Working Papers

The Boss in Blue: Supervisors and Police Behavior (Cond. Accepted at AEJ: Policy)
[Supplementary Appendix]
We know little about the influence of supervisors in high-stakes, discretionary settings such as policing. Leveraging rotations of officers between supervisors—sergeants—I estimate causal effects of individual sergeants on arrests. Moving an officer from a 10th to 90th percentile sergeant increases monthly arrests by 42%. Sergeant effects on serious and low-level arrests are weakly correlated and operate through distinct behavioral mechanisms: sergeants who drive low-level arrests disproportionately increase discretionary drug enforcement, while those who increase serious arrests expand officers’ 911 call volume. These findings position supervisors as critical actors in shaping police behavior and offer new insights for reform.

`Who You Gonna Call?` 911 Call Takers and Police Discretion
[Supplementary Appendix]
Police officers make high-stakes decisions under uncertainty, often acting on information from 911 call takers. Using quasi-random assignment of calls to call-takers in Dallas, I show that variation in call takers’ risk assessments significantly affects arrests. Calls upgraded to priority increase arrests by 53% relative to the mean, primarily for low-level offenses. These effects are partly driven by officers using call information to inform evaluations of suspect culpability, with stronger responses among inexperienced officers or in racially discordant neighborhoods. The results highlight the critical role of call takers and officer information processing in shaping enforcement.

The Effects of 911 Response Size (Draft available upon request)
I estimate the effects of allocating more officers to 911 calls. In order to circumvent the endogenous assignment of more officers to calls with greater unobserved severity, I leverage exogenous variation in the amount of double-crewed patrol vehicles across shifts. I find that police are more likely to use their enforcement powers when additional officers are dispatched: an additional officer being dispatched to a call increases the likelihood of an arrest being made by 24\% relative to the mean. I provide suggestive evidence that officers are more effective at incapacitating criminals when response sizes are larger. My results highlight an understudied feature of patrol allocation that police departments ought to consider when making deployment decisions.

Works in Progress

Detective Quality and Investigative Output (with Matthew B. Ross and CarlyWill Sloan)
Clearance and Crime Prevention (with Catarina Meneses, Matthew B. Ross, and CarlyWill Sloan)
Immigration Enforcement Partnerships and Local Police Activity (with Spencer Cooper)