The Effect of Field Training Officers on Police Use of Force

Over the past decade, police use of force has become an increasingly charged po- litical issue with growing calls for reform. One of the few reforms where advocates and the policing community have reached a consensus is on the need for improved and expanded training. In this paper, we study an under researched but nearly universal approach whereby a recruit is paired with a senior officer during a phase referred to as ”field training”. In particular, we consider the link between a field training offi- cer’s prior propensity to use force and a recruit’s subsequent enforcement behavior. We leverage a unique setting where recruits are as good as randomly assigned to field training officers and where we have detailed information on the universe of calls for service. We document meaningful differences across field training officers in terms of their propensity to use force prior to being paired with a recruit. Further, we find that a one standard deviation increase in a field training officer’s propensity to use force is associated with a 12 percent increase in their recruit’s subsequent propensity to use force. The effect of having a more aggressive field training officer persists for as much as two and a half years after the recruit completes training.