the impact of racial and ethnic diversity in policing · the impact of racial and ethnic diversity...

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The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing * Bocar Ba Dean Knox Jonathan Mummolo § Roman Rivera February 15, 2020 Abstract Racial and ethnic diversication is among the oldest proposed police reforms, but severe data constraints have forced scholars to rely almost exclusively on problematic cross-agency comparisons to evaluate its eects. We assess the impact of diversi- cation using millions of observations of Chicago police ocers’ behavior, merged with data on their socio-demographic traits. Compared with white ocers facing the same working conditions, we show that black ocers make substantially fewer discretionary stops (e.g. for “suspicious behavior”), fewer arrests for petty crimes, and use force less often. These reductions stem primarily from a reduced focus on black civilians, a pattern concordant with eorts to end abusive policing and mass incarceration in African American communities. However, we also nd evidence that coarse identity groupings mask large variation in police behavior. Most notably, we nd Hispanic ocers who cannot speak Spanish—the native language of many co-ethnic communities—stop Hispanic residents at the highest rates. Taken together, these results show the substantial impact of diversity on police treatment of minority communities, and emphasize the need to consider multiple facets of police ocers when crafting personnel-driven reforms. * Data for this project were gathered in collaboration with Invisible Institute, with the help of Sam Steck- low and Emma Herman. We thank Rachel Ryley, the Lucy Parsons Lab, and L2, Inc. for generously sharing additional data, and Ted Enamorado for research assistance. Postdoctoral associate, University of Pennsylvania, Law School, [email protected]. Assistant Professor of Politics, Princeton University, [email protected]. § Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Aairs, Princeton University, [email protected]. PhD student, Dept. of Economics at Columbia University, [email protected].

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Page 1: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity inPolicing∗

Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶

February 15, 2020

Abstract

Racial and ethnic diversi�cation is among the oldest proposed police reforms, butsevere data constraints have forced scholars to rely almost exclusively on problematiccross-agency comparisons to evaluate its e�ects. We assess the impact of diversi�-cation using millions of observations of Chicago police o�cers’ behavior, mergedwith data on their socio-demographic traits. Compared with white o�cers facingthe same working conditions, we show that black o�cers make substantially fewerdiscretionary stops (e.g. for “suspicious behavior”), fewer arrests for petty crimes,and use force less often. These reductions stem primarily from a reduced focus onblack civilians, a pattern concordant with e�orts to end abusive policing and massincarceration in African American communities. However, we also �nd evidencethat coarse identity groupings mask large variation in police behavior. Most notably,we �nd Hispanic o�cers who cannot speak Spanish—the native language of manyco-ethnic communities—stop Hispanic residents at the highest rates. Taken together,these results show the substantial impact of diversity on police treatment of minoritycommunities, and emphasize the need to consider multiple facets of police o�cerswhen crafting personnel-driven reforms.

∗Data for this project were gathered in collaboration with Invisible Institute, with the help of Sam Steck-low and Emma Herman. We thank Rachel Ryley, the Lucy Parsons Lab, and L2, Inc. for generously sharingadditional data, and Ted Enamorado for research assistance.

†Postdoctoral associate, University of Pennsylvania, Law School, [email protected].‡Assistant Professor of Politics, Princeton University, [email protected].§Assistant Professor of Politics and Public A�airs, Princeton University, [email protected].¶PhD student, Dept. of Economics at Columbia University, [email protected].

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Racial disparities in the volume and nature of police-civilian interactions (Gelman,Fagan and Kiss, 2007; Knox, Lowe and Mummolo, Forthcoming; Lerman and Weaver, 2014)have for decades fueled persistent allegations of racial bias in policing. Central to thesecritiques are the fact that throughout most of U.S. history—from the formation of the�rst organized security patrols on slave plantations (Reichel, 1988; Turner, Giacopassiand Vandiver, 2006), to the concentrated implementation of “Broken Windows” policingin communities of color in recent decades (Wilson and Kelling, 1982)—many police forceshave been comprised of nearly all white o�cers (Forman Jr., 2017). In turn, one of themost often proposed police reforms aimed at reducing racial inequities in policing hasbeen to increase racial diversity within law enforcement agencies (DOJ/EEOC, 2016).

But despite a large body of research in economics (Antonovics and Knight, 2009), crim-inology (Cao and Cullen, 1996; Shusta and Wong, 1995), law (Forman Jr., 2017), and po-litical science (Garner, Harvey and Johnson, 2019), the e�cacy of this reform strategyremains contested. In some cases, scholars have concluded diversity has no detectableimpact on police violence (Smith, 2003). Other prominent studies conclude the reformchanges the racial composition of arrested civilians (Levitt, 2012; McCrary, 2007). In anexhaustive review of the empirical literature on racial diversity in policing, one legalscholar concluded: “[t]he fairest summary of the evidence is probably that we simplydo not know” (Sklansky, 2005, 1225).

The central obstacle to evaluating this reform has been a lack of su�ciently �ne-grained data on police o�cer deployment and behavior. A comprehensive assessmentrequires analysts to test whether minority police o�cers behave di�erently from whiteo�cers when faced with otherwise identical circumstances. Without the ability to makesuch careful comparisons, virtually all prominent work in this area has relied on cross-agency comparisons (e.g. Legewie and Fagan, 2016; Donohue III and Levitt, 2001; Smith,2003). This approach cannot distinguish whether apparent di�erences in o�cer behaviorarise due to selection (e.g., diverse agencies di�er on unmeasured traits) or ecological falla-cies (Johnson et al., 2019) (e.g., white and nonwhite o�cers in a jurisdictions are assignedto work in di�erent circumstances, which we demonstrate is in fact true). In addition,even the handful of studies that have leveraged plausibly exogenous variation in agencyracial composition (McCrary, 2007; Garner, Harvey and Johnson, 2019; Harvey and Mat-tia, 2019)1 mask important details of police-civilian interactions and the contexts in which

1McCrary (2007),Garner, Harvey and Johnson (2019) and Harvey and Mattia (2019) employ di�erence-in-di�erences designs and leverage the timing of court-ordered a�rmative action mandates on law enforce-

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they unfold. Most prior work also lacks basic information on police and civilians, much ofwhich is relevant to evaluating this policy. For example, skeptics of diversi�cation arguethat minorities choosing to apply to police academies are a self-selected group that maynot mirror the socio-demographic backgrounds and political views of the broader minor-ity population. This critique is in line with much prior work on selection in bureaucraticsta�ng (Clinton and Lewis, 2008; Forman Jr., 2017; Lewis, 2010; Linos and Riesch, 2019;Wilson, 1989). In other words, regardless of an o�cer’s race and ethnicity, it may be thecase that “blue is blue.” If so, diversity-based hiring reforms may not deliver meaningfulchange.

In this paper, we draw on a host of newly collected data sets that together allow us toovercome these longstanding limitations. Our data, which track more than 33,000 Chicagopolice o�cers over time, was assembled through years of open records requests and law-suits and allows for the most credible and �ne-grained assessment of the impact of o�cerdiversity on police behavior to date. It includes timestamped and geolocated records ofo�cers’ decisions to stop, arrest, and use force, as well as civilian complaints that arisefrom o�cer behavior. After aggressively pruning these data to maximize the validity ofour analyses, we construct a panel of 2.9 million detailed observations of events linkedto individual o�cers and speci�c patrol assignments. Our data further includes infor-mation on o�cers’ demographics, language skills, places of residence, political prefer-ences/participation, and career progressions. Most crucial for the validity of our policyevaluation, we leverage data on o�cers’ patrol assignments—i.e., the speci�c days andshifts that o�cers were assigned to patrol speci�c beats, or narrow sets of city blocks.This feature allows us to compare o�cers of di�erent racial and ethnic groups who areworking under the same conditions even when they do not record any enforcement activi-ties. This means we can e�ectively control for environmental factors including di�erentialexposure to civilians across o�cers, overcoming a fundamental limitation in prior work(Knox, Lowe and Mummolo, Forthcoming; Knox and Mummolo, 2020). In short, our dataallow us to credibly approximate, for the �rst time, whether and how white and nonwhiteo�cers perform their jobs di�erently.

We present �ve broad conclusions, several of which undermine prior studies that reliedon coarsely aggregated data at the city or agency level:

(1) Minority o�cers are assigned to very di�erent districts, and even within districts,

ment agencies to estimate agency-level e�ects of o�cer diversity on various outcomes including crime andcrime victimization.

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receive vastly di�erent geographic and temporal patrol assignments. Without accountingfor these di�erences in working conditions, there is no way to meaningfully characterizethe di�erences between minority and white o�cer behavior.

(2) Like Chicago city residents, white, black and Hispanic o�cers tend to live in areasof the city with high shares of co-racial and co-ethnic civilians, a pattern which suggestslow levels of inter-group contact when o�-duty. Black o�cers also have similar politicalpreferences to black civilians, while Hispanic and white o�cers are substantially morepolitically conservative than their civilian counterparts.

(3) Black o�cers make roughly 31% fewer stops and 22% fewer arrests, and they useforce 35% less often, relative to white o�cers working in the same places and times. Ex-amining a wide range of o�cer activity, we show this is mostly driven by a decreasein discretionary activity (e.g. a 53% decrease in loitering stops and 30% fewer drug ar-rests), rather than lower enforcement of severe criminal behavior (only a 10% decrease inviolent-crime arrests). Moreover, relatively higher levels of enforcement by white o�cersfall primarily on black civilians. Black o�cers stop and use force against black civiliansat a rate that is roughly 40% lower than white o�cers.

(4) Hispanic o�cers behave comparably to white o�cers in the aggregate. But thereis massive variation in behavior among Hispanic o�cers. Those who can speak Spanishmake signi�cantly fewer stops and arrests than o�cers who cannot speak Spanish, and aretherefore less likely to have cultural ties to immigrant communities. In fact non-Spanish-speaking o�cers stop Hispanic civilians at even higher rates than white o�cers.

(5) Despite clear evidence that black o�cers make fewer stops and arrests and use forceless often than white o�cers, we �nd civilians lodge complaints against black and whiteo�cers working in the same places and times in roughly equal number overall. However,black o�cers (relative to white o�cers) and Spanish-speaking Hispanic o�cers (relativeto non-Spanish-speaking Hispanic o�cers) receive substantially more complaints for mi-nor infractions, a category that includes failure to �le paperwork, while appearing com-parable in numerous other categories. These patterns suggest the possibility of bias on thepart of civilians when lodging complaints against some groups of minority o�cers. How-ever, due to data limitations on civilian complaints which we outline below, we presentthese results as suggestive, requiring further investigation.

Overall, our results suggest that diversi�cation has a substantial impact on the treat-ment of minority civilians. However, our �ndings also suggest the need to consider mul-tiple facets of police o�cers when crafting personnel-driven reforms. Like the civilians

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they police, o�cers are complex, not easily reducible to racial or ethnic categories. Schol-ars and reformers must take stock of other factors that may a�ect how o�cers relate toresidents, including political preferences and language skills, to develop e�ective policy.

