Development of a Digital Crime Reporting Portal for the Nigeria Police Force, Rivers State Command

Public trust in crime reporting mechanisms in Nigeria is low, largely due to physical barriers to reporting, fear of retaliation, and perceptions of police unresponsiveness. This study focuses on the development of a digital crime reporting portal for the Rivers State Command of the Nigeria Police Force, targeting urban populations in Port Harcourt, South South Nigeria. A baseline survey of 300 residents in Port Harcourt revealed that 61 percent had witnessed a crime in the past year but only 19 percent formally reported it, with bureaucratic processes and personal safety concerns cited as the primary deterrents. The portal was developed as a responsive web application using React.js for the front end and Node.js with a PostgreSQL backend, offering anonymous crime reporting, incident categorisation, GPS-tagged location mapping, and a follow-up case status tracker. Role-based administrative access was implemented for divisional police officers to review and assign cases. A functional review by five senior police officers confirmed that the portal aligned with the Force's Standard Operating Procedures for crime recording. The study recommends that the Nigeria Police Force integrate digital reporting channels into its community policing strategy and that this model be piloted as a proof-of-concept before nationwide rollout. Keywords: crime reporting, digital portal, Nigeria Police Force, Rivers State, anonymous reporting.