Police Staffing Shortages, Public Awareness, and Policy Preferences

Since the summer of 2020, police agencies across the United States have continued to experience police staffing shortages. The consequences of understaffed police agencies are well studied, but little is known about whether the public is aware of the staffing problem and its consequences for public safety and police behavior. This study presents a pre-registered factorial survey experiment to 3,105 US adults, varying the information respondents see on the consequences of staffing shortages (e.g., public safety, police behavior) and the messenger of this information (e.g., police chief, mayor). Respondents are then asked about their levels of concern about police staffing, the downstream consequences of staffing shortages on crime and public safety, and their willingness to pay more taxes to resolve the issue. We find a strong effect of the informational treatments on the public’s concern about understaffed police departments and their willingness to pay more taxes, with surprisingly little effect heterogeneity by respondent race and partisanship. Despite well-documented polarized views towards contemporary policing among Americans, we find strong support across partisan and racial dimensions for resolving police staffing shortages. Our findings suggest that voters understand the link between short-staffed police departments and the consequences for public safety, and are even willing to pay more taxes in response. As public opinion is the primary heuristic elected policymakers rely on for forming policy agendas, these results indicate a real opportunity for policy action and proposals. Relevant stakeholders are likely to benefit from being clear about the consequences of understaffing on public safety.