Title:The Spillover Effects of Highly Publicized Police Use-of-Force on Policing and Crime: Evidence from St. Louis

Speaker:龙威

Time:1:55pm June 15, 2018

Venue:Yide building H501

Abstract

Controversial police use-of-force has become widely publicized due in part to the viral dissemination of information. These incidents, which often cause widespread public outrage and extensive scrutiny of the police, have potentially far-reaching spillover effects on policing and crime. Particularly, these high-profile incidents are often linked to a recent nationwide increase in homicides in some U.S. cities. This paper examines the impact of the widely publicized Ferguson shooting – in which a white police officer shot and killed the unarmed black teenager Michael Brown – in St. Louis. To identify effects, we exploit the shooting’s plausibly exogenous timing and its disproportionate impact on predominantly black communities combined with a novel panel dataset. Results indicate that the Ferguson shooting led to immediate and persistent reductions in arrests and self-initiated activities by at least 16 percent, along with other police behavioral changes (less use-of-force and improved 911 emergency call response). Consistent with the evidence on de-policing, we find that the shooting resulted in significant increases in violent crimes, including a 63.2 percent increase in homicides, 16.9 percent increase in robberies, and 19.5 percent increase in aggravated assaults. While it is difficult to know if the results here extend to other cities and other controversial police use-of-force incidents, they do support the hypothesis that these events have caused de-policing in minority neighborhoods and corresponding increases in violent crime.

Speaker’s Information

龙威，男，Texas A&M University经济学博士，现为Tulane Univer 经济系助理教授。研究兴趣为计量经济学和应用经济学。主要成果发表于Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Public Economics, Economics Letters, Applied Economics 和 Empirical Economics.