Public Scrutiny, Police Behavior, and Crime Consequences: Evidence from High-Profile Police Killings
| Author | Deepak Premkumar |
|---|---|
| Published | April 2025 |
| Format | Research paper |
TL;DR — A national study finding that high-profile police killings reduce arrests for low-level offenses and are followed by rises in murders and robberies.
An accepted manuscript in the Review of Economics and Statistics (April 2025) by Deepak Premkumar of the Public Policy Institute of California; an earlier version circulated as “Intensified Scrutiny and Bureaucratic Effort.” It describes itself as the first national analysis of how scrutiny after high-profile police killings affects local policing and crime.
The paper finds that such killings reduce arrests for low-level offenses without changing arrests for serious crimes, and are followed by significant increases in serious crime, especially murders and robberies. The effects appear once communities learn of the incident and are larger with more media coverage. The author concludes that scrutiny drives the fall in arrests, while the incidents themselves, not reduced policing, drive the rise in crime, and recommends reducing police use of force.
What it is: a peer-reviewed economics paper in a top field journal.
Where this came from
- A copy saved in October 2026.
46 pages. A PDF copy is held in Kyle’s private archive; it is not linked or shared here.