Do Teams Perform Differently Under Black and Hispanic Leaders? Evidence from the Chicago Police Department

Abstract

In an effort to improve policing and enhance public trust in minority communities, police departments have sought to increase racial diversity among their leadership. Yet, evidence on whether this makes a difference is lacking. In this paper, we ask whether team-level outcomes such as total arrests differ when minority police supervisors are on duty. We do so in the context of the Chicago Police Department (CPD), where we exploit the annual, pre-determined, rotational nature of CPD's operations calendar to compare team-level outcomes on days when Black and Hispanic police lieutenants (LTs) are predicted to be on duty as compared to days when they have a day off (and another LT is working). Underlying crime conditions are balanced across these two sets of days. We find that fewer arrests take place on days when Black or Hispanic LTs are predicted to be on duty. The reductions in arrests are concentrated in arrests related to low-level crimes, such as disorderly conduct arrests, which decline by 17% of the mean. Differences in subordinate officer composition do not explain our results. Instead, reductions in arrests appear to be driven by watch operations LTs, who are stationed in the district headquarters and in charge of approving arrests. Together, these results suggest that supervisors can influence the policing practices of their subordinates, and open up avenues for interventions involving supervisors.