CarlyWill Sloan, West Point University

Over the past decade, police use of force has become an increasingly charged political issue with growing calls for reform. One of the few reforms where advocates and the policing community have reached a consensus is on the need for improved and expanded training. In this paper, we study an under-researched but nearly universal training approach whereby a recruit is paired with a senior officer during a phase referred to as “field training.” In particular, we consider the link between a field training officer’s prior propensity to use force and a recruit’s subsequent enforcement behavior. We leverage a unique setting where recruits are as-good-as-randomly assigned to field training officers and where we have detailed information on the universe of calls for service. We document meaningful differences across field training officers in terms of their propensity to use force prior to being paired with a recruit. Further, we find that a one standard deviation increase in a field training officer’s propensity to use force (124 percent) leads to a 15 percent increase in their recruit’s subsequent propensity to use force. The effect of having a more aggressive field training officer persists for as much as two years after the recruit completes training.

DATE: Friday, February 28, 2025

TIME: 3:30-5:00 p.m.

LOCATION: Fronczak 444