almost every stage,
including allocation of sources, patrolling, crime prevention, crime tracking, hot
pursuits, and crime solving. Colvin and Goh (2005) assert that information technology
has substantial impact on police practices. In addition, any increased acceptance of
information technology by police officers improves the quality of policing and
performance of law enforcement agencies (Gottschalk & Holgersson, 2006). Therefore,
it is important to know how well information technology is working for a police force.