The Evolution the job is exacting. The police are asked to control crime, maintain order, and provide an intricate array of services, from responding to emergency 911 calls to regulating the flow of traffic. On occasion, they must perform remarkable feats of criminal investigation, quell rowdy crowds and violent offenders, and put their lives on the line. Much of the time, police resources are limited. It is estimated that the workload crime imposes on the police has increased fivefold since 1960. Their resources have not kept pace with their workload. To do their job, police frequently have looked to technology for enhancing their effectiveness. The police, with crime laboratories and radio networks, made early use of technology, but most police departments could have been equipped 30 or 40 years ago as well as they are today. The Crime Commission in response to rapidly rising crime rates and urban disorders. The Commission advocated federal government funding for state and local criminal agencies to support their efforts. It called for what soon became the 911 system for fielding emergency calls and recommended that agencies acquire computers to automate their functions. But even with the start-up help of hundreds of millions of dollars in early federal assistance, computerization came slowly. Only in recent years have many agencies found the use of information technology significantly helpful. Examples include fingerprinting databases, computerized crime mapping, and records management systems doing everything from inventorying property and cataloging evidence to calculating solvability factors. Of all criminal justice agencies, the police traditionally have had the closest ties to science and technology,
