Civil-Police Relations: The Effects of Police Power on Electoral Accountability

• In Event: Government Accountability to Citizens

Abstract

Inadequate police accountability and oversight are well-documented. The failure to appropriately control police violence is also expensive, costing cities millions of dollars each year. Even so, politicians routinely fail to regulate police behavior. In this paper, I concentrate on the negative effect that police can have on local leaders' political stability by engaging in "de-policing", withholding services or changing patrol behavior in ways that exacerbate crime. I analyze a formal model where citizens form beliefs about a politician's competence using crime statistics, but politicians have limited power to control police patrols. This creates an incentive for police to withhold services when threatened by reforms. This is a credible threat because citizens will be more likely to assign responsibility to the politician, even when they actually represent the citizen's preferences. I test the model's implications with case evidence from Vallejo, CA, and Minneapolis, MN.

Author

• Alexander Stephenson, University of California Berkeley