Police find many internet reports incomplete and unusable

Due to the growth in the number of internet reports, the amount of up-to-date information available to the police has decreased and the distance between citizens and the police has increased. Moreover, many internet declarations are incomplete, according to the police.

This is stated in the research report Basic Teams in the National Police, which was drawn up on behalf of the Police and Science programme. The police encourages reporting via the internet; in the order of preference, this is followed by the telephone, the declaration at the counter and finally a visit from the police officers themselves. As a result, the number of internet reports has grown in recent years, but according to the police, this has a number of negative consequences.

Because there is less contact with citizens at the counter and many internet declarations are incomplete, the police would have less up-to-date information. When making declarations at the counter, the employees could ask for explanations and additions.

“Because the internet report is not immediately available to the desk staff, but is received elsewhere in the police organization, the basic team no longer has an up-to-date overview of relevant events and incidents,” the report continues. It could take two to three days for information about declarations to reach the base teams. At the beginning of this year, it turned out that almost 40 percent of the declarations are made via the internet.

In addition, the police acknowledge that the strong emphasis on internet declarations ‘does not match the internet skills and possibilities of a large part of the population’, for example when it comes to the elderly or the less educated. Also, this way of reporting would often not meet the emotional needs of citizens.