Understanding Demand for Police Alternatives

While police brutality has sparked demands to scale back policing, public constituencies still have limited knowledge about policing alternatives. In survey experiments, we provide information about dontcallthepolice.com—a database of police alternatives—and police violence statistics and evaluate their impact on respondents’ stated likelihood of calling the police. We find information about police alternatives increases the likelihood of relying on police in violent scenarios but significantly reduces it in scenarios for which police alternatives exist. These findings hold across political affiliations, suggesting broad support for limiting police involvement to violent crises and investing in police alternatives for nonviolent situations. In a follow-up survey six months later, individuals informed about police alternatives were 12 percentage points more likely to recall that the newly available 988 government hotline is available for suicidal crises, a result highlighting the enduring effectiveness of targeted educational interventions. Our study shows that providing information on existing 911 alternatives results in increased demand for these police substitutes in non-violent situations both in the short and long run.