Building A Civic Tool for Community-Police Engagement to Adapt Neighborhood Policing

Motivation

• Existing decision-support systems often struggle to combine qualitative citizen feedback with quantitative indicators, leaving a gap between institutional safety measures and public experience.Community policing depends on high-quality information exchange, but unequal power relations and limited infrastructure can hinder inclusion of citizen perspectives.Source: §1 · p. 1

Approach

• The RtD inquiry examines collaboration among police, NGOs, and municipal offices, using co-design artifacts as boundary objects for stakeholder negotiation and trust-building.The authors define a Civic Tool as socio-technical infrastructure that encourages community–government engagement through physical, digital, and human elements.Source: §1 · p. 2

Tool overview

• The tool combines recent incident records with role-based resident surveys, juxtaposes the data, and supports neighborhood policing adjustments through street, web-application, and stakeholder interactions.Surveyors include patrol officers, a district coordinator, and NGO volunteers; possible adjustments include reallocating patrols or convening community meetings.Source: §1 · p. 3

Contributions

• The paper contributes an empirical two-year RtD account, a civic-tool artifact integrating police data and citizen perceptions, and reflections on interaction design as boundary-spanning practice.The inquiry presents co-design with public institutions as community-engaged research involving multiple civic actors in policing.Source: §1 · pp. 2–3

Findings and contribution

• The mixed-methods evaluation found increased resident-officer interaction and city leaders viewed the tool as a mechanism to build trust, while also exposing limits of participation in hierarchical institutions.The authors argue that civic tools should function as boundary objects for negotiation and trust-building, not merely aim for usability.Source: §1 · p. 3

2.1 RtD with Public Institutions

• RtD can act as infrastructuring by aligning socio-technical resources, practices, and institutional logics, while design artifacts can serve as boundary objects for negotiation across disciplines.Prior public-institution co-design research also emphasizes maintaining relationships and other forms of human work.Source: §2.1 · p. 3

2.2 Co-Design for Public Safety

• Co-design can support community-police communication and trust, but integrating its outputs into official workflows remains difficult.Public-safety co-design can surface social relevance, ethical implications, and practical utility; the paper focuses on negotiations between open-ended co-design and police operational constraints.Source: §2.2 · p. 3

2.3 Community-Data-Integrated Policing

• Citizen-generated data can add firsthand experience to institutional records, but it becomes actionable through human infrastructure such as moderators, data intermediaries, and feedback loops.The paper uses community surveys to gather safety perceptions including insecurity, perceived risk, trust, and social cohesion.Source: §2.3 · pp. 3–4

2.4 Interaction Design for Trust

• Trust-oriented interaction design must account for how technology shapes participation and complements offline community relations rather than assuming digital systems replace them.Participatory safety technologies also involve tensions: residents may prioritize lived experience while institutions privilege quantitative metrics and formal procedures.Source: §2.4 · p. 4

2.5 Gap

• Few studies co-design public-space safety tools with multiple civic actors, and policing adds conceptual challenges around hierarchy, authority, legitimacy, interpretation, and workflow compatibility.The paper addresses this gap through a real-world case integrating citizen feedback into police workflows.Source: §2.5 · p. 4

3.1 Public Safety Context in Riga

• Riga’s neighborhood safety work concerns public order, minor offenses, and disputes, while citywide survey feedback lacks neighborhood-level detail and incident statistics may miss residents’ insecurity and police trust.The authors situate local relationships within historical and sociocultural factors and state that findings are not intended to generalize universally.Source: §3.1 · pp. 4–5

3.2 Co-Designing

• The two-year co-design inquiry involved a dozen structured activities with municipal police, city staff, and NGOs across four iterative phases, from framing through assessment.The phases were framing, alignment, and requirements; prototyping and iteration; validation and demonstration; and assessment.Source: §3.2 · p. 5

3.2.1 Framing the Problem, Aligning Stakeholders, and Gathering

• Diverse stakeholder workshops did not converge on a solution; passive police tweets yielded no neighborhood-level insight, prompting a lightweight hybrid requirement and a role-based survey plus web visualizations.The Community of Interest validated and prototyped the concept, negotiating survey roles: NGOs asked about trust while officers asked about insecurity.Source: §3.2.1 · p. 5, §3.2.2 · p. 5

