Police Killings and Municipal Reliance on Fine-and-Fee Revenue

Abstract

High-profile police killings in the United States have drawn attention to how municipalities generate revenue through citations and arrests. This article investigates whether killings by police are more frequent in places that rely on fine-and-fee revenue by first describing the types of municipalities that collect the most money from monetary sanctions. It then analyzes whether fine-and-fee reliance and a municipality’s status as urban, suburban, or rural are associated with police killings. Descriptive statistics and negative binomial models reveal that suburbs with large Black populations rely the most on fine-and-fee revenue and police killings are higher in central cities than suburbs or rural towns. Cross-sectional and longitudinal regression models find that municipalities that rely more on fines and fees have more police killings, suggesting municipal fiscal imperatives influence police violence.