Police Response Time and Injury Outcomes

Abstract The delayed response of law enforcement to calls for service has become a hot button issue when evaluating police department performance. While it is often assumed that faster times could play an important role in quelling potentially violent incidents, there no empirical evidence support this claim. In paper, we measure the effect time on likelihood incident will result injury. To overcome endogeneity more severe being assigned higher priority, which requires response, take several steps. First, focus subset categorised as ‘Major Disturbance—Violence’ all receive same priority level. Second, instrument with number vehicles within 2.5-mile radius at received by call centre. When controlling beat, month and time-of-day fixed effects, instrumenting strategy allows us advantage geographical constraints faced dispatcher assigning officers incident. contrast ordinary least squares estimates, our two-stage analysis establishes strong causal relationship whereby increasing increases results concentrated among female victims, suggesting reducing injuries related domestic violence.