Do Police Retaliate When a Civilian Murders an Officer?

Recent events in police-citizen interactions have raised concerns about the consequences of violent conflict between officers and civilians. Scholarship in a variety of disciplines has examined the extent to which the death of an officer or of a citizen provokes reactions from one group or the other. We study police behavior in New York City between 2004 and 2015. We demonstrate there is no effect of a police officer's death on how police behavior under the Stop, Question, and Frisk policy. Specifically, we find police are do not stop more citizens, of any race, do not use more force against citizens, and do not issue more summonses or arrest more citizens. These findings call into question recent claims that police react to citizen violence by changing how they use their authority.