Police Officer Identification, Misconduct, and Public Trust Jul 1, 2025 · Thomas SIMON Thomas SIMON , Felix W. Vetter , Gerrit von Zedlitz · 1 min read Abstract Policing in high-stakes mass gatherings often raises allegations of accountability and appropriate use of force. This paper investigates the impact of a police oversight reform that introduced identification tags for police officers deployed at mass events. Using the staggered state-level implementation of such tags in Germany, we study how they affect misconduct, crime, and public trust. Exploiting daily district-level administrative data on police misconduct and criminal activity, we find that officer misconduct declines by 65% following the reform. Civilian crime rates remain stable or decline slightly, countering concerns that heightened oversight reduces policing efforts. Survey evidence further shows increased public trust in the police. Our findings suggest that low-cost transparency measures can reduce frictions in public prosecutions and improve police accountability without compromising public safety.

When officers' identities are hidden, they commit more crime and so do others.
#EconSky
thomas-simon.org/publications...

Screenshot of title and abstract of article, “Reconsideration of Secure Communities rollout reveals preemptive local-federal cooperation in immigration enforcement.”

NEW (and open access!) in @pnas.org:

We find that Secure Communities triggered “preemptive” immigration enforcement, increasing detentions, transfers, & removals even before formal county activation.

Joint with @cvargas100.bsky.social and @immigrationlab.bsky.social

www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Data Visualization A Practical Introduction

Here’s a full draft of the upcoming second edition of my “Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction”: socviz.co

New! How homicide changed in Minnesota’s Twin Cities after the police murder of George Floyd. Check out @ryanplarson.bsky.com’s thread (and data viz) and/or our team’s new article in J of Quant Crim.

Overall, we document an enduring, compositionally distinctive, and spatially concentrated spike in homicide following Floyd’s murder, partially mediated by de-policing. This highlight how institutional ruptures can interact with chronic inequality to reshape lethal violence.

Fourth, we observe a decrease in MPD stops after the murder, and reduced proactive policing explains a meaningful portion (~25%) of the post-murder increase in homicide, suggesting that both de-policing and broader social and institutional mechanisms were also at work. 5/n

Third, the the post-murder homicide surge locally was spatially uneven and disproportionately concentrated in structurally disadvantaged neighborhoods. 4/n

Second, we show that not only did the quantity of homicide changed, but so did the quality. We observe argument and felony crime incidents among adults driving the overall increase. 3/n

First, homicide rates rose from an average of 0.11 to 0.28 per 100,000 (about 2.5x). Net of pandemic outcomes, policy, and movement and seasonality we identify an effect of + 0.28 homicides per 100,000 - equivalent to ~ 183 excess homicides in the period. 2/n

Fresh in JQC w/@jillkpeterson.bsky.social , @chrisuggen.bsky.social, and others! We use an ITS design to examine the changes in the Twin Cities in relation to the pandemic and the police murder of George Floyd. Finding summaries below!

Link here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
1/n

Many workers have missed shifts without jobs being destroyed making it challenging to measure labor impacts with conventional sources.

We use real-time daily data from Homebase to measure impacts. Thanks to UChicago and Homebase for making the data available.
#EconSky #NumbersDay

We're mourning yet again in Minnesota — and struggling to square the gut-churning video of Alex Pretti's final moments with official accounts.

I'm teaching techniques of neutralization this term, so I made this quick slide on the DHS statement. Share if it's useful. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/us...

Man, Du Bois had some bangers, but for me, it doesn't get much better than his scathing indictment of the "Christianity" of the United States.

Certainly this was all true of the nation in his lifetime. But in my lifetime, his criticisms have never felt so true of the nation right now.

The need is no doubt greater than the increase in call volume, since the federal crackdown likely increased legal cynicism and system avoidance, both of which reduce the likelihood of calling authorities for help.

There are many signs of the fear and distress people are feeling in my home town of Minneapolis. One signal of elevated strain is the rise in 911 calls for help — up about 9% daily in the new year relative to previous daily averages across 2020-2024.

Unfortunately, all Census TIGER/Line and cartographic boundary shapefiles are down as of this evening.

This means that the tigris #rstats and pygris #Python packages will not work, and geometry support in tidycensus will also fail.

The Census API, for now, is still up.