All data and interactive replication materials are publicly available at [LINK]. We en-courage readers to probe and extend our analyses.

1 Data

Over a period of three years, we submitted open records requests to the Chicago PoliceDepartment (CPD) and the city’s Department of Human Resources. The resulting recordsinclude the name, race, gender, birth year, salary, language skill, unit assignments andappointment date of each o�cer, as well as behavioral outcomes including arrests, usesof force, and associated complaints (Ba, 2019; Rim, Rivera and Ba, 2019). We merged thesedata with records on stops of civilians and o�cer beat assignments, proprietary recordson voter turnout and party registration,2 and U.S. census data. SI A.1 describes these datasets and our pre-processing procedures in detail.

We begin with 4.2 million stops in the period of interest, including stops by o�cers onspecial duty, stops that occurred outside their assigned shift times, or other idiosyncraticcircumstances that make principled comparisons di�cult. After aggressive pruning tomaximize the validity of our comparisons, we retain 1.3 million stop records linked to in-dividual o�cers and speci�c patrol assignments. Similarly, after merging and pruning, weretain records of nearly 250,000 arrests and 8,000 uses of force. In this period, we matchroughly 6,000 records of civilian complaints (these complaint records are often incom-plete, a feature we discuss further below). Table 1 contains aggregate information on fourbehaviors tabulated by o�cer race: stops, arrests, uses of force, and civilian complaintsfrom Jan. 2012 to Dec. 2015, the period that informs our behavioral analysis. Due to thesmall sample sizes associated with o�cer groups including Asian Americans and NativeAmericans, our analysis is limited to three racial and ethnic groups: white, black and His-panic o�cers, (together accounting for roughly 97% of o�cers for whom shift assignmentdata is available).

Figure 1 illustrates the dataset’s various attributes by highlighting a small slice of its2We are grateful to Lucy Parsons Labs for publicly releasing data on civilian stops, Rachel Ryley for

generously sharing data on beat assignments, and L2, Inc. for allowing access to its national voter �ledatabase.

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Table 1: Summary of data on o�cer behavior (counts), 2012-2015

Black Hispanic Whiteo�cers o�cers o�cers

Stops 253,609 356,541 729,078Arrests 47,406 65,587 132,285

Uses of force 1,355 2,081 4,514Civilian complaints 1,661 1,345 2,922

temporal and geographic coverage. The �gure maps activity during a four-month windowin the CPD’s Wentworth District (District 2), a highly segregated 7.5 square mile territoryon Chicago’s South Side that is 96% black and consistently ranks among the city’s mostviolent districts in per-capita crime rates. The district is comprised of 15 beats (small col-lections of city blocks assigned for patrols),3 which are shaded according to their racialcomposition. Points distinguish between geolocated stops, arrests, uses of force and civil-ian complaints during this period.

The �gure also describes the behavior of four CPD o�cers working in District 2 duringthis time, renamed to maintain anonymity. For example, one o�cer is female, Hispanic,speaks both English and Spanish, has no political party a�liation, and was born in 1965;another is a white male Republican who does not speak Spanish, born in 1981. The �gureshows the speci�c beats to which o�cers were assigned over time, each o�cer’s behav-ior while working in these beats, the political party a�liation of each o�cer (Democrat,Republican, or una�liated), and whether they turned out to vote in the 2012 Novembergeneral election. The �gure also highlights particular events associated with these o�-cers. For example, one summary details an incident that occurred on Oct. 8, 2012 at 7:13p.m. in which an o�cer used force against a 20-year old unarmed black male. The eventoccurred outdoors, during clear weather in a vacant lot, and the civilian was not injuredduring the encounter. The o�cer, who was not in uniform during the event, was also notinjured. The precise location of the event is denoted on the map in an encircled red “X.”

With data this granular, we are not only able to describe the makeup of the police forcerelative to the city population on a host of dimensions, providing a rich context absent inprior work. We can also make the most valid comparisons to date between the behaviorof white and nonwhite o�cers facing common working conditions. To accomplish this,in our behavioral analysis, we restrict our data to the years 2012-2015, the years covered

3Based on Chicago Police Department 2008 Annual Report.

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by our patrol assignment data. We further restrict analysis to the 87% of o�cers employedat the rank “police o�cer” (pay grade D|1) to isolate o�cers who work primarily on citystreets, rather than behind desks or in atypical environments (e.g. excluding o�cers atrank “helicopter pilot” or “superintendent’s chief of sta�”).4

In the next section, we further detail our analytic strategy.

4This is one of the few o�cer level covariates we condition on in our analysis. We do this because itrepresents a potential violation of our key assumption: that white and nonwhite o�cers common externalcircumstances within month-day-shift-beat units. We detail this rationale in the following section.

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Figure 1: Detailed view of the data. The right panel �gure maps police activity in a single police district (Wentworth, CPDDistrict 2), with green circles, blue squares, and red crosses respectively indicating the locations of stops, arrests, and uses offorce. Polygons represent geographic beats and are shaded by their proportion of minority residents. Lower left panels chartthe behavior of four anonymized o�cers over a four-month period, with panel headers indicating age, gender, ethnicity/race,language ability, and political orientation. In addition to mapped events, these panels indicate general election turnout andcivilian-�led complaints with purple triangles and orange asterisks, respectively. Encircled incidents are described further inthe left middle panel, which report civilian and incident speci�cs. Finally, the top left panel indicates how the four selectedo�cers are assigned to patrol beats over dates and times, with vertical gray bars indicating weekends.

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2 Empirical Strategy

Our main goal is to assess the impact of o�cer diversity on the treatment of civilians.Speci�cally, we seek to test whether o�cers of various racial and ethnic groups per-form their jobs di�erently, on average, when faced with the same circumstances. How-ever, previous policing studies have lacked information on the context in which police-civilian interactions occur, as well as insight into how o�cers relate to civilians on socio-demographic dimensions.

Our analysis therefore proceeds in two main parts. The �rst is a descriptive analy-sis of the concordance between several features of o�cers and the civilians they police.Beyond shared racial and ethnic identity, these include place of residence, political pref-erences and political participation. Many reformers have asserted the importance of ad-ditional factors that may condition the impact of racial diversity, such as the frequencywith which o�cers interact with co-racial and ethnic civilians, whether o�cers reside inthe communities they patrol (Goodyear, 2014) and whether o�cers share common goalswith respect to police reform, among other attributes (Lockwood and Prohaska, 2015).Indeed, there are strong reasons to suspect that racial diversi�cation alone will not bringabout meaningful change depending on the prevalence and distribution of these otherfeatures. Hiring conservative black o�cers who believe policing needs no substantial re-form (Eckhouse, 2019; Federico and Holmes, 2005; Weaver, 2007; Weitzer and Tuch, 2004),or Hispanic o�cers who cannot speak the native language of many immigrant commu-nities, for example, may do little to transform the nature of police-civilian interactions.Our analysis thus begins with a rich description of how o�cers relate to the civilians theypolice on a host of dimensions.

Following this descriptive assessment, we proceed to our main analysis, presentingcomparisons of the behavior of o�cers belonging to various racial and ethnic groupswho are working under virtually identical conditions. Unless white and nonwhite o�cersbehave di�erently on the job, it is unlikely that diversi�cation will yield tangible bene�tsfor policed populations. The ideal experiment to evaluate this question would be to ran-domize white and nonwhite o�cer into patrol assignments. Given this randomization,white and nonwhite o�cers would encounter the same on-average conditions, and ob-served behavior across o�cer groups could inform a valid causal assessment of the policyreform of interest. (For a formal discussion of our quantity of interest, see SI Section B.)

While we cannot directly implement this experiment, our data allow us to recover a

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close approximation. We assemble a vast panel data set, where each row contains infor-mation on a particular o�cer’s activities during a particular shift, including contextualinformation on those activities.5 In each of these 2.9 million patrol assignments, we com-pute the volume of stops, arrests, uses of force, and civilian complaints. We then compareo�cers of di�erent racial and ethnic groups working in the same unique month, day group(weekend vs. weekday), shift number (one of three nominal eight-hour watches eachday), and beat (a small collection of city blocks, averaging 0.82 square miles citywide)—extremely narrow slices of time and space that we label MDSBs for short. Because we arecomparing o�cers working in these narrow units, we can credibly assume that observeddi�erences in o�cer behavior are not due to disparities in external conditions. That is, weassume that white and nonwhite o�cers within MDSBs face the same set of enforcementopportunities, and are faced with: the same types of civilian activity; common neigh-borhood attributes such as infrastructure and architecture; and common time-varyingconditions such as seasons and lighting. We term this the “common circumstances” (CC)assumption. For ease of interpretation, we present di�erences estimated using ordinaryleast squares regression with MDSB �xed e�ects, though our results are robust to severalother estimators (see SI Figures A6-A9 for these additional results). All statistical infer-ences are based on o�cer-level block bootstrap con�dence intervals that are robust tounobserved o�cer-speci�c peculiarities. Our behavioral analysis organizes patrol assign-ments into nearly 207,000 groups de�ned by MDSBs, of which roughly 121,000 containassigned o�cers of di�erent ethno-racial groups (i.e., vary on the explanatory variable ofinterest and thus contribute to our estimates).

Importantly, because we have data on micro-level assignments, we are able to retaino�cers in our panel analysis in every time period whether or not they engaged in anyenforcement activity. Here, our analysis di�ers from most prior studies of police admin-istrative data, which only rely on instances in which o�cers recorded an activity (e.g.a stop or arrest; see discussion in Knox, Lowe and Mummolo (Forthcoming)). Withoutthese patrol assignment records, inaction is invisible to the analyst, and o�cers who donot record any enforcement activity simply vanish from the data. To our knowledge, no

5In analyzing o�cer behavior and associated complaints, we take patrol assignments—the level at whichcommanding o�cers typically exercise control—as the basic unit of analysis. In SI Section C.5, we examinethe possibility that di�erences in clock-in/out times may be one mechanism behind observed di�erencesin behavior between o�cer racial groups. While some statistically signi�cant di�erences can be observed(roughly 0.1% disparities in patrol time), these gaps are two orders of magnitude smaller than the di�erencesobserved in stops, arrests, uses of force, and civilian complaints.

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previous study has been able to leverage patrol assignments in this fashion.6

We stress that our goal is to estimate the �rst-order impact of a policy intervention—the counterfactual substitution of an o�cer of di�ering race into a patrol assignment.(This conceptual manipulation di�ers substantially from the imagined scenario of chang-ing an o�cer’s race or ethnicity while holding their other attributes �xed, an arguablyimpossible counterfactual (Greiner and Rubin, 2011; Holland, 1986).) The policy inter-vention we examine may have second-order e�ects as well. For example, the presenceof additional nonwhite o�cers could a�ect department culture in ways that eventuallyalter the nature of policing. Such e�ects are far more di�cult to evaluate rigorously andbeyond the scope of our analysis.

