@article{125906,
  author = {Jonathan Mummolo},
  title = {Militarization Fails to Enhance Police Safety or Reduce Crime but May Harm Police Reputation},
  abstract = { The increasingly visible presence of heavily armed police units in American communities has stoked widespread concern over the militarization of local law enforcement. Advocates claim milita-rized policing protects officers and deters violent crime, while critics allege these tactics are targeted at racial minorities and erode trust in law enforcement. Using a rare geocoded census of SWAT team deployments from Maryland, I show that milita-rized police units are more often deployed in communities with large shares of African American residents, even after control-ling for local crime rates. Further, using nationwide panel data on local police militarization, I demonstrate that militarized policing fails to enhance officer safety or reduce local crime. Finally, using survey experiments{\textemdash}one of which includes a large oversample of African American respondents{\textemdash}I show that seeing militarized police in news reports may diminish police reputation in the mass public. In the case of militarized policing, the results suggest that the often-cited trade-off between public safety and civil liberties is a false choice. },
  year = {2018},
  journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
  volume = {15},
  pages = {9181-9186},
  language = {eng},
}