By Andrew Jordan and Taeho Kim

We study how civilian complaint investigators affect officer behavior in Chicago. We exploit quasi-random assignment of complaints to supervising investigators and use variation in whether supervisors tend to acquire sworn affidavits that substantiate the complaints. When the assigned investigator opens more investigations through obtaining affidavits, accused officers accumulate fewer complaints in the first three months of the investigation. We find that, prior to a scandal, assignment to high-investigation supervisors causes officers to make more arrests. However, this reverses after the scandal. Our findings suggest that police watchdogs can improve officer behavior in ordinary oversight environments but may backfire in heightened oversight environments.

Unpublished paper, 2022. 46p.

By Tanaya Devi and Roland G. Fryer, Jr.

This paper provides the first empirical examination of the impact of federal and state "Pattern-or-Practice" investigations on crime and policing. For investigations that were not preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force, investigations, on average, led to a statistically significant reduction in homicides and total crime. In stark contrast, all investigations that were preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime. We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%. Other theories we test such as changes in community trust or the aggressiveness of consent decrees associated with investigations -- all contradict the data in important ways.

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020. 673p

By David Spencer

As a new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is appointed, Policy Exchange has published our report, “‘Policing Can Win’: The New Commissioner’s First 100 Days” by David Spencer, Policy Exchange’s Head of Crime & Justice.

The central thesis to this report is that ‘Policing Can Win’ over those who would commit crime and disorder in our communities. In addition to summarising the core issues the Met has faced over the last five years, this report sets out the three areas where substantial changes must be made:

Leadership at Every Level: Providing the leadership that the officers and staff of the Met need to effectively fight crime and keep the public safe. Fighting Crime and Reconnecting with the Public: Reigniting the tradition that only by working closely with the public will the police be successful in retaining the public’s confidence, fighting crime and disorder, and keeping the public safe. Police Officer Conduct and Competence:Eliminating from policing those who are incompetent or would break the public’s trust in policing by committing criminality or misconduct.

• More.....

  DeDuring and by the end of the Commissioner’s first 100 days in office, things need to feel different.Different to the men and women of the Met, different to those who hold the Commissioner to account, and most importantly different to Londoners. This report seeks to give the Commissioner a head start.scription text goes here

London: Policy Exchange, 2022. 67p.

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By The Expert Review Panel

The concerns identified in this report, though not unique, are serious and will require significant attention by the Department’s leadership and the City. There is important learning from the reforms being undertaken by other agencies for Fort Worth as it continues its efforts to operate according to its stated values and policies. The Department has many characteristics of a modern, professional police department. The leadership of the Department revised its policies and procedures in an effort to conform to nationally recognized best practices. In place are the basic structures, accountability committees, and review processes that one would expect in a department of its size. It has built a new academy and converted its training curriculum away from a military style boot camp to a scenario and classroom-based academic setting. Investments in technology have given managers the tools necessary to effectively and efficiently hold officers accountable to policy and law, as well as to identify and address gaps in policy, training, supervision, or widespread practices. Both the Department’s and the City’s leadership have taken steps to create legitimacy in all of Fort Worth’s communities. …. However, the actual experience of some members of the community, especially people of color and those in low-income neighborhoods, is very different. Daily encounters are far too often characterized by a “command and control” approach to policing that leads to avoidable uses of force and creates tension with residents who encounter police officers. The failure to use effective de-escalation techniques continues to be a significant issue that has increased mistrust. Accountability for aggressive police tactics is frequently anemic or ineffective and can place form over substance, missing both individual and systemic problems. Compounding the issue, the Panel heard reports from supervisors in the Department that middle managers were discouraged from raising issues unless there had been a complaint or a public outcry.

Fort Worth, TX: Expert Review Panel, 2022. 97p.

