Does Police Transparency “Work”? Evidence from the Seattle Police Department

Abstract

Transparency on police use of force has been touted as a means to keep police accountable, yet evidence on its effectiveness has been elusive. This lack of evidence is concerning since police often wield significant professional autonomy, thereby plausibly remaining impervious to attempts by institutional outsiders (e.g., the public) to hold them accountable. Furthermore, police may even respond to transparency by privileging the already-advantaged populations, insofar as they infer the public to also favor such populations. Using difference-in-differences by exploiting the adoption of the Police Data Initiative that was introduced by the US federal government in May 2015 and subsequently adopted by the Seattle Police Department, we find that Seattle police made fewer traffic stops in response to the adoption of the transparency initiative, but the effect was concentrated on neighborhoods with fewer Black residents. Further analyses suggest that the effect is partly driven by relatively fewer unique officers being dispatched to neighborhoods with fewer Black residents after the adoption of the transparency measure. Ultimately, the inequality in police use of force based on the racial makeup of neighborhoods became greater after the Seattle Police Department adopted the transparency policy, contrary to the likely intent behind the policy.