Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces After a Terrorist Attack Classical criminology assumes that criminals are rational beings who weigh the costs and benefits of...

In this paper we present an approach to estimate the effect of time, place and police on car theft
in the city of Buenos Aires. Car theft is the most common crime in the city of Buenos Aires
which is 87 percent of crime that are reported to the police, compared to only 29 percent for all
types of crime. Ninety-four percent of Buenos Aires car thefts occur in the street. Following the
terrorists attacked the main Jewish center AMIA, on which 85 people died and more than 300
wounded, the federal government assigned police protection to every Jewish building in the city
of Buenos Aires. It is noted that a crime like car theft is expected to be more sensitive to the
presence of police. Most car thefts occur after a brief period of surveillance of the intended
victim. Criminals concentrating their attention on mobile victims might miss the presence of
police. Therefore, are the time, place of police in the nearly area can affect car theft? These are
the questions that we are to find an answer.
The author used the fixed effect approach as month and block are treated as fixed parameters.
The instrumental variable is used to avoid simultaneity.
The information on the locations of each Jewish institution in the neighborhoods of the city of
Buenos Aires are collected and police protection on that place is recorded. Then the effect of
presence of police