For full transparency, we highlight a number of possible threats to the validity ofour analysis given our analytic goal. Confounding factors in this scenario include allvariables that correlate with o�cer race in ways that violate the CC assumption. Anexample would be if black and white o�cers were assigned to the same beat and shift, butblack o�cers were ordered to stay in their patrol cars the entire time while white o�cerswere allowed to freely roam the beat. Another violation, given that we control for daygroup but not day of week, would occur if white and nonwhite o�cers were systematicallyassigned to work particular days of the week in ways that correlated with criminal activity.However, because we are not seeking to identify the e�ect of race per se, other correlatesof o�cer race which do not violate the CC assumption do not obstruct our ability toevaluate this counterfactual. Examples of these innocuous correlates include: (1) blackand white o�cers possessing di�erent levels of education which in turn lead to di�erentialenforcement; or (2) black and white o�cers choosing to focus on di�erent corners of theirbeats once assigned in ways that in�uence policing outcomes. These facets of o�cer racewould represent di�erent mechanisms through which the policy intervention of interesta�ects police-civilian interactions, but would not bias causal estimates relating to minorityo�cer deployment. (For a related discussion of conceptualizing race as a causal variable,see Knox, Lowe and Mummolo (Forthcoming) and Sen and Wasow (2016)).

This analysis, while a substantial advance over prior work, has important limitations.First, we measure relative di�erences in o�cer behavior, which do not necessarily implyracial bias. For example, if we were to �nd that white and nonwhite o�cers use force at

6In some cases, our data indicate that two o�cers were involved in stopping a civilian. Throughout,such instances enter as separate rows in our o�cer-shift data, since in such cases each o�cer made a stop.However, to gauge robustness, Si Section C.10 presents a reanalysis of stops after restricting the data to the�rst reporting o�cer, which yields essentially identical results.

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equal rates against nonwhite civilians under identical circumstances, that may indicateno racial bias. However, it may also indicate a high but equal level of bias across o�cers.A second limitation is that we cannot identify speci�c mechanisms connecting o�cerrace to behavior. The behavioral di�erences we observe could be due to di�erences inhow o�cers engage civilians, di�erences in how civilians behave toward certain o�cergroups, or some combination of the two. The e�ects we demonstrate still inform thee�cacy of the policy of racial diversi�cation, but the mechanisms behind these e�ectsdeserve further study, a point to which we return in the conclusion.

In addition, while our analysis tests for tangible e�ects of diversi�cation, we empha-size this policy reform may yield additional intangible bene�ts, namely, increased trustin government among minorities. A long literature has argued that trust in police is acrucial element of public safety, compelling residents to more readily cooperate with lawenforcement (e.g. Tyler and Fagan, 2008) and thereby potentially increasing the chancesthat o�cers solve crimes. If racial diversity a�ects levels of public trust, the cost-bene�tcalculus when considering this policy would be further complicated.

Finally, our analysis is con�ned to a single city, a feature that a�ords us unusuallydetailed data at the expense of geographic scope. Given the substantial progress our dataallow us to make in quantifying the impact of this policy, we view this as a worthwhiletrade. These data also emanate from a setting that is ideal for investigating the role ofo�cer diversity in shaping police-civilian interactions: both Chicago and its police de-partment are racially diverse, and the city has come under �re for a range of aggressivepolice tactics and allegations of misconduct, making it an important case for the studyof a widely proposed police reform (Rivera and Ba, 2019). Our analysis also provides atemplate for future work to be conducted in other jurisdictions.

3 Racial Representation in Chicago

The CPD, which currently employs about 12,000 sworn o�cers, exhibits substantial levelsof racial and ethnic diversity, making it a useful test case for the e�cacy of this policy.However, this has not always been the case: the department has slowly and steadily di-versi�ed over time. Figure 2 visualizes this process. The �gure’s left panel plots the shareof CPD employees belonging to each racial and ethnic group since 1970, as well as thecorresponding shares of the city population belonging to those groups (see SI SectionA.2 for details on the coding of race and ethnicity). The right panel compares the share of

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new CPD recruits belonging to racial and ethnic groups to the city’s population over time.White o�cers have historically made up a disproportionate share of the CPD, but theirrepresentation has been steadily declining, dropping from 78% (61%) to 54% (36%) of theagency (city) between 1970 and 2010. These declines in white representation have beeno�set by gains by minority groups, with sharp rates of increase for Hispanics in particularin both the CPD and among city residents. At present, the CPD is roughly 24% black and21% Hispanic. The �gure also shows that blacks have been declining as a share of cityresidents since 1980, which has likely contributed to stagnant growth in the CPD’s shareof black o�cers. In recent years, only about 15% of new CPD recruits have been black,down from a high during this period of nearly 35% in the late 1970s. While the agencydoes not perfectly mirror the racial composition of the city, it does contain substantialshares of nonwhite o�cers—a necessary feature for our evaluation.

4 Race and geographic assignment

Given Chicago’s high levels of racial segregation7 among residents, it is unclear the extentto which o�cers interact with co-racial and co-ethnic civilians while on duty. If suchinteractions were infrequent, the impact of diversi�cation could be limited. To assess this,Figure 3 plots the the composition of police districts (25 sectors of the city, each covering9.25 square miles, on average) against the composition of o�cers assigned to work inthose districts. In general, white-dominated districts have virtually no minority o�cersassigned, and districts with sizeable minority populations tend to have more o�cers ofthe corresponding race. However, a number of districts dominated by black residentsnonetheless have sizeable contingents of white o�cers. For example, Wentworth (CPDDistrict 2, depicted in Figure 1) is 95% black, but 24% of o�cers assigned there are white.The disparity is even starker in Austin (CPD District 15), where a 93% black residentpopulation is policed by a unit that is 55% white. (See SI Section A.3 for details, and SIFigure A1 for additional analyses.)

Further, among o�cers assigned to a particular district, considerable variation exists inthe exact patrol assignments that o�cers receive. To show this, we examine each unit indi-vidually, tabulating o�cer race and shift time assignments (�rst, second and third watch,respectively corresponding to the nominal duty periods of midnight to 8 a.m., 8 a.m. to4 p.m., and 4 p.m. to midnight). SI Figure A2 depicts the frequency of each shift period,

7See http://www.censusscope.org/us/print_rank_dissimilarity_white_black.html.

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Figure 2: Composition of CPD o�cers and city residents over time. The left paneldepicts the proportion of active CPD o�cers belonging to a racial/ethnic group in Jan-uary of each year. The right panel shows the corresponding proportion for incomingrecruits, aggregated by �ve-year windows (e.g., 1970–1974, 1975–1980) to reduce noisefrom relatively small recruitment cohorts. In both plots, decennial Census proportionsfor each racial/ethnic group for the city of Chicago, tabulated by the National HistoricalGeographic Information System, are provided for reference.

Composition of full department,by year

Composition of recruits,by 5-year window

1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 1970 1980 1990 2000 20100.00

0.25

0.50

0.75

Pro

port

ion

Race/Ethnicity Black Hispanic White

Group Chicago city population Chicago Police Department

13

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Figure 3: Racial and ethnic composition of o�cers’ assigned districts. In each panel,points corresponding to police districts indicate the proportion of civilians of a givenracial/ethnic group residing in 2010 Census data, together with the corresponding shareof o�cers assigned to that district in January 2010 from the same racial/ethnic group.

Black Hispanic White

0.0 0.5 1.00.0 0.5 1.00.0 0.5 1.0

0.00

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Proportion of district civilians

Pro

port

ion o

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ass

igned t

o d

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showing that the pattern of assignments di�ers dramatically by o�cer race. For example,white o�cers in Wentworth (District 2) almost exclusively serve from 4 p.m. to midnight,whereas black o�cers are more likely to be assigned to mid-day shifts. Similarly, SI Fig-ure A3 shows that relative to white o�cers, black o�cers are far more frequently deployedto assigned beat 202—roughly corresponding to a patrol area in the district’s southwestcorner (depicted in Figure 1) that has extremely high police activity and a high concen-tration of black residents. These results undermine analyses in a wide array of previousstudies that aggregate at high levels of geography (for example, controlling for districtor unit assignment) and which assume that o�cers face homogeneous conditions withinthese crude groupings.

These patterns not only establish that o�cers tend to police co-racial residents, butalso underscore a central di�culty in testing whether white and nonwhite o�cers per-form their duties di�erently. Namely, white and nonwhite o�cers work in di�erent envi-ronments on average, especially with regard to local racial composition. This means anyinferred di�erences in o�cer behavior that rely on data aggregated to large geographicunits, such as districts or agencies—the analytic strategy in most prior work—may simplybe artifacts of the divergent environments they police. Our data allow us to overcome thisobstacle to inference.

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5 Do O�cers Live Where They Work?

Our data contain the home addresses of CPD employees for the year 2004, which allowsus to assess whether o�cers reside in or near the areas of the city where they work.8

Home location may serve as a rough proxy for all manner of attributes, such that o�cersliving in their assigned district may have more in common with the residents they police.While CPD o�cers are required to live within the city limits, Chicago’s extreme racial andeconomic segregation means that living in a di�erent part of town often implies a whollydi�erent lived experience. To the extent that o�cers reside in the same areas they patrol,some reformers have asserted they may have greater familiarity with residents, inspiregreater levels of trust, and exhibit greater levels of empathy toward the civilians theyserve (Goodyear, 2014; Gramlich, 2017). And by assessing the correspondence betweenthe racial composition of areas where o�cers live and work, we can gain insight intowhether o�cers are likely coming into contact with various civilian groups when o�duty, i.e. in a less adversarial context.

Figure 4 shows that much like city residents, Chicago Police o�cers are racially seg-regated. The left panel of the �gure depicts the residences of 13,635 o�cers for whomgeocoded 2004 addresses were available, perturbed randomly by 500 meters to maintainprivacy. The center panel shows only those o�cers assigned to work in their home dis-trict in 2004. The right panel shows the racial composition of each district for reference.As the �gure makes clear, o�cers tend to live among co-racial and co-ethnic civilians, apattern echoed in Table 2.

Table 2: Racial composition of o�cers’ home districts, averaged over o�cers.Civilian demographics of the districts in which o�cers live, averaged over o�cers in eachracial group. Boxes indicate co-ethnic/co-racial proportions.

Proportion Black Residents Proportion Hispanic Residents Proportion White ResidentsO�cer White 0.219 0.207 0.525O�cer Hispanic 0.207 0.324 0.420O�cer Black 0.630 0.153 0.199

8In addition, we analyze local demographics here at the district level rather than the beat level, becausethe geographic boundaries of beats change over time, sometimes in unobservable ways. However, this doesnot compromise our behavioral analysis. Within a given month, beat boundaries remain �xed, so we canbe sure o�cers compared within beats in a given month are patrolling to same geographic areas.

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Figure 4: Police residences by o�cer race. The left panel shows the rough locations of all CPD o�cer residences in 2004,perturbed to maintain privacy. The center panel shows those o�cers whose homes are located in their assigned district. Theright panel shows the local racial composition of each district.

