Recently, my paper "more cops, less crime" has been cited by folks pushing back against the movement to defund the police. I wanted to weigh in on how I think my research fits into these conversations --

1. I found that (ARRA-funded) increases in police manpower reduced crime. Based on my paper, as well as other studies such as Evans + @ProfEmilyOwens, @ajc730 + McCrary, and @emilyweisburst, rolling back police presence is likely to carry a cost in the form of increased crime.

2. But there may also be important benefits to scaling back police presence, such as reducing the number of police-civilian interactions with the potential to become violent and reducing the disproportionate burden of low-level policing in minority communities.

3. While many studies speak to [1], our understanding of [2] is still relatively new. Important work by Desmond Ang has shown huge impacts of police violence on kids. One of my papers finds that fines + fees can have outsized effects on the finances of low-income households.

4. I was recently asked to comment on @KamalaHarris’s statement: "we have confused having safe communities with hiring more cops on the street…when in fact, the real way to achieve safe and healthy communities is to invest in those communities..."

5. Do her comments contradict what we know? Not really. While I (and others) have found that police can reduce crime, an arguably larger body of research has revealed the public safety benefits associated with exactly the types of investments she is talking about.

6. Here are some papers highlighting the role for many other policies to reduce crime:

7. Lochner + Moretti on education; @brittanyrsteet, @KSchnepel on economic opportunity; Freedman + @ProfEmilyOwens on low-income housing; @cody_tuttle, Yang on public assistance; @eastbayabhay + Avenancio-Leon on access to credit.

8. To summarize, reducing police may increase crime but may also reduce other undesirable outcomes such as police violence. Our collective ability to evaluate this tradeoff is still a work in progress.

9. Further, police manpower is not the only policy lever for crime reduction and funding could be diverted to other policies with significant effects on public safety.