We provide quasi-experimental evidence on the effects of law enforcement collective bargaining rights on violent incidents of misconduct. Our empirical strategy exploits a 2003 Florida Supreme Court decision (Williams) conferring collective bargaining rights on sheriffs’ deputies. Using a state administrative database of “moral character” violations over 1996–2015, we implement a difference-in-difference approach in which police departments (PDs; which were unaffected by Williams) serve as a control group for sheriffs’ offices (SOs). Our estimates imply that collective bargaining rights led to a substantial increase in violent incidents of misconduct among SOs relative to PDs. This result is robust to including only violent incidents involving officers hired before Williams, suggesting that it is due to a deterrence mechanism rather than compositional effects. In a separate event-study analysis, unionization is associated with higher levels of violent misconduct, and so appears to be a channel for the effect. (JEL K42, J50, J45).
A string of deadly police-citizen encounters, made public on an unprecedented scale, has thrust American policing into the crucible of political conflict. New social movements have taken to the streets, while legislators have introduced a wide array of reform proposals. Optimism is elusive, however, as the police are notoriously resistant to change. Yet one powerful policy lever has been overlooked: police liability insurance. Based on primary sources new to legal literature and interviews with over thirty insurance industry representatives, civil rights litigators, municipal attorneys, police chiefs, and consultants, this Article shows how liability insurers are capable of effecting meaningful change within the agencies they insurea majority of police agencies nationwide. This Article is the first to describe and assess the contemporary market for liability insurance in the policing contextin particular, the effects of insurance on police behavior. While not ignoring the familiar (and potentially serious) problem of moral hazard, the Article focuses on the ways in which insurers perform a traditionally governmental "regulatory" role as they work to manage risk. Insurers get police agencies to adopt or amend written departmental policies on subjects like the use of force and strip searches, to change the way they train their officers, and even to fire problem officers from the beat up to the chief One implication of these findings is that the state might regulate the police by regulating insurers. In this spirit, the Article considers several legal reforms that could reduce police misconduct, including a mandate that all municipalities purchase insurance coverage, a ban on 'Yirst-dollar" (no-deductible) policies that may reduce municipal care, and a requirement that small municipalities pool their risks and resources before buying insurance on the commercial market. At bottom, the Article establishes that liability insurance is significant to any comprehensive program of police reform. * Assistant Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School. Many thanks to my interview subjects, some of whom spoke with me multiple times. For feedback on drafts, I am grateful to Ken Abraham,
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