> The leading hypothesis for why these [police shooting protests] increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%.
This is from a 2020 paper from Harvard’s Roland Fryer and Tanaya Devi: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27324/w273...
I've read similar in other papers as well, but I can't recall them off the top of my head.
Maybe you mean "there isn't evidence that the reduction in policing is caused by 'pressure'", which seems kind of absurd considering the near-decade of nationwide protests. What's the alternative hypothesis? That police around the country spontaneously and abruptly reduced their discretionary policing and it's merely a coincidence that it happened following major protests aimed at reducing the quantity of policing?
> Not that we actually defunded them, but we have sharply reduced the quantity of policing (not usually through official policy as much as pressure on police departments to sharply reduce discretionary, proactive policing) which is what 'defund the police' aimed to do