COVID-19, George Floyd Protests, and a Violent Crime Spike

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# COVID-19, George Floyd Protests, and a Violent Crime Spike: The Denver Experience

[Justin Nix](https://jnix.netlify.app)  
*University of Nebraska Omaha*

[Jessie Huff](https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-public-affairs-and-community-service/criminology-and-criminal-justice/about-us/jessica-huff.php)  
*University of Nebraska Omaha*

[Scott Wolfe](https://cj.msu.edu/directory/wolfe-scott.html)  
*Michigan State University*

[David Pyrooz](https://www.colorado.edu/sociology/our-people/david-pyrooz)  
*University of Colorado Boulder*

.white[Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences: Las Vegas, NV]  
.white[March 17, 2022]

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# Background

**March 2020**: COVID-19 stay-at-home orders issued

**May 2020**: Police kill George Floyd in Minneapolis

- Sparked the [largest protest movement](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html) in U.S. history

> *Further racialize[d] and politicize[d] attitudes within the domain of race and law enforcement in the U.S.*

<div style="text-align: right"> - Reny & Newman (2021) </div>

- Calls to "defund" and "abolish" the police
  
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By year's end, homicides had spiked in the U.S. [by nearly 30%](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/27/what-we-know-about-the-increase-in-u-s-murders-in-2020/)

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# Background

**Feb 2021**: We wrote about city-level trends for [The Denver Post](https://www.denverpost.com/2021/02/24/denver-crime-rate-homicide-shooting-property-crime-police/)

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# Purpose

To examine the relationship between police discretionary behaviors and crime at the neighborhood level

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# Data

- Crime, vehicle and pedestrian stops, and traffic collisions (from [Police Data Initiative](https://www.denvergov.org/opendata/search?q=police))

- Drug-related arrests (requested from [DPD](https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Offices/Agencies-Departments-Offices-Directory/Police-Department))

- [Open Table Reservations](https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry)

- Precipitation and Temperature (from [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration](https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets))

- Air Quality Index (from [Environmental Protection Agency](https://www.epa.gov/outdoor-air-quality-data/download-daily-data))

- Concentrated Disadvantage (from [ACS](https://www.denvergov.org/opendata/dataset/american-community-survey-nbrhd-2015-2019))

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# Data

Unit of analysis 👉 **neighborhood weeks**

- 78 neighborhoods nested within 52 weeks (N x T = 4,056)

For each week of 2020, each variable is coded as the deviation from the **weighted 3-week average**

- 2020 split into three periods:

- pre-COVID (weeks 1-10)
  - COVID Shock (weeks 11-21)
  - Floyd Shock (weeks 22-52)

**Outcomes** 👉 *violent* and *property* crime

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# **Preliminary** Findings

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# Findings: Vehicle Stops

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# Findings: Vehicle Stops

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# Findings: Pedestrian Stops

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# Findings: Pedestrian Stops

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# Findings: Drug-related Arrests

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# Findings: Drug-related Arrests

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# Findings: Violent Crime

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# Findings: Violent Crime

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# Findings: Property Crime

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# Findings: Property Crime

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# Findings: Recap

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# Next Steps

What happens to crime rates when police suddenly *make fewer proactive stops and arrests* for a sustained period?

We've requested but are still waiting on COVID test data

Plan to run multi-level multivariable models that regress crime outcomes onto:

- *Time variant factors*
  - Police discretionary behaviors
  - Weather
  - Air Quality
  - Public movement
  - Reckless driving
  
- *Time stable factors*
  - Concentrated disadvantage
  
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# Limitations

Just one city

Don't know precisely what caused the reduction in discretionary stops and arrests

- Calculated decision-making by officers?
  
  - Patrol officers having to work protests?
  
  - Reduction in sworn capacity brought on by COVID or resignations? (e.g., [Mourtgos et al. 2022](https://jnix.netlify.app/files/pdfs/cpp_turnover.pdf))
  
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Can't speak to variation within neighborhoods (e.g., street segments, see [Connealy 2021](https://www.proquest.com/docview/2542373679?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true))

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# Implications

The national homicide rate increased again in 2021, and [remains elevated in 2022](https://www.ahdatalytics.com/dashboards/ytd-murder-comparison/)

Studies like ours hope to contribute to a broader conversation about the appropriate role of police in our society

- How should police allocate their limited resources? ([Wheeler 2020](https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2019.1630471))

- In terms of maximizing public safety while minimizing police-caused harms...

- What is the *optimal* rate of stopping (or arresting) people? ([Weisburst 2022](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yYwJ9Kl1eJHdAD8HH9HVB8QFTvkb1Sov/view))

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# Thank you!

## Questions?

**Justin Nix**  
School of Criminology and Criminal Justice  
University of Nebraska Omaha

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# References

Connealy, N. T. (2021). [*Exploring the overlap, saliency, and consistency of environmental predictors in crime hot spots: A remote systematic social observation and case-control examination*](https://www.proquest.com/docview/2542373679?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true) (Doctoral dissertation, City University of New York).

Mourtgos, S. M., Adams, I. T., & Nix, J. (2022). [Elevated police turnover following the summer of George Floyd protests: A synthetic control study](https://jnix.netlify.app/files/pdfs/cpp_turnover.pdf). *Criminology & Public Policy*, 21(1), 9-33.

Reny, T. T., & Newman, B. J. (2021). [The opinion-mobilizing effect of social protest against police violence: Evidence from the 2020 George Floyd protests](https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055421000460). *American Political Science Review*, 115(4), 1499-1507.

Weisburst, E. K. (2022). [“Whose help is on the way?” The importance of individual police officers in law enforcement outcomes](https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.0720-11019R2). *Journal of Human Resources*, 0720-11019R2.

Wheeler, A. P. (2020). [Allocating police resources while limiting racial inequality](https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2019.1630471). *Justice Quarterly*, 37(5), 842-868.