Abstract
This research examines how the composition of patrol units affects public safety, focusing on whether the presence of a female officer changes police and civilian behavior. Using the universe of 911 calls handled by the Dallas Police Department (DPD), I compare otherwise similar incidents that are dispatched to units with at least one female officer versus all-male units. To isolate the causal effect of female officer presence, I leverage DPD’s fixed shift structure, in which officers’ workdays are set far in advance and organized into stable groups, generating quasi-random variation in female officer availability across time, sectors, and shifts. I find that units with a female officer spend more time on scene, write incident reports at higher rates, and make fewer discretionary arrests. At the household level, calls handled by units with a female officer are about 3 percentage points less likely to result in another 911 call of the same type within 90 days—a 12 percent decrease relative to baseline. Evidence from 311 calls and variation by call priority indicates that these reductions reflect lower repeat offending rather than changes in reporting behavior.
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Citation
Longmuir, Ryan. 2025. “Who Cares What Gender the Cops Are? The Impact of Policewomen on Public Safety.” Working Paper.