Stop and frisk, or stop and park? Fixed effects analyses of perceived scrutiny upon police vigor

Abstract

Police have been the subject of increased scrutiny over the past several years, and there exists a contention that this increased scrutiny impacted officer behavior, resulting in diminished proactive policing as officers may be performing their duties less vigorously. The study examines the effect that changes in scrutiny, as measured in terms of public interest and local news coverage, had upon police officer vigor, as measured by monthly counts of pedestrian and vehicle stops. This research is unique in that it examines the effects of scrutiny emanating from local incidents separately from that related to high profile incidents that received considerable nationwide interest; the extant research is currently limited to the latter. A series of fixed-effects negative binomial regression models examine the impact of scrutiny upon vigor over time throughout all neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia. The study finds that local and national scrutiny do not have the same impact upon officer vigor, as scrutiny emanating from national incidents generally results in increases in officer vigor, while scrutiny emanating from local incidents results in an increase in ped stops in the first month following the scrutiny, and then a subsequent decrease in both forms of vigor in the second month. This study of police officer decision-making across space and time has both theoretical and practical implications.