Police assignments by seniority in Chicago

 Here's a recent NBER working paper reporting a study of the assignment of police officers in Chicago, where some officers can choose to transfer to newly vacant positions, with priority determined by seniority. The resulting allocation reveals that more senior officers move to assignments with lower levels of violent crime.

Police Officer Assignment and Neighborhood Crime  by Bocar Ba, Patrick Bayer, Nayoung Rim, Roman Rivera & Modibo Sidibé  WORKING PAPER 29243, DOI 10.3386/w29243,  September 2021

Abstract: We develop an empirical model of the mechanism used to assign police officers to Chicago districts and examine the efficiency and equity of alternative allocations. We document that the current bidding process, which grants priority based on seniority, results in the assignment of more experienced officers to less violent and high-income neighborhoods. Our empirical model combines estimates of heterogeneous officer preferences underlying the bidding process with causal estimates of the effects of officer experience on neighborhood crime. Equalizing officer seniority across districts would reduce violent crime rate by 4.6 percent and significantly decrease inequality in crime, discretionary arrests, and officer use of force across neighborhoods. Moreover, this assignment can be achieved in a revenue-neutral way while resulting in small welfare gains for police officers, implying that it is more equitable and efficient.