Can't Wait to Retire: Officer Retention amid Turmoil in Policing - Job Market Paper
Amid the fallout from the 2020 George Floyd murder and the COVID pandemic, reports surfaced that an unexpected and unprecedented wave of police officers exited police employment, contributing to severe staffing shortages. It remains unclear, however, which officers left policing and why they left. In this paper, I explore police officers’ decisions to exit policing, examine how these decisions changed from 2012 to 2022, and evaluate the mechanisms that may account for the early 2020s spike in officer exits. After linking statewide administrative employment data to officers’ voter registration records, I find that police exits increased by 1.4 percentage points (70 percent) from 2019 to 2022 for retirement-ineligible officers. Police exits differentially increased for white and Republican officers compared to their nonwhite and non-Republican colleagues at the same agencies. I also demonstrate that in stark contrast to police, there is little change in firefighter exits for retirement-ineligible employees during these years. Collectively, the results suggest that shifts in the police climate substantially contributed to the early 2020s police exodus and that there can be tradeoffs between police reform and officer retention.
Interest in Policing Careers Following George Floyd and Policy Reform (in progress)
Many police agencies report difficulties in attracting enough high-quality candidates for officer positions, contributing to staffing shortages. Anecdotally, police groups and media accounts often link these challenges to high-profile Black Lives Matter protests and the broader police reform movement, which may shift perceptions of policing and increase uncertainty over the future environment of the profession. Using detailed data on individual job applicants to a large California police agency, I examine how interest in policing careers changes following the 2020 George Floyd protests and subsequent policy reforms. I find that job applications decrease by 50 percent following the protests and initial reforms, with substantial declines across all ethnicities, genders, and regions. The decline persists for more than one year. In contrast, applications for firefighter positions increase by 12 percent over the same period, suggesting the protests and reforms led to a sustained reduction in interest in policing careers.
Spillovers from Public Health Policies in Schools: Evidence from COVID Mask Mandates (with Matthew Guzman, Scott A. Imberman, Tara Kilbride, Nat Malkus) - NBER Working Paper, 2025.
Are Effective Teachers for Students with Disabilities Effective Teachers for All? (with W. Jesse Wood, Ijun Lai, Scott A. Imberman, Nathan D. Jones, Katharine O. Strunk) – Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 2023.