ByTanaya Devi and Roland G. Fryer Jr,

This paper provides the first empirical examination of the impact of federal and state "Pattern-or-Practice" investigations on crime and policing. For investigations that were not preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force, investigations, on average, led to a statistically significant reduction in homicides and total crime. In stark contrast, all investigations that were preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime. We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%. Other theories we test such as changes in community trust or the aggressiveness of consent decrees associated with investigations -- all contradict the data in important ways.

Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020. 63p.

By Bocar A. Ba and Roman G. Rivera

Does policing the police increase crime? We avoid simultaneity effects of increased public oversight during a major scandal by identifying events in Chicago that only impacted officers’ self-imposed monitoring. We estimate crime’s response to self- and public-monitoring using regression discontinuity and generalized synthetic control methods. Self-monitoring, triggered by police union memos, significantly reduced serious complaints without impacting crime or effort. However, after a scandal, both civilian complaints and crime rates rise, suggesting that higher crime rates following heightened oversight results from de-policing and civilian behavior simultaneously changing. Our research suggests that proactive internal accountability improves police-community relations without increasing crime.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, 2019. 89p.

By Vanda Felbab-Brown

Even as the administration of Mexico’s President Enrique Peña Nieto has scored important reform successes in the economic sphere, its security and law enforcement policy toward organized crime remains incomplete and ill-defined. Preoccupied with the fighting among vicious drug trafficking groups and the rise of anti-crime vigilante militias in the center of Mexico, the administration has for the most part averted its eyes from the previously highly-violent criminal hotspots in the north where major law enforcement challenges remain. • The Peña Nieto administration thus mostly continues to put out immediate security fires—such as in Michoacán and Tamaulipas—but the overall deterrence capacity of Mexico’s military and law enforcement forces and justice sector continue to be very limited and largely unable to deter violence escalation and reescalation.

Washington DC: Latin America Initiative, Foreign Policy at Brookings, 2016. 48p.

By Zoorob, Michael

Under what conditions can citizens hold government officials accountable for their behavior? I examine accountability over the police, a pervasive face of the state as experienced by most people. Like elected politicians, police enjoy significant discretion, limited oversight, power, and corruptibility. Continued problems of police violence and disparate treatment, especially against Black Americans, have shown the importance of accountable policing.

Using calls for service records, election returns, survey data, and case studies, I explore challenges of political accountability across the highly varied 18,000 police department in the United States. The police are both a nationally salient social group – evaluated differently by partisans in a national media environment – as well as a locally-provided government function that tens of millions of Americans encounter regularly. This decentralization complicates improvements to policing policies by limiting the impacts of reform activism to particular cities and by misaligning activism with local conditions.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2021. 207p.

By William I. Tchakirides

This dissertation uncovers the roots of discriminatory police power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and traces Black-led efforts to make the city’s police bureaucracy more accountable to all citizens. It analyzes the politics of police reform in the century spanning the passage of two state laws that reconfigured Milwaukee’s law enforcement arrangements. The first (1885) removed City Hall’s managerial control over the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). Corporate elites and social reformers fearful of rising working-class power and moral degeneration in the immigrant-industrial city lobbied for the statute’s enactment. The second (1984) reversed course, re-empowering nonpolice officials after decades of Black-led campaigns for diverse input, representation, and oversight within Milwaukee’s white-controlled police bureaucracy. While the 1885 law created a civil service commission to regulate public safety hiring free of political machine influence, it also gave exclusive accountability to property-holders and shielded department heads from external supervision— provisions later targeted by activists. A revision (1911) clarified the power of the city’s public safety chiefs, granting them indefinite tenure, policymaking authority, and institutional autonomy. In turn, the MPD fostered an outwardly exceptional status at the height of policing’s “reform era” (1920s-1950s). This apparent exceptionalism, marked by a value-neutral self-image, was established around administrative innovations and crime control efficiencies heralded by national policing experts. It was a dynamic that broadly served white middle-class and corporate interests, as...

Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, 2020. 517p.