Officer residence locations

BlackHispanicWhite

Officers residing in assigned district District civilian racial composition

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6 O�cers’ Political Preferences

Another contextual factor that may contribute to the e�ectiveness of diversi�cation isconcordance between the political preferences of o�cers and residents within racial andethnic groups. Democrats and Republicans hold markedly di�erent views on criminaljustice matters (Eckhouse, 2019; Federico and Holmes, 2005; Weaver, 2007; Weitzer andTuch, 2004). If nonwhite o�cers skew conservative, there may be little reason to expectthat racial diversi�cation would change the nature of policing. To investigate this, wemerge our o�cer data with a commercial voter database, following Enamorado, Fi�eldand Imai (2017), to obtain information on o�cers’ political activity and partisan leanings;details of the procedure are given in SI Section A.4.9

Figure 5 displays the share of each racial and ethnic group a�liating with the Demo-cratic and Republican parties—as well as the shares a�liating with neither party—by birthyear among both city residents and CPD o�cers. This tabulation, based on contempora-neous voter turnout data, allows us to assess the degree to which CPD o�cers’ currentpolitical preferences resemble those of Chicago residents, as well as the degree to whichthis correspondence varies across cohorts. Turning �rst to black o�cers, we see thatcompared to city residents, o�cers are slightly more likely to be Democrats, slightly lesslikely to be nonpartisan, and slightly more likely to be Republican. Though there is somevariation in the magnitude of these di�erences across cohorts, in the aggregate, 7% ofblack o�cers a�liate with the Republican party, compared to 1% of black city residents.But Hispanic and white o�cers diverge sharply from minority populations: while theshare of Democratic o�cers is comparable to the share of Democratic civilians, o�cersare substantially less (more) likely to be nonpartisan (Republican). In the aggregate, 22%of Hispanic o�cers and 40% of white o�cers a�liate with the Republican party, comparedwith 8% and 28% among co-racial and co-ethnic residents, respectively. In general, blacko�cers appear fairly similar to co-racial residents in terms of political preferences, whileHispanic and white o�cers appear markedly more conservative. To the extent politicalpreferences predict styles of policing, this pattern suggests that black civilians may expe-rience improved treatment by black o�cers relative to other groups of o�cers. In fact,we �nd precisely this pattern in our behavioral analysis below.

9Voters in Chicago are not required to register with a party to vote in party primaries, but can onlyparticipate in one party’s primary in each election. L2 codes party a�liation based on a proprietary process,and we use their coding here. As a robustness check, we also code party ID based on which party primaryvoters participated in during the 2016 cycle and obtain highly similar results; see SI Figure A5.

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Figure 5: Police more likely to be Republican and to vote than co-Racial and co-ethnic civilians. Cohort political participation and composition of CPD o�cers andChicago residents based on current political orientation. O�cers are aggregated to �ve-year windows on birth year (1950–1954, 1955–1960, etc.). For turnout in previous electionsfrom 2000–2016, see SI Section C.3 and SI Figure A4.

Voted in 2016 Democratic Non-Partisan Republican

Bla

ckH

ispanic

White

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

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1960

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0.00.20.40.60.8

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port

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Race/Ethnicity Black Hispanic White

Group Chicago city population Chicago Police Department

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In addition, Figure 5 shows police across nearly all cohorts are far more likely to votethan city residents. On average, white, Hispanic, and black citizens’ (o�cers’) votingrates in 2016 were 74% (84%), 61% (68%) and 60% (77%), respectively. Given longstandingcorrelations between turnout and strength of partisanship (Campbell et al., 1960), thisresult suggests that not only do many o�cers a�liate with the Republican party at higherrates, they are also likely to be stronger partisans across the board.

7 Racial Diversity and Police Behavior

We now turn to assessing whether racial diversity among police o�cers a�ects the natureand volume of police-civilian interactions. Figures 6-8 display the average di�erences inthe number of stops, arrests and uses of force associated with black and Hispanic o�cersrelative to white o�cers working in the same MDSBs. Turning �rst to black o�cers, wesee that when faced with the same conditions, black o�cers make roughly 0.16 fewerstops, make 0.020 fewer arrests, and use force 0.0011 fewer times per shift, on average,than white o�cers facing the same circumstances—that is, counterparts assigned to thesame month, the same part of week, the same shift time, and the same beat. These gapsrespectively represent reductions of 31%, 22%, and 41% over typical stop, arrest, and use-of-force volume for white o�cers (see SI Table A1 for detailed tables of average behaviorby o�cer race).

Importantly, Figure 7 also shows that these disparities are not uniform across situa-tions. Rather, they are driven by a reduced focus on engaging black civilians (41% fewerstops, 26% fewer arrests) and a broad class of enforcement activities that can be thoughtof as relatively discretionary, including stops of civilians for “suspicious behavior” (33%less) or arrests for drug-related crimes (30% less). However, when it comes to enforcingviolent crime, black o�cer behavior looks similar to that of white o�cers, with black o�-cers making only 10% fewer arrests for violent crimes than whites. In other words, whenit comes to policing the most serious o�enses, black o�cers are comparable to white of-�cers. Black o�cers also deploy force 35% less often than their white counterparts. Thisdi�erence is driven largely by reduced uses of force against black civilians: decreased useof force against this group accounts for 83% of the overall disparity between white andblack o�cers. (SI Section C.6 and SI Tables A2–A6 report detailed analyses for the resultspresented here; SI Section C.7 and SI Figures A6–8 show that results are virtually identicalusing a wide range of alternative estimators.) This pattern of results is remarkably in line

19

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with the hopes of proponents of racial diversi�cation, who have asserted the policy couldreduce abusive policing and mass incarceration in black communities. Our results implythat if the CPD were to hire additional similarly situated black o�cers from the same poolof recruits from which current o�cers are drawn, and deployed them in the same manneras current o�cers, then black civilians would be subject to signi�cantly lower levels ofdetainment for petty crime and police violence.

Results di�er in important ways for Hispanic o�cers. As with black o�cers, Hispanico�cers facing the same working conditions exhibit fewer stops, arrests and uses of forcethan white o�cers, but the magnitudes of these di�erences are far more modest. Strik-ingly, these negative di�erences are driven by less engagement with black civilians, whileHispanic o�cers exhibit nearly the same volume of enforcement activity against Hispaniccivilians as white o�cers on average. These estimates imply that Hispanic o�cers can beexpected to produce 0.032 fewer stops (6% reduction relative to white o�cers) and 0.00034fewer uses of force (11% reduction) per shift.

In addition to stops, arrests and uses of force, Figure 9 displays average di�erences incomplaints �led by civilians against di�erent groups of o�cers. These results di�er some-what from our analyses of the previous three behaviors. Despite engaging civilians at alower rate, black o�cers receive roughly the same number of complaints as white o�cersworking in the same places and under the same conditions, with two notable exceptions:black o�cers are signi�cantly less likely to receive a complaint related to improper searchor arrest of a civilian (0.22 fewer complaints per 1,000 shifts, a 36% reduction), and theyare estimated to receive a large but statistically insigni�cant number of additional minorprocedural complaints (e.g. relating to improper �ling of paperwork or failure to provideservice). Hispanic o�cers, on the other hand, receive 0.16 fewer complaints per 1,000shifts relative to comparable white o�cers. This gap is primarily driven by a decrease incomplaints (1) from black civilians (0.10 fewer complaints per 1,000 shifts, a 19% reduc-tion) and (2) relating to improper use of force (0.09 fewer complaints per 1,000 shifts, areduction of 21%).

We caution that complaint records are incomplete, in part due to extensive missingnessand procedural hurdles that impede their �ling (Ba, 2019). For instance, of complaints�led between January 2011 and July 2014, investigations were closed for 38% because theinvestigator was not able to link the allegation to a speci�c accused o�cer. In addition,complaints may incorporate elements of civilian perception and bias (e.g., �ling of petty orretaliatory complaints). We note that our analysis of complaints necessarily di�ers from

20

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Figure 6: Stops. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in the number ofcivilian stops conducted by black and Hispanic o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling in the same month, daygroup (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat. Corresponding regression tables are reported in SISection C.6, and results from alternative estimators are shown in SI Section C.7.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

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Figure 7: Arrests. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in the number ofarrests conducted by black and Hispanic o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling in the same month, day group(weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat. Corresponding regression tables are reported in SI SectionC.6, and results from alternative estimators are shown in SI Section C.7. Results are qualitatively similar when holding o�cergender constant; see SI Figures A13–A14 for details.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

Civ. r

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Figure 8: Uses of Force. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in thenumber of uses of force by black and Hispanic o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling in the same month, daygroup (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat. Corresponding regression tables are reported in SISection C.6, and results from alternative estimators are shown in SI Section C.7.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

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Figure 9: Complaints. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in the numberof civilian complaints registered against black and Hispanic o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling in the samemonth, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat. Corresponding regression tables arereported in SI Section C.6, and results from alternative estimators are shown in SI Section C.7.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

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our analysis of the previous three behaviors due to these data constraints. In particular, theexact time of the incident which generated a complaint is often unknown. By necessity,if an incident is reported on the date of the accused o�cer’s shift, we assume the incidentoccurred while the o�cer was on duty. (If complaint-generating incidents occur whileo�cers are o�-duty, after departing their assigned beat, the CC assumption is likely to beviolated.) Given these limitations, we advise readers to treat our conclusions regardingcivilian complaints as tentative. However, we include these data in our analysis becausethey o�er a unique civilian perspective on the appropriateness of police behavior thatis di�cult to obtain from o�cer-generated reports, and suggest several patterns whichfuture research should further examine.

8 O�cers’ Spanish Language Pro�ciency

Our initial analysis indicated that white and Hispanic o�cers behaved comparably towardHispanic civilians, suggesting hiring and deploying additional similarly situated Hispanico�cers would not alter the treatment of Hispanic civilians by police, on average. However,this analysis does not account for the role of language in police-civilian interactions. Ac-cording to a Pew Research Center study, roughly 77% of Hispanic residents in the Chicagometropolitan area speak Spanish at home as of 2015 (Krogstad and Lopez, 2017). However,personnel data we obtained through open records requests show less than half of HispanicCPD o�cers can speak Spanish. This could preclude e�ective communication with im-migrant populations. Moreover, Hispanic o�cers who cannot speak Spanish may divergefrom many Hispanic residents in their cultural backgrounds and lived experiences. If His-panic o�cers cannot speak the native language of the co-ethnic civilians they serve, thee�ects of co-ethnic policing may not materialize.

To investigate this possibility, we use the same analytic approach as in the previoussection to compare the behavior of Hispanic o�cers who can and cannot speak Spanish ontheir volume of stops, arrests, uses of force and civilian complaints. These comparisons,displayed in Figure 10, reveal important heterogeneity in o�cer behavior within this var-ied ethnic group.10 Relative to Hispanic o�cers who speak Spanish and are working in thesame places and times, Hispanic o�cers who cannot speak Spanish exhibit substantiallyhigher numbers of stops, arrests and uses of force. For example, non-Spanish-speakingHispanic o�cers make roughly 9% more stops and 13% more arrests of Hispanic civilians,

10SI Figure A10 shows similar di�erences between Spanish-speaking Hispanic o�cers and white o�cers.