3.2.3 Validation and Demonstration.

• In the one-neighborhood pilot, patrol officers collected over 100 survey responses while the district coordinator and NGO volunteers collected only a small number.The disparity surfaced how sustained participation depends on time availability, role mandates, and visibility in public space.Source: §3.2.3 · p. 6

3.2.4 Assessment.

• Assessment combined role-based usability sessions with process evaluation embedded across training, demonstration, and reception.The component tests assessed task completion and perceived quality; process data included questionnaires, fieldwork diaries, media reports, survey logs, feedback, and interviews.Source: §3.2.4 · p. 6

4 Artifact: Par drošu R¯ıgu civic tool

• The five-component tool links incident analysis, field surveying, survey analysis, updates and sharing, and a web application in a twice-yearly cycle.It supports situated surveyor-resident interaction, police interpretation of data, and institutional coordination; Figure 6 maps stakeholders across components.Source: §4 · p. 6, Figure 6 · p. 7

4.1 Police Incident Records Analysis

• Incident analysis turns anonymized police records into ten visualizations of temporal patterns, spatial hotspots, and response metrics for contextualizing citizen feedback.The visualizations represent an institutional view of safety and are not prescriptive.Source: §4.1 · p. 7

4.2 Citizen Survey

• The in-person survey assigns feelings of insecurity, perceived risks, and community cohesion to different surveyor groups to address access and local legitimacy.The design repurposes patrol encounters as listening interactions; in-person administration also allows clarification and rapport.Source: §4.2 · p. 7, Table 1 · p. 7

4.3 Citizen Survey Analysis

• Survey visualizations show perceived unsafe areas, neighborhood social dynamics, and police trustworthiness alongside incident records, making discrepancies available for interpretation.CoDs can annotate tensions, such as a crime-free park with a high avoidance score.Source: §4.3 · p. 8, Figure 8 · p. 8

4.4 Updates and Sharing

• CoDs use perceptions, incident reports, and operational priorities to adapt patrols, incident responses, and community meetings, then share analyses with municipal and community partners.The tool supports flexible interpretation and action rather than a fixed data-action pipeline.Source: §4.4 · pp. 8–9

4.5 Web Application

• The web application coordinates, analyzes, and archives incident data, survey responses, and surveyor feedback, with annotations saved alongside visualizations for reporting.It is designed for CoDs to use without external technical staff.Source: §4.5 · p. 9

5.1 Tool Components

• Survey testers found the online form straightforward and feasible, but anticipated limited resident responsiveness, adverse weather, and difficulty reaching all age groups.Participants estimated collecting 20–100 responses over two weeks.Source: §5.1.1 · p. 9

5.1.1 Citizen Survey.

• Most web-application testers rated the interface positively for ease and perceived supportiveness, while generally describing its visual design as clean and professional.One participant perceived a mismatch with expectations and suggested refinement as needs evolve.Source: §5.1.2 · p. 9

5.1.3 Integration with existing workflows.

• CoDs valued survey data and dashboard analytics as sources of neighborhood-level insights, but reported limited interaction with surveyors and some mobile-use issues.Participants also saw visualizations as prompts for reallocating patrols and cameras; the application was not designed primarily for small screens.Source: §5.1.3 · pp. 9–10

5.2.1 Stakeholder Engagement.

• Existing stakeholder relationships and officer participation supported engagement, while interviewees said formal co-ownership could improve shared responsibility.NGOs conducting surveys during their activities was suggested as one way to reduce burden.Source: §5.2.1 · p. 10

5.2.2 Citizen Interaction.

• Interviewees described new resident communication and perceived improved police-citizen trust, but low response collection by some surveyors raised concerns about survey data quality.Patrol officers’ results suggested interaction was attainable, while other surveyors’ experiences underscored the importance of stakeholder engagement.Source: §5.2.2 · p. 10, §5.2.3 · p. 10

