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Turnover in large US policing agencies following the George Floyd protests

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  • Adams, Ian T.
  • Mourtgos, Scott M.
  • Nix, Justin

Abstract

We examine whether police resignations and retirements significantly changed in the two years following public backlash related to the police murder of George Floyd. We employ Bayesian Structural Time Series to compare observed trends in each agency to synthetic counterfactuals using monthly staffing data from fourteen large municipal policing and sheriffs' agencies in the US. In the two years since the Floyd protests began, large metropolitan agencies have experienced significant increases in resignations, retirements, or both. One agency was unaffected, two saw small improvements, and eleven saw between 2.2% and 16% excess loss of sworn full-time personnel when compared to the synthetic counterfactual. These results reaffirm the importance of understanding how agency operational and personnel patterns have shifted since the summer of 2020.

Suggested Citation

  • Adams, Ian T. & Mourtgos, Scott M. & Nix, Justin, 2023. "Turnover in large US policing agencies following the George Floyd protests," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:88:y:2023:i:c:s0047235223000764
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2023.102105
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Mourtgos, Scott M. & Adams, Ian T., 2019. "The rhetoric of de-policing: Evaluating open-ended survey responses from police officers with machine learning-based structural topic modeling," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-1.
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