25

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relative to Spanish-speaking Hispanic o�cers facing a comparable pool of civilian ac-tivity. Perhaps counterintuitively, non-Spanish-speaking o�cers stop signi�cantly moreHispanic civilians than even white o�cers. However, like black o�cers, Spanish-speakingHispanic o�cers receive more minor complaints (those falling into the “other” category).

26

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Figure 10: Spanish Language Ability. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence inter-vals) in the number of civilian stops, arrests, uses of force, and civilian complaints generated by non-Spanish-speaking Hispanic(NSSH) o�cers per shift, relative to Spanish-speaking Hispanic (SSH) facing common circumstances (CC) o�cers patrolling inthe same month, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat.

Force uses per 100 shifts Complaints per 1,000 shifts

Stops per shift Arrests per 10 shifts

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9 Discussion and Conclusion

A string of fatal encounters between white police o�cers and unarmed civilians of colorhas led to renewed calls for law enforcement reforms. Prominent among these propos-als is the racial diversi�cation of police agencies, but the e�ects of this widely studiedreform have remained uncertain due to severe data limitations. Using an unusually richindividual-level data set on police activity in Chicago, we provide the most credible as-sessment to date of the impact of this reform on police-civilian interactions.

Our results reveal a much more nuanced story than previous accounts—which arelargely based on agency-level summary statistics (e.g. McCluskey and McCluskey, 2004;Smith, 2003)—have been able to show. Using demographic and political data on o�cers,we �rst show that o�cers are geographically assigned in ways that increase interactionswith co-racial and co-ethnic residents. Though the majority of o�cers do not live in thepolice districts where they are assigned to work, they do tend to live among co-racialand co-ethnic residents, suggesting lower levels of inter-group contact when o� duty.In addition, while the political preferences of black o�cers are fairly comparable to co-racial city residents, white and Hispanic o�cers are markedly more conservative thantheir civilian counterparts—a noteworthy pattern given the correlation between politicalconservatism and support for punitive criminal justice policies.

After establishing these descriptive portraits of police o�cers, we report a range ofanalyses characterizing police behavior and how racial diversity translates into meaning-ful but sometimes unexpected di�erences in the lives of the policed. Faced with the sameworking conditions, black o�cers are less likely to stop, arrest, and use force against civil-ians, especially black civilians, relative to white o�cers. These disparities are driven by areduced focus on the enforcement of discretionary stops and arrests for petty crimes, in-cluding drug o�enses, which have long been thought to fuel mass incarceration (Alexan-der, 2010). In contrast to these drastic di�erences in the policing of petty crime, blacko�cers’ enforcement of violent crime is only slightly lower than that of white o�cers.But this pattern, which closely comports with the hopes of advocates of racial diversi�ca-tion, is complicated by several additional results. For one, while Hispanic o�cers displaylower levels of enforcement activity than whites overall, their behavior toward Hispaniccivilians is broadly comparable to that of white o�cers. And after accounting for lan-guage ability, we �nd non-Spanish speaking Hispanic o�cers engage Hispanic civiliansfar more often than their Spanish-speaking counterparts.

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Our analysis of civilian-generated complaints provides suggestive evidence of the roleof civilian behavior. While black o�cers engage in lower levels of enforcement activitythan white o�cers, they receive a roughly equal number of civilian complaints. Thispattern could be explained by several mechanisms. On the one hand, it may indicate thatblack o�cers engage in misconduct at higher rates, though we �nd this unlikely giventhat most of the complaint disparity stems from allegations of minor infractions. Anotherexplanation is that civilians judge the behavior of black o�cers more harshly than thatof white o�cers, or that civilians believe complaints against white o�cers are less likelyto be taken seriously and therefore opt not to �le them in a variety of situations. Ourability to parse these mechanisms with current data is limited, and we encourage futureresearch to investigate these patterns further. Future work should also seek to discernwhether the patterns we reveal stem from di�erential levels of proactive behavior acrossracial and ethnic groups of o�cers, as opposed to di�erential reactions by civilians towardo�cers of various groups. Doing so would likely require close, unobtrusive observation ofpolice-civilian encounters, perhaps via the analysis of dash or body-worn camera footage.

Finally, while our analysis focuses on evaluating policies related to race and ethnic-ity, other o�cer attributes—most notably, o�cer gender (Lockwood and Prohaska, 2015;Raganella and White, 2004)—that deserve renewed and extended analysis. Our data andresearch design o�er an immediate path for researchers to explore the impact of this andother personnel related reforms. Taken together, our results show that the e�ects of racialdiversi�cation are neither simple nor monolithic. Like the civilians they serve, o�cersare multidimensional. Crafting e�ective personnel reforms requires thinking beyond thecoarse racial and ethnic categories typically used in diversity initiatives, and considerationof how multiple o�cer attributes relate police to the civilians they serve.

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Supplemental Materials

Table of ContentsA Detailed Description of Data 2

A.1 CPD Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

A.2 Coding race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

A.3 U.S. Census Merge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

A.4 Voter File Merge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

A.5 Preprocessing of patrol assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

A.6 Preprocessing of police behavior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

B Causal Estimand in Behavioral Analysis 5

C Additional Results 7

C.1 Race and District Assignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

C.2 O�cer Race and Patrol Assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

C.3 O�cers’ Political Preferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

C.4 O�cer Behavior: Overall Means . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

C.5 O�cer Behavior: Shift Duration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

C.6 O�cer Behavior: Regression Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

C.7 O�cer Behavior: Alternative Estimators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

C.8 O�cers’ Spanish Language Pro�ciency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

C.9 O�cer Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

C.10 Robustness Checks: Multiple Stopping O�cers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

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A Detailed Description of Data

A.1 CPD Data

The administrative data from CPD used in this study span multiple data sets collectedin collaboration with the Invisible Institute, Sam Stecklow, and Emma Herman over thecourse of three years (2016-2019). We obtained these records from the Chicago Police De-partment or Chicago Department of Human Resources via Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) or through court ordered releases stemming from requests made by Invisible In-stitute and Jaime Kalven. CPD provided the following data: rosters of all available currentand past o�cers up to 2018, data on o�cers allegation of misconduct from 2000 to 2016(complaints), unit movement data for individual o�cers from the 1930s to 2016, Tacti-cal Response Reports from 2004 to 2018 (i.e. use of force reports), and arrest data witharresting o�cers and arrestee demographic information from 2001 to 2017. The ChicagoDepartment of Human Resources provided data on o�cers’ language skills up to 2019 ando�cers’ home address in 2004, 2005 and in early 2019. We supplement our core data withdata on “Stop, Question and Frisk” (SQF) activity between 2012-2015, which was publicyshared by the Lucy Parson’s Lab. Finally, the Automated Daily Attendance and Assign-ment sheet data for each police district between 2012 and 2015 was obtained via a FOIArequest to the CPD and shared by Rachel Ryley.

These data and others have been used to construct rich pro�les of Chicago Police O�-cers. While no �le contains a unique identi�er (star numbers change over time, names arecommon, etc.), we constructed unique o�cer pro�les through a successive merge processdescribed here. Each �le contains some identifying information such as of demographicdata (birth year, race, gender) or other characteristics (name, start/badge number, ap-pointed date, resignation date, current unit). We used these identifying characteristics to�rst de-duplicate o�cers within a �le and to then merge to pre-existing o�cer data withinter-�le unique identi�ers. The merging process itself is an iterative-pairwise matchingmethod, where the o�cers in each data set are repeatedly merged on identifying charac-teristics and any successful 1-to-1 match in a round removes the matched o�cers fromthe next round of merging.

The resulting data contains records on 33,000 police o�cers appointed between Marchof 1936 to February of 2018. The number of years and o�cers varies across analyses inour paper due to missing data (for example, assignment data only exists for the years2012–2015).

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A.2 Coding race

We determine race/ethnicity of CPD o�cers based on demographic data obtained fromthe CPD through FOIA. The CPD classi�es race/ethnicity in 6 mutually exclusive groups:white/Caucasian, Hispanic, Black/African American, Asian/Paci�c Islander, Native Amer-ican/Native Alaskan, and unknown/missing. If an o�cer has multiple races associatedwith them across di�erent data sets, we aggregate by most common non-missing races.

For Census and American Community Survey data, we construct corresponding racecategories as follows: any Hispanic individual is coded Hispanic; white and black arecomprised of individuals who are coded as not Hispanic and white (black) alone.

A.3 U.S. Census Merge

District and beat demographic data was constructed using the 2010 US Census data andthe CPD’s pre-2012 beat map. The centroid of each census tract was identi�ed, then thedemographic information of all the centroids inside a beat were aggregated to determinethe beat’s population and demographic composition. District demographics were deter-mined by aggregating across all beats within that district. Post-2012 district and beatdemographics were constructed based on the pre-2012 beat data discussed previously andusing a crosswalk that maps pre-2012 beats to current (2018) beats and their respectivedistricts.

A.4 Voter File Merge

We merged CPD employee data with a nationwide commercial voter �le, maintained byL2 Inc., using the Fellegi-Sunter model as implemented in fastLink (Enamorado, Fi�eldand Imai, 2017). The merge was conducted using �rst, middle, and last name, along withyear of birth. Because a direct merge of the CPD roster with a voter �le of more than180 million observations would result in over 6 trillion pairwise comparisons, we employadditional restrictions for computational feasibility. We focus our attention on voter �leobservations that have a postal code in the greater Chicago area, reducing the number ofpairwise comparisons to slightly over 100 million. For string-valued �rst and last name,we evaluate the quality of a match by Jaro-Winkler similarity, a common string similaritymeasure widely used for name comparison that employs a character-wise comparison oftwo strings while placing more emphasis in their �rst four characters. This similarity is

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discretized into three levels (di�erent, similar, and identical/almost identical) by thresh-olding at 0.85 and 0.94. For year of birth, the absolute value of the di�erence is thresholdedat 1 year (i.e., agreement in year of birth is declared for observations that are at most oneyear apart). For middle names, we evaluate whether candidate matches have an identi-cal value. Based on these discrete comparisons, the probabilistic model behind fastLink

assigns a probability of being a match for each pair of records. The intuition is simple:the more that a pair of records agree in the linkage �elds, the more likely that pair ofrecords is a match. In total, 21,276 out of 33,645 police o�cers were matched, for a matchrate just above the 63% mark; only pairs with a �tted match probability greater than 0.9are retained. We then use the resulting mapping to obtain L2’s proprietary predictionsof each matched o�cer’s current political orientation (Republican, Democratic, and non-partisan, with an extremely small number of third-party labels that are not depicted inanalysis), along with public records of general election and party primary turnout thatare aggregated and maintained by L2.