5.2.3 Levels of Trust.

• Police expected more automated data merging and interpretation than the web application delivered, although they reported that survey perspectives differed from incident statistics.Interviewees also described language and data-literacy differences among partners.Source: §5.2.4 · p. 11

5.2.5 Political Leadership.

• Political support helped secure implementation resources, while interviewees viewed lightweight, low-cost components as supporting continued use and organizational learning.After the initial pilot, police continued to use and adapt the tool in another neighborhood.Source: §5.2.5 · p. 11, §5.2.6 · p. 11

5.2.6 Tool Sustainability.

• In a later neighborhood deployment, two officers collected 100 responses in three weeks, identified information absent from incident records, and prompted a supplementary nighttime-transit action.Findings were shared with residents and officials at the 2025 Nightlife conference.Source: §5.2.6 · p. 11

6.1 Co-Design for Public Safety

• Different stakeholder views of safety—from enforcement to inclusion and road infrastructure—pushed the design toward a participatory survey representing perceptions and social relationships.The workshops also produced vague outcomes and required additional co-design, which can be difficult under time or resource constraints.Source: §6.1 · p. 11
• Early introductory meetings and workshops can establish shared understanding of terms, goals, and tool concepts across stakeholder perspectives.The recommendation follows a process in which divergent views required additional co-design.Source: §6.1 · p. 11

6.2 Interaction Design for Trust

• The tool provides recurring interaction for reflection and revisable interpretations and actions, while several design intentions remained aspirational and the tool does not solve public-safety challenges.Underuse, nonresponsiveness, and one-way communication can limit civic tools’ potential.Source: §6.2 · p. 11

• Inline explanations are intended to prevent misreadings and overconfidence in data while police stakeholders view charts.Source: §1 · p. 12

2. Free-text comment boxes

• Police leadership shaped functional priorities, while episodic NGO and coordinator participation and differences in digital literacy prompted explanations, comment boxes, and participation badges.A Community of Interest helped formalize roles and sustain feedback channels.Source: §2 · p. 12, Figure 11 · p. 12

6.3 Local Factors Influencing Civic Tool Demonstration

• Patrol officers collected substantially more survey responses than NGO volunteers and district coordinators, whose lower capacity was linked to limited time and less visibility or authority in public space.The police were the only stakeholder group with sufficient capacity to scale surveying, raising response-bias concerns; no scalable alternative was identified within the setting.Source: §6.3 · p. 12
• District chiefs struggled to integrate multiple charts during the demonstration, and hands-on use elicited new requests such as automated interpretation.The pilot treated material engagement as a probe that informed subsequent co-design iterations.Source: §6.3 · p. 12

6.4 Implications for RtD with Public Institutions (RQ2)

• Civic tools should work as boundary objects across stakeholder perspectives and accommodate slower decision cycles and literacy differences as conditions for trust and legitimacy.The study frames these frictions as meaningful inefficiencies in public institutions.Source: §6.4 · pp. 12–13
• Infrastructuring requires compatibility with existing formats, networks, and work practices, alongside organizational buy-in and capacity-building for primary users.The case used police record exports in their original form and repeated co-design engagements and training to establish initial practices.Source: §6.4 · p. 13
• The study contrasts shared problem framing and negotiation with police-vendor collaborations described as unidirectional, treating negotiation time as potential capacity-building rather than overhead.Small-scale iterative changes may better accommodate evolving relationships and institutional constraints.Source: §2 · p. 12, §6.4 · p. 13

6.5 Limitations and Future Work

• Findings are bound to Riga’s socio-political context, citizen co-design was mediated through NGOs, and the tool leaves interpretation of juxtaposed data to police.Future work could include additional stakeholders, collaborative annotation, and longer-term evaluation of boundary-object use and trust in practice.Source: §6.5 · p. 13

