Toshio Ferrazares

Hunter College
Department of Economics

About

Toshio Ferrazares is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Hunter College (CUNY). His research focuses broadly on Labor and Public Economics with a primary interest in the economics of policing and public safety. He explores why police officers use force and what factors influence their behavior.

His recent work explores the effects of fatigue and overwork on police officers. This paper finds that consecutive working days leads to higher instances of use-of-force, more officer injuries, and unnecessary arrests, while simultaneously reducing proactive policing activities such as patrolling, investigatory stops, and timely 911 dispatching. This finding is significant, as it shows that officer-specific factors influence officer-civilian interactions and highlight the significant costs of overwork in policing.

Toshio’s research has been published in top field journals, such as the Journal of Urban Economics and Journal of Policy Analysis and Management,, and has been honored with the "Best Second Year Paper" by UCSB Economics and the "Best Paper Award" at the SOCAE conference. He completed his doctoral studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and earned both a B.A. and M.A. in Economics from San Diego State University.

Publications

"Monitoring Police with Body-Worn Cameras: Evidence from Chicago",
Journal of Urban Economics, 2024.

Using data from the Chicago Police Department on complaints filed by civilians and reports of force by officers, this paper estimates the effect of body-worn cameras (BWCs) of officer and civilian behavior. Using a two-way fixed effects design, I find BWCs are associated with a 33% reduction in use-of-force complaints, driven by white officer-black civilian complaints. Additionally, I find a 42% reduction in officers reporting striking civilians and a large though less significant reduction in officer firearm usage, potential mechanisms for the reduction in complaints. Importantly, I find no change in officer injury or force from civilians. However, I find evidence of de-policing as officers make fewer drug-related arrests following BWC adoption.
"Have U.S. Gun Buyback Programs Misfired?" with Joseph J. Sabia and D. Mark Anderson.
Forthcoming at Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.
Media Coverage: NBC Philadelphia, Reason, CNN, Houston Chronicle, Virginia Public Radio, CATO Institute, Stateline

Gun buyback programs (GBPs), which use public funds to purchase civilians' privately-owned firearms, aim to reduce gun violence. However, next to nothing is known about their effects on firearm-related crime or deaths. Using data from the National Incident Based Reporting System, we find no evidence that GBPs reduce gun crime. Given our estimated null findings, with 95 percent confidence, we can rule out decreases in firearm-related crime of greater than 1.3 percent during the year following a buyback. Using data from the National Vital Statistics System, we also find no evidence that GBPs reduce suicides or homicides where a firearm was involved. These results call into question the efficacy of city gun buyback programs in their current form.

Working Papers

"Shift Structure and Cognitive Depletion: Evidence from Police Officers",
Job Market Paper.

Decision-making, risk-taking, and situational awareness are all important factors for effective and equitable policing. However, these factors can also be affected by fatigue, overwork, and cognitive stress, which can accumulate as police officers continue to work. This paper studies the evolution of police officer outcomes and activity over consecutive working days using rich data from the Chicago Police Department. To overcome the endogenous selection of working days, I take advantage of a unique shift structure where working days are predetermined and based on fixed groupings. This is combined with a two-way fixed effects design that leverages within-officer variation across different working days. I find that as officers work more consecutive days, they use more force, make more judgement-based discretionary arrests, and are more likely to be injured. These increases occur despite a decline in proactive policing activities. Officers make fewer arrests, conduct fewer stops, issue fewer citations and tickets, and spend less time actively patrolling as their workdays accumulate. The divergence between use-of-force and policing activity is not driven by changes in arrest types, shift assignments, or officer roles, instead, officers are changing their behavior as they work more days.
"The Unintended Consequences of Policing Technology: Evidence from ShotSpotter", with Michael Topper.
Revisions requested at Journal of Human Resources.
Media Coverage: The Economist, The Chicago Tribune, Stateline, NPR, WBEZ Chicago, Block Club Chicago

ShotSpotter is an acoustic gunfire detection technology utilized by police departments in over 150 cities with the intention of rapidly dispatching police officers to violent crime scenes to catch perpetrators and reduce gun violence. Despite its prevalence, little is known about its effectiveness in reducing gun violence (intended consequence) nor its effect on 911 emergency response times (unintended consequence) given its resource-intensive operating procedures. In this paper, we utilize variation in timing from ShotSpotter roll-outs across Chicago police districts from 2016-2022 to estimate the causal effects of ShotSpotter on 911 emergency response times that are designated as Priority 1 (immediate dispatch). Using comprehensive 911 dispatch data from the Chicago Police Department, we find that ShotSpotter leads police officers to be dispatched one-minute slower (23% increase) and arrive on-scene two-minutes later (14% increase) while controlling for the police officer availability and overall 911 call quantities. Moreover, these effects are driven by resource-constrained periods, and consequently, reduce police officers' success rate in arresting perpetrators (12%) when responding to emergency calls. However, we also find that ShotSpotter increases the number of gun-related arrests, thereby indicating success in achieving its primary goal, albeit at a significant cost.

Works In Progress

“Extended Shifts and Productivity: Evidence from 12-Hour Shifts”, with Michael Topper.
“The Stock and Flow of Police Officers in the US”, with Michael Topper.
“Drinking Water Contaminants and Infant Health”, with Katie Grooms, Heather Royer, and Kevin Schnepel.

Teaching Assistant Experience

Econ 1: Introduction to Microeconomics
Econ 2: Introduction to Macroeconomics
Econ 140a: Introduction to Econometrics
Econ 145: Data Wrangling in R for Economists
Econ 150: Labor Economics
Econ 187: Topics in Personnel Economics

Evidence of Teaching Effectiveness and Testimonials (PDF)