A.5 Preprocessing of patrol assignments

We restrict analysis to patrol assignments in which black, Hispanic, or white o�cers serve.Asian/Paci�c Islander and Native American/Alaskan Native o�cers are not examined dueto small sample sizes. Within this subset, we further drop non-standard assignments (no-tably including “station supervisor” and “station security” assignments, as well as specialassignments for training, compensatory time, and excused sick leave). Patrol assignmentsin which o�cers are indicated as non-present are also dropped. These steps are intendedto ensure that o�cers nominally patrolling a beat are in fact actively circulating in theassigned geographic area, improving the plausibility of the CC assumption. For the samereason, we drop double shifts (patrol assignment slots in which the assigned o�cer servedfor more than one shift on the same day) to address the possibility that o�cers behavedi�erently due to fatigue in these circumstances. We also eliminate o�cers assigned tonon-standard watches (i.e., other than �rst through third watches). Finally, we drop o�-cers at ranks other than “police o�cer.” This step eliminates police sergeants, who servein 8% of beat assignments but make very few stops and arrests, as well as legal o�cers,helicopter pilots, explosives technicians, and canine handlers.

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A.6 Preprocessing of police behavior

Events are merged to the remaining patrol assignments based on o�cer ID and date. Thisstep discards a large number of events, including those involving o�cers of higher ranksand incidents occurring on rest days. For stops, arrests, and uses of force, we drop allevents that occur outside of the reported patrol start/stop times. A key di�erence in thehandling of complaints, where retrospectively reported incident times are of extremelylow quality, is that we do not implement this step (i.e., all complaints about incidents onthe date of a recorded patrol assignment are assumed to be occur while the o�cer is onduty, an assumption that may potentially be violated).

Stops for “dispersal” and “gang and narcotics-related loitering” are coded as loiteringstops; those that are “gang / narcotics related” are coded as drug stops; “investigatorystops” and stops of “suspicious persons” are coded as suspicious behavior; and stops un-der the “Repeat O�ender Geographic Urban Enforcement Strategy (ROGUES)” programare combined with the “other” category. For stops, if a single o�cer is reported as bothprimary and secondary stopping o�cer, only one event is retained.

Arrests for municipal code violations and outstanding warrants are categorized as“other.”

Complaints initiated by other o�cers, which often relate to truancy or job perfor-mance rather than treatment of civilians, are discarded. Complaints can have multiplereported victims and complainants. When this is the case, each complaint is treated as asingle event, and all victims and complainants are aggregated. When multiple victims arereported, if any victims are black, the civilian race is coded as black. Otherwise, if anyHispanic victims are reported, civilian race is coded as Hispanic. Otherwise, if any whitevictims are reported, civilian race is coded as white. If and only if victim demograph-ics are unavailable, we fall back on complainant demographics. If multiple complainantsare reported, if any are black, the civilian race is coded as black. Otherwise, if any His-panic complainants are reported, civilian race is coded as Hispanic. Finally, if any whitecomplainants are reported, civilian race is coded as white.

B Causal Estimand in Behavioral Analysis

At a high level, the goal of our analysis is to evaluate the policy e�ect of a personnelreform that increases the representation of minorities in the CPD by assigning them to

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positions that would otherwise be �lled by white individuals. The analysis is conductedat the level of the patrol assignment slot. Commanding o�cers are assumed to have a�xed set of patrol assignments that must be �lled, where each slot is associated with abeat (geographic patrol area) and shift time (temporal window). Multiple slots may beavailable for a particular beat and shift time, but each slot can be �lled by only one o�cer.

We organize beat assignments into groups, indexed by i, based on unique combi-nations of month (Mi), day group (weekday/weekend, Di), shift time (�rst/second/thirdwatch, Si), and beat (Bi), or unique MDSBs. Patrol assignment slots within a MDSB are in-dexed by j. For each slot, the realized pattern of o�cer behavior is denoted Yi,j(Ri,j), whereRi,j is the race of the o�cer assigned to a particular slot. Our notation implicitly makesthe stable unit treatment value assumption (SUTVA, Rubin, 1990), which requires that (1)there do not exist �ner gradations of o�cer identity (i.e., within the broad racial/ethniccategories used) that would result in di�ering potential o�cer behavior, and (2) that po-tential outcomes do not very depending on the racial/ethnic identity of o�cers assignedto other slots.1

The slot-level policy e�ect is the di�erence in potential outcomes (Rubin, 1974) Yi,j(r)−Yi,j(r ′), the change in behavior that would have realized if an o�cer of race r had beenassigned to the patrol assignment slot, rather than another o�cer of race r ′. These coun-terfactual di�erences are fundamentally unobservable; instead, we target the average pol-icy e�ect within the subset of F MDSBs for which policy e�ects can be feasibly estimated(i.e., for which variation in o�cer race exists). This quantity is

� =1FAi

F∑i=1

Ai∑j=1Yi,j(r) − Yi,j(r ′),

where Ai is the number of patrol assignment slots available within MDSB i and Ai isthe average slot count across MDSBs. This can be rewritten as the weighted average of

1We explore the validity of this second assumption to the extent possible in SI Section C.10, in whichstops made by two o�cers are reanalyzed. In this section, we re-compute our estimates of di�erentialstopping behavior after excluding the second reporting o�cer from our analysis; the resulting estimatesare highly similar.

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MDSB-speci�c e�ects, �i , with weights given by Ai .

� =F∑i=1

Ai

∑Fi′=1 Ai′ (

1Ai

Ai∑j=1Yi,j(r) − Yi,j(r ′))

=F∑i=1

Ai

∑Fi′=1 Ai′

�i .

As we discuss in Section 2, a key identifying assumption is that

Yi,j(r), Yi,j(r ′) ⟂⟂ Ri |Mi = m,Di = d, Si = s, Bi = b.

Informally, this requires that minority o�cers are not selectively assigned to slots withinMDSBs, at least in ways that matter for potential o�cer behavior. (Hypothetically speak-ing, this independence condition could be achieved even without adjusting for MDSB ifwhite and nonwhite o�cers were randomly assigned locations and times to patrol.)

Our primary results estimate this quantity with an ordinary least squares (OLS) re-gression of the form Yi,j = �i +∑r �r1(Rij = r), where �i represents a �xed e�ect for MDSBi. Unbiasedness of this estimator requires the additional assumption that MDSB-speci�cpolicy e�ects are homogeneous, or that �i = � for all i. It is well known that whenthis assumption is violated, OLS recovers the weighted average of �is with weights cor-responding to the variance of o�cer race within strata. To allow for the possibility ofnon-homogeneous policy e�ects and other departures from our modeling assumptions,we therefore apply a number of alternative estimators, which are described in detail inSI Section C.7. As we show in SI Figures A6–A9, these alternative results are virtuallyidentical to our primary results.

C Additional Results

C.1 Race and District Assignment

The CPD currently subdivides Chicago into 22 policing districts which correspond to CPDunits, in which the majority of police o�cers work. There were 25 districts (numbered1 - 25) until 2012, at which time 3 smaller districts (ranking 18th, 21st, and 25th in landarea2) were eliminated and merged with other districts. Districts 23 and 21 and District 13

2See Chicago Police Department 2008 Annual Report, page 37, https://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2008-Annual-Report.pdf

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Figure A1: Racial composition of o�cers’ assigned districts. Each panel depicts ageographic police district. Points represent the racial composition of district residents.Lines represent monthly proportions of o�cers assigned to a district that belong to eachracial group. Districts 21, 23, and 13 were eliminated during the observation period.

District 21: Prairie District 22: Morgan Park District 23: Town Hall District 24: Rogers Park District 25: Grand Central

District 16: Jefferson Park District 17: Albany Park District 18: Near North District 19: Belmont District 20: Lincoln

District 11: Harrison District 12: Monroe District 13: Wood District 14: Shakespeare District 15: Austin

District 6: Gresham District 7: Englewood District 8: Chicago Lawn District 9: Deering District 10: Ogden

District 1: Central District 2: Wentworth District 3: Grand Crossing District 4: South Chicago District 5: Calumet

2005 2010 2015 2005 2010 2015 2005 2010 2015 2005 2010 2015 2005 2010 2015

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Prop

ortio

n

Race Black Hispanic White

were eliminated and absorbed into neighboring districts in March and December of 2012,respectively. While District 23 was mostly absorbed by District 19 and most of District 13was absorbed by District 12, signi�cant parts of District 21 were absorbed by Districts 1,2, and 9.

Figure A1 displays signi�cant heterogeneity across districts in the racial compositionof their o�cers. There is a correlation between the racial composition of a district’s polic-ing unit and that of the population, and the heterogeneity across police units re�ectsChicago’s racial segregation across geographic areas.

8

Page 43: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

C.2 O�cer Race and Patrol Assignments

Among o�cers assigned to a particular police district, considerable variation exists in theexact patrol assignments that o�cers receive. We examine each unit individually, tabu-lating o�cer race and shift time assignments (�rst, second and third watch, respectivelycorresponding to the nominal duty periods of midnight to 8 a.m., 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and4 p.m. to midnight). Figure A2 depicts the frequency of each shift period, showing thatthe pattern of assignments di�ers dramatically by o�cer race. For example, white o�-cers in Wentworth (District 2) almost exclusively serve from 4 p.m. to midnight, whereasblack o�cers are more likely to be assigned to mid-day shifts. Similarly, Figure A3 showsthat relative to white o�cers, black o�cers are far more frequently deployed to assignedbeat 202—which roughly corresponds to a patrol area in the district’s southwest corner(depicted in Figure 1) that has extremely high police activity and a high concentrationof black residents. These results undermine analyses in a wide array of previous studiesthat aggregate at high levels of geography (for example, controlling for district or unitassignment) and which assume that o�cers face homogeneous conditions within thesecrude groupings.

9

Page 44: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

Figure A2: Assigned shift time by o�cer race. Each panel depicts o�cers within a geographic police district. Within adistrict, each row shows the proportion of shift assignments for black, Hispanic, or white o�cers to �rst watch (midnight to8 a.m.), second watch (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.), and third watch (4 p.m. to midnight). Darker cells indicate a higher proportion ofassignments to a shift time, and entries in a row sum to unity. The �gure demonstrates that within any particular district,black and Hispanic o�cers are called to serve at very di�erent times of day (p < 0.001 for all within-district statistical tests ofindependence).

District 21: Prairie District 22: Morgan Park District 23: Town Hall District 24: Rogers Park District 25: Grand Central

District 16: Jefferson Park District 17: Albany Park District 18: Near North District 19: Belmont District 20: Lincoln

District 11: Harrison District 12: Monroe District 13: Wood District 14: Shakespeare District 15: Austin

District 6: Gresham District 7: Englewood District 8: Chicago Lawn District 9: Deering District 10: Ogden

District 1: Central District 2: Wentworth District 3: Grand Crossing District 4: South Chicago District 5: Calumet

1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch

1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch

1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch

1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch

1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch 1st watch 2nd watch 3rd watch

Black

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Assigned shift

0.00 0.25 0.50 0.75Proportion of officer-shifts assigned to shift

10

Page 45: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

Figure A3: Assigned beat by o�cer race. Each panel depicts o�cers within a geographic police district. Within a district,each row shows the proportion of shift assignments for black, Hispanic, or white o�cers to beats, or geographic patrol areas.Darker cells indicate a higher proportion of assignments to a beat, and entries in a row sum to unity. The �gure demonstratesthat within any particular district, black and Hispanic o�cers are called to serve at very di�erent locations (p < 0.001 for allwithin-district statistical tests of independence).