• The civic tool serves as an RtD outcome and a probe that surfaced infrastructural tensions, contributing an empirical account, an artifact, and reflections on public-sector design.The findings show how a civic tool can mediate between institutional data practices and residents’ lived experiences.Source: §7 · p. 13
• The two-year co-design process combined police records and citizen feedback through a situated survey, while surfacing recurring frictions around trust, data literacy, and stakeholder alignment.The authors identify flexible probes, iterative refinement, and organizational arrangements as needed to respond to local constraints and community needs.Source: §7 · p. 13
• The final design juxtaposes operational records with lived experience and supports interpretation through lightweight interaction mechanisms.Stakeholders reported shifts in officer-resident interactions from enforcement toward listening and care.Source: §7 · p. 13

• The authors use Zimmerman et al.’s Research through Design conceptualization to reflect on how the design process unfolded.Source: A Co-Design Process Details · p. 16
• The reflection considers the socio-technical configurations that emerged and how they addressed local needs.Source: A Co-Design Process Details · p. 16
• The authors consider how resulting practices might transfer to other contexts.Source: A Co-Design Process Details · p. 16
• Table 2 is identified as the summary of the process activities and outputs.Source: Table 2 · p. 16

A.1 Framing the Problem, Aligning Stakeholders, and Gathering the Requirements

• The preparatory workshop mapped potential co-design stakeholders after seven participants discussed Riga’s urban-security needs and policing issues.Source: §A.1 · p. 16, Figure 12 · p. 16
• Discrepancies between biennial citizen surveys and crime statistics left perceptions of neighborhood safety and public-space risks inconclusive.Police also received concerns such as inadequate park lighting that were beyond their control.Source: §A.1 · p. 16
• After the design-thinking workshop surfaced diverse challenges without a clear solution direction, police input and requirements-gathering narrowed the civic tool’s focus.Twitter analysis centered mainly on traffic and parking, so that material was excluded from the tool design; police said they needed diverse information about ground conditions.Source: §A.1 · p. 16

A.2 Prototyping and Iteration

• COI feedback on the proposed concept was generally positive, citing its potential to bridge information gaps and support community engagement.Structured feedback addressed usefulness, clarity, and feasibility.Source: §A.2 · p. 16
• Stakeholders iteratively tested and refined components, with police reviewing dashboard usability and NGO members reviewing survey language and engagement strategies.Source: §A.2 · p. 16

A.3 Validation and Demonstration

• Most validation-workshop participants fully or partially agreed that the right stakeholders were involved, their feedback was considered, and the process was engaging and productive.Some emphasized inter-institutional collaboration and continuous citizen dialogue for long-term success.Source: §A.3 · p. 17, Figure 13 · p. 17
• In the first neighborhood demonstration, surveyors collected responses for two weeks, then Community of Interest members analyzed survey responses alongside police incident records.They used the dashboard to discuss findings with residents and NGOs, although they made no policy decisions and needed researcher support to interpret charts and tables.Source: §A.3 · p. 17

B.1 Feelings of Insecurity

• The insecurity survey asks about worries and fear related to crime, feelings of safety after dark, and streets or areas avoided because of crime fears.Source: §B.1 · p. 17

B.2 Residents’ Cohesion and Disorder in the Neighborhood

• The neighborhood survey covers perceived disorder and fear, residents’ willingness to help and trust one another, and responses to suspected burglary.Source: §B.2 · p. 18

B.3 Perceived Risk of Harm and Trust in police

• The police survey asks respondents to rate local police performance and the likelihood of specified crimes occurring in the next six months.Source: §B.3 · p. 18

C Surveyors’ Feedback Questionnaire

• The surveyor feedback questionnaire asks about survey experience, respondent willingness, recruiting challenges, willingness to continue, and suggestions.It also invites comments received from citizens during surveying.Source: C Surveyors’ Feedback Questionnaire · pp. 18–19

D Design Assessment

• Figure 14 is titled as responses to the tool components evaluation, but its caption does not report the responses or their direction.Source: Figure 14 · p. 19

E List of Participants

• Table 4 lists participants in citizen survey user testing.Source: Table 4 · p. 19
• Table 5 lists participants in web application user testing, while Table 6 lists participants in continuous tool assessment.Source: Table 5 · p. 19, Table 6 · p. 20