Finding & Reviewing Community Policing Apps in Asia

The increasingly-adopted mobile devices create new opportunities for the police to engage with citizens at anywhere and anytime. However, there has been limited academic work evaluating these technologies. This paper reports an auto-ethnographic evaluation study of Android community policing (CP) applications (Apps) used in Asia. Without guidance, our study indicates that finding appropriate Asian CP Apps is challenging. This paper reports the descriptive App store characteristics, functionalities, communication channels, and privacy of CP Apps. We conclude with design implications and call for developing the standardized App store description system and a CP App evaluation model.