District 25: Grand Central

District 22: Morgan Park District 23: Town Hall District 24: Rogers Park

District 19: Belmont District 20: Lincoln District 21: Prairie

District 16: Jefferson Park District 17: Albany Park District 18: Near North

District 13: Wood District 14: Shakespeare District 15: Austin

District 10: Ogden District 11: Harrison District 12: Monroe

District 7: Englewood District 8: Chicago Lawn District 9: Deering

District 4: South Chicago District 5: Calumet District 6: Gresham

District 1: Central District 2: Wentworth District 3: Grand Crossing

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Assigned beat

0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5Proportion of officer-shifts assigned to beat

11

Page 46: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

C.3 O�cers’ Political Preferences

12

Page 47: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

Figure A4: Police are more likely to vote than co-racial and co-ethnic civilians.O�cer and city resident turnout rates by racial/ethnic groups, cohort, and election.

Black Hispanic White

20

00

20

02

20

04

20

06

20

08

20

10

20

12

20

14

20

16

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

0.00.20.40.60.8

0.00.20.40.6

0.000.250.500.75

0.00.20.40.6

0.000.250.500.75

0.00.20.40.60.8

0.000.250.500.75

0.00.20.40.60.8

0.000.250.500.75

Birth year

Pro

port

ion

Race/Ethnicity Black Hispanic White

Group Chicago city population Chicago Police Department

13

Page 48: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

Figure A5: Party identi�cation among o�cers using 2016 party primary partici-pation as proxy for party ID. O�cers aggregated to �ve-year windows on birth year(1950–1954, 1955–1960, etc.). For yearly bins and previous elections (2000–2016).

Black Hispanic White

Dem

ocra

tic prim

ary

Neith

er p

rimary

Republica

n p

rimary

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

0.0

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Birth year

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port

ion

Race/Ethnicity Black Hispanic White

Group Chicago city population Chicago Police Department

14

Page 49: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

C.4 O�cer Behavior: Overall Means

15

Page 50: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

Table A1: Average events per shift. Mean number of stops, arrests, uses of force, andcomplaints without adjustment for time or location. Typical behavior is reported for black,Hispanic, and white o�cers individually, as well as the average pooling three o�cer races.Records associated with Native American/Alaskan and Asian/Paci�c Islander o�cers areexcluded due to small sample sizes. O�cer behavior toward Native American/Alaskanand Asian/Paci�c Islander civilians is not included for the purposes of computing totaland reason-speci�c events. Note that civilian race is often unknown in complaint records.Values are scaled for ease of interpretation.

Mean Mean Mean MeanBehavior (Pooled) (Black o�.) (Hisp. o�.) (White o�.)

Stops per shift:Civilian race: Black 0.303 0.261 0.309 0.325Civilian race: Hispanic 0.092 0.021 0.143 0.110Civilian race: White 0.057 0.021 0.061 0.075Reason: Other 0.131 0.116 0.135 0.139Reason: Loitering 0.006 0.003 0.009 0.007Reason: Suspicious 0.154 0.089 0.173 0.184Reason: Drug 0.048 0.018 0.063 0.058Reason: Tra�c 0.118 0.081 0.139 0.130Total 0.458 0.306 0.519 0.517

Arrests per 10 shifts:Civilian race: Black 0.564 0.495 0.593 0.591Civilian race: Hispanic 0.176 0.040 0.252 0.219Civilian race: White 0.089 0.032 0.098 0.117Reason: Other 0.310 0.204 0.346 0.354Reason: Drug 0.094 0.036 0.124 0.113Reason: Tra�c 0.070 0.035 0.078 0.087Reason: Property 0.152 0.115 0.166 0.168Reason: Violent 0.211 0.182 0.238 0.216Total 0.837 0.571 0.952 0.936

Uses of force per 100 shifts:Civilian race: Black 0.199 0.145 0.210 0.226Civilian race: Hispanic 0.041 0.009 0.058 0.050Civilian race: White 0.026 0.007 0.028 0.036Total 0.271 0.163 0.302 0.319

Complaints per 1,000 shifts:Civilian race: Black 0.542 0.604 0.493 0.530Civilian race: Hispanic 0.102 0.025 0.147 0.124Civilian race: White 0.084 0.048 0.081 0.106Reason: Other 0.988 1.181 0.852 0.941Reason: Arrest/Search 0.541 0.367 0.596 0.616Reason: Force 0.386 0.354 0.383 0.407Reason: Unknown 0.106 0.099 0.120 0.103Total 2.021 2.001 1.951 2.06716

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C.5 O�cer Behavior: Shift Duration

We consider the possibility that stop, arrest, force, and complaint volume are driven bydi�erent amounts of time spent patrolling. Even among o�cers assigned to a particularshift time (a nominal eight-hour patrol period), minor variation exists in the precise startand end of the o�cer’s duty time. Of the o�cer-shifts analyzed, 85.5% are 9 hours induration, with 8.5- and 8-hour shifts making up an additional 7.8% and 5.1%, respectively(percentages are based on rounding shift duration to the nearest 6 minutes). In �xed-e�ect regression analyses that compare o�cers within unique MDSB combinations, weestimate that shifts of black o�cers are 0.0094 hours shorter (roughly 0.1% shorter) thantheir white counterparts assigned to the same MDSB, and Hispanic o�cer shift durationsare statistically indistinguishable from those of white o�cers. Because these di�erencesare two orders of magnitude smaller than reported di�erences in behavior, patrol timedisparities are unlikely to be a mechanism driving observed racial gaps in stop, arrest,force, and complaint volume.

17

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C.6 O�cer Behavior: Regression Tables

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Table A2: Models of Stops, by Civilian Race

Stops per shift, by civilian race:Black Hispanic White All races

O�cer black −0.133 −0.014 −0.013 −0.161[−0.156; −0.122] [−0.019; −0.011] [−0.016; −0.011] [−0.188; −0.148]

O�cer Hispanic −0.032 0.005 −0.004 −0.032[−0.047; −0.019] [−0.001; 0.010] [−0.008; −0.001] [−0.052; −0.016]

MDSB FE Yes Yes Yes YesN 2923458 2923458 2923458 2923458Ne�ective 2186703 2186703 2186703 2186703R2 0.295 0.230 0.183 0.276Speci�cation includes �xed e�ects for each unique combination of month, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and assigned beat. Cluster-robust95% con�dence intervals are computed by block bootstrap on o�cers and reported in brackets. N and Ne�ective indicate the number of o�cer-shifts analyzed and the number ofo�cer-shifts within MDSB containing variation on o�cer race, respectively.

Table A3: Models of Stops, by Reason for Stop

Stops per shift, by reason:Loitering Suspicious Drug Tra�c Other

O�cer black −0.004 −0.061 −0.017 −0.053 −0.026[−0.005; −0.003] [−0.071; −0.055] [−0.022; −0.014] [−0.067; −0.047] [−0.034; −0.017]

O�cer Hispanic 0 −0.019 −0.005 −0.005 −0.003[−0.001; 0.002] [−0.026; −0.011] [−0.010; −0.002] [−0.016; 0.002] [−0.010; 0.004]

MDSB FE Yes Yes Yes Yes YesN 2923458 2923458 2923458 2923458 2923458Ne�ective 2186703 2186703 2186703 2186703 2186703R2 0.170 0.232 0.228 0.268 0.206Speci�cation includes �xed e�ects for each unique combination of month, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and assigned beat. Cluster-robust95% con�dence intervals are computed by block bootstrap on o�cers and reported in brackets. N and Ne�ective indicate the number of o�cer-shifts analyzed and the number ofo�cer-shifts within MDSB containing variation on o�cer race, respectively.

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Table A4: Models of Arrests, by Civilian Race

Arrests per 10 shifts, by civilian race:Black Hispanic White All races

O�cer black −0.153 −0.031 −0.019 −0.203[−0.192; −0.129] [−0.043; −0.022] [−0.027; −0.011] [−0.249; −0.175]

O�cer Hispanic −0.034 −0.008 −0.009 −0.050[−0.059; −0.013] [−0.021; 0.004] [−0.016; −0.004] [−0.085; −0.020]

MDSB FE Yes Yes Yes YesN 2930957 2930957 2930957 2930957Ne�ective 2193343 2193343 2193343 2193343R2 0.183 0.160 0.123 0.185Speci�cation includes �xed e�ects for each unique combination of month, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and assigned beat. Cluster-robust95% con�dence intervals are computed by block bootstrap on o�cers and reported in brackets. N and Ne�ective indicate the number of o�cer-shifts analyzed and the number ofo�cer-shifts within MDSB containing variation on o�cer race, respectively.

Table A5: Models of Arrests, by Reason for Arrest

Arrests per 10 shifts, by reason:Tra�c Drug Property Violent Other

O�cer black −0.019 −0.034 −0.030 −0.022 −0.098[−0.029; −0.012] [−0.046; −0.027] [−0.038; −0.023] [−0.033; −0.013] [−0.123; −0.079]

O�cer Hispanic −0.009 0.001 −0.008 0.002 −0.037[−0.017; −0.002] [−0.010; 0.013] [−0.015; −0.003] [−0.006; 0.011] [−0.056; −0.020]

MDSB FE Yes Yes Yes Yes YesN 2930957 2930957 2930957 2930957 2930957Ne�ective 2193343 2193343 2193343 2193343 2193343R2 0.161 0.173 0.128 0.114 0.157Speci�cation includes �xed e�ects for each unique combination of month, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and assigned beat. Cluster-robust95% con�dence intervals are computed by block bootstrap on o�cers and reported in brackets. N and Ne�ective indicate the number of o�cer-shifts analyzed and the number ofo�cer-shifts within MDSB containing variation on o�cer race, respectively.

20

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Table A6: Models of Force, by Civilian Race

Uses of force per 100 shifts, by civilian race:Black Hispanic White All races

O�cer black −0.093 −0.009 −0.006 −0.112[−0.126; −0.068] [−0.019; −0.002] [−0.013; −0.001] [−0.149; −0.085]

O�cer Hispanic −0.032 0.006 −0.006 −0.034[−0.062; −0.012] [−0.005; 0.016] [−0.014; 0.002] [−0.068; −0.010]

MDSB FE Yes Yes Yes YesN 2933232 2933232 2933232 2933232Ne�ective 2195410 2195410 2195410 2195410R2 0.094 0.095 0.096 0.095Speci�cation includes �xed e�ects for each unique combination of month, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and assigned beat. Cluster-robust95% con�dence intervals are computed by block bootstrap on o�cers and reported in brackets. N and Ne�ective indicate the number of o�cer-shifts analyzed and the number ofo�cer-shifts within MDSB containing variation on o�cer race, respectively.

Table A7: Models of Complaints, by Civilian Race

Complaints per 1,000 shifts, by civilian race:Black Hispanic White All races

O�cer black −0.066 0.007 −0.012 −0.058[−0.213; 0.062] [−0.039; 0.047] [−0.055; 0.026] [−0.323; 0.153]

O�cer Hispanic −0.099 −0.012 −0.020 −0.163[−0.206; −0.012] [−0.066; 0.032] [−0.065; 0.013] [−0.383; 0.017]

MDSB FE Yes Yes Yes YesN 2933278 2933278 2933278 2933278Ne�ective 2195437 2195437 2195437 2195437R2 0.091 0.087 0.089 0.092Speci�cation includes �xed e�ects for each unique combination of month, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and assigned beat. Cluster-robust95% con�dence intervals are computed by block bootstrap on o�cers and reported in brackets. N and Ne�ective indicate the number of o�cer-shifts analyzed and the number ofo�cer-shifts within MDSB containing variation on o�cer race, respectively.

21

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Table A8: Models of Complaints, by Reason for Complaint

Complaints per 1,000 shifts, by reason:Arrest/Search Force Unknown Other

O�cer black −0.222 −0.030 0.019 0.175[−0.342; −0.108] [−0.146; 0.070] [−0.035; 0.073] [−0.001; 0.338]

O�cer Hispanic −0.012 −0.087 −0.003 −0.061[−0.112; 0.096] [−0.176; −0.005] [−0.049; 0.034] [−0.180; 0.056]

MDSB FE Yes Yes Yes YesN 2933278 2933278 2933278 2933278Ne�ective 2195437 2195437 2195437 2195437R2 0.104 0.087 0.076 0.087Speci�cation includes �xed e�ects for each unique combination of month, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and assigned beat. Cluster-robust95% con�dence intervals are computed by block bootstrap on o�cers and reported in brackets. N and Ne�ective indicate the number of o�cer-shifts analyzed and the number ofo�cer-shifts within MDSB containing variation on o�cer race, respectively.

22

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C.7 O�cer Behavior: Alternative Estimators

23

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Our primary analysis of o�cer behavior uses OLS regression with MDSB �xed e�ects,of the form Yi,j = �i +∑r �r1(Rij = r), where �i represents a �xed e�ect for MDSB i. As wediscuss in SI Section B, this estimator will deviate from the desired average policy e�ect(i.e., the average e�ect of replacing white o�cers assigned to a particular patrol assign-ment slot with a minority o�cer on resulting stop, arrest, use-of-force, and complaintvolume) if MDSB-speci�c policy e�ects are highly variable in a way that is associatedwith the proportion of minority o�cers that are assigned to MDSBs (in this case, it is wellknown that OLS recovers the weighted average of MDSB-speci�c policy e�ects, whereweights are determined by variance of o�cer race within the MDSB).

To gauge robustness of our results to the violation of this assumption, we presentalternative estimates in SI Figures A6–A9 below. The �rst alternative estimator takes thewithin-MDSB di�erence in behavior between average minority- and white-o�cer patrolassignments, then aggregates these according to the number of patrol assignment slots ineach MDSB. Following the notation de�ned in SI Section B, this estimator can be writtenas

F∑i=1

Ai

∑Fi′=1 Ai′

Ai∑j=1(

∑Aij=1 Yi,j 1(Di,j = d)∑Ai

j=1 1(Di,j = d)−∑Ai

j=1 Yi,j 1(Di,j = d ′)∑Ai

j=1 1(Di,j = d ′) ).

To assess the extent to which results are driven by large MDSBs, we further computethe unweighted average of MDSB-speci�c estimated e�ects:

1F

F∑i=1

Ai∑j=1(

∑Aij=1 Yi,j 1(Di,j = d)∑Ai

j=1 1(Di,j = d)−∑Ai

j=1 Yi,j 1(Di,j = d ′)∑Ai

j=1 1(Di,j = d ′) ).

Finally, we consider the possibility that observed racial/ethnic di�erences in o�cerbehavior are driven by di�erences in experience between minority and white o�cers. Ifthis were the case, it would undermine the applicability of our results to the e�ect of ahiring reform that brought in additional minority rookie o�cers. To examine whetherthese di�erences impact our results, we extend the regression speci�cation by addingadditional linear and quadratic terms for each o�cer’s length of service.

24

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Figure A6: Stops. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in the number ofcivilian stops conducted by black and Hispanic o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling in the same month, daygroup (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat. Results presented using four di�erent estimators.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

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Count-weighted mean of within-MDSB differencesOLS with MDSB FE

OLS with MDSB FE and experience controlsSimple mean of within-MDSB differences

25

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Figure A7: Arrests. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in the numberof arrests conducted by black and Hispanic o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling in the same month, day group(weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat. Results presented using four di�erent estimators.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

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Count-weighted mean of within-MDSB differencesOLS with MDSB FE

OLS with MDSB FE and experience controlsSimple mean of within-MDSB differences

26

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Figure A8: Uses of Force. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in thenumber of uses of force by black and Hispanic o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling in the same month, daygroup (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat. Results presented using four di�erent estimators.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

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Count-weighted mean of within-MDSB differencesOLS with MDSB FE

OLS with MDSB FE and experience controlsSimple mean of within-MDSB differences

27

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Figure A9: Complaints. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in thenumber of civilian complaints registered against black and Hispanic o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling inthe same month, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat. Results presented using fourdi�erent estimators.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

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Count-weighted mean of within-MDSB differencesOLS with MDSB FE

OLS with MDSB FE and experience controlsSimple mean of within-MDSB differences

28

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C.8 O�cers’ Spanish Language Pro�ciency

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Figure A10: Comparison of Spanish-speaking Hispanic O�cers to White O�cers. Points (error bars) depict estimateddi�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in the number of civilian stops, arrests, uses of force, and civilian com-plaints generated by white o�cers per shift, relative to Spanish-speaking o�cers patrolling in the same month, day group(weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat.

Force uses per 100 shifts Complaints per 1,000 shifts

Stops per shift Arrests per 10 shifts

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30

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C.9 O�cer Gender

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Figure A11: Stops. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in the numberof stops of civilians by black and Hispanic male and female o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling in the samemonth, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

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Gender Female officers Male officers

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Figure A12: Arrests. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in the numberof arrests by black and Hispanic male and female o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling in the same month, daygroup (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

Civ. r

ace:

Bla

ck

Civ. r

ace:

Hisp

anic

Civ. r

ace:

Whi

teRea

son:

Dru

g

Reaso

n: T

raffi

c

Reaso

n: P

rope

rty

Reaso

n: V

iole

nt

Reaso

n: O

ther

Tota

lCiv

. rac

e: B

lack

Civ. r

ace:

Hisp

anic

Civ. r

ace:

Whi

teRea

son:

Dru

g

Reaso

n: T

raffi

c

Reaso

n: P

rope

rty

Reaso

n: V

iole

nt

Reaso

n: O

ther

Tota

l

-0.2

-0.1

0.0

Diffe

rence

s in

arr

est

s per

10

shifts

by o

ffic

ers

of

each

raci

al/eth

nic

gro

up,

vers

us

whit

e o

ffic

ers

faci

ng C

C

Gender Female officers Male officers

33

Page 68: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

Figure A13: Uses of force. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in thenumber of uses of force by black and Hispanic male and female o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling in thesame month, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

Civ. r

ace:

Bla

ckCiv

. rac

e: H

ispan

icCiv

. rac

e: W

hite

Tota

l

Civ. r

ace:

Bla

ckCiv

. rac

e: H

ispan

icCiv

. rac

e: W

hite

Tota

l

-0.15

-0.10

-0.05

0.00

Diffe

rence

s in

use

s of

forc

e p

er

10

0 s

hifts

by o

ffic

ers

of

each

raci

al/eth

nic

gro

up,

vers

us

whit

e o

ffic

ers

faci

ng C

C

Gender Female officers Male officers

34

Page 69: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

Figure A14: Complaints. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in thenumber of complaints registered against by black and Hispanic male and female o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cerspatrolling in the same month, day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

Civ. r

ace:

Bla

ck

Civ. r

ace:

Hisp

anic

Civ. r

ace:

Whi

te

Reaso

n: A

rrest

/sea

rch

Reaso

n: F

orce

Reaso

n: O

ther

Reaso

n: U

nkno

wn

Tota

lCiv

. rac

e: B

lack

Civ. r

ace:

Hisp

anic

Civ. r

ace:

Whi

te

Reaso

n: A

rrest

/sea

rch

Reaso

n: F

orce

Reaso

n: O

ther

Reaso

n: U

nkno

wn

Tota

l

-0.5

0.0

0.5

Diffe

rence

s in

com

pla

ints

per

1k

shifts

by o

ffic

ers

of

each

raci

al/eth

nic

gro

up,

vers

us

whit

e o

ffic

ers

faci

ng C

C

Gender Female officers Male officers

35

Page 70: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

C.10 Robustness Checks: Multiple Stopping O�cers

Data on stops of civilians indicate that 87% of stops report two o�cers as participatingin the stop. In our main analysis, we treat a stop by two o�cers as two incidents in thedata, as both o�cers contribute to the decision to engage a civilian. To gauge the extent towhich this decision drives our results, we present an alternative analysis of stops in whichwe use only data on �rst reporting o�cers. As Figure A15 shows, results are essentiallyunchanged when imposing this restriction.

36

Page 71: The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing · The Impact of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Policing∗ Bocar Ba† Dean Knox‡ Jonathan Mummolo§ Roman Rivera¶ February

Figure A15: Stops. Points (error bars) depict estimated di�erences (95% block-bootstrap con�dence intervals) in the numberof civilian stops conducted by black and Hispanic o�cers per shift, relative to white o�cers patrolling in the same month,day group (weekday/weekend), shift time (�rst/second/third watch), and beat, using only data generated by the �rst reportingo�cer.

Black officers (vs white) Hispanic officers (vs white)

Civ. rac

e: Blac

k

Civ. rac

e: Hisp

anic

Civ. rac

e: Whit

e

Reaso

n: Lo

iterin

g

Reaso

n: Sus

piciou

sRea

son:

DrugRea

son:

Traffic

Reaso

n: Othe

rTota

lCiv.

race:

Black

Civ. rac

e: Hisp

anic

Civ. rac

e: Whit

e

Reaso

n: Lo

iterin

g

Reaso

n: Sus

piciou

sRea

son:

DrugRea

son:

Traffic

Reaso

n: Othe

rTota

l

-0.12

-0.08

-0.04

0.00

Diff

eren

ces

in s

tops

per

shi

ft by

offic

ers

of e

ach

raci

al/e

thni

c gr

oup,

ver

sus

whi

te o

ffice

rs fa

cing

CC

37