Changes in policing in the past 20 years include changes in police budgets, in the pattern of public support for their actions, in police involvement with the media, and in the links between police reform groups. Police information technologies also influence police organizations. These technologies include centralized call collection, computer-aided dispatching, management information systems, and computer networking. The three major sources of influence on the nature and amount of information that the police collect, process, and store are police organization, occupational culture, and the information technology used. Although researchers and others have assumed that information is the basis for police decisions, alternative assumptions about the role of technology in organizations may be more appropriate. The available ethnographic evidence also suggests the conditions under which information technologies will change or shape police practice and indicates that police officers use information technology in line with traditional practices. The social organization of policing is slow to change; the next 10 years or so will tell whether the major changes in technology will restructure policing. Notes and 85 references