Social networks of bad cops

This article reports a social network analysis of 23,000 complaints against Chicago police from 2000 to 2018. Not surprisingly, officers in certain assignments such as the gang unit generated more complaints. Most interesting was the tendency for problematic officers, regardless of assignments, to work together and, apparently, contaminate others — “The same cops who are exposed to other high complaint officers go on to be listed on four times as many uses of force per year in the next few years. They also commit shootings at rates more than five times higher than their colleagues who weren’t exposed to misbehaving officers.”

Tags: Illinois