Political diversity in U.S. police agencies.

ABSTRACT: Partisans are divided on policing policy, which may affect officer behavior. We merge rosters from 99 of the 100 largest local U.S. agencies-over one third of local law enforcement agents nationwide-with voter files to study police partisanship. Police skew more Republican than their jurisdictions, with notable exceptions. Using fine-grained data in Chicago and Houston, we compare behavior of Democratic and Republican officers facing common circumstances. We find minimal partisan differences after correcting for multiple comparisons. But consistent with prior work, we find Black and Hispanic officers make fewer stops and arrests in Chicago, and Black officers use force less often in both cities. Comparing same-race partisans, we find White Democrats make more violent crime arrests than Whi

SUBMITTER: Ba B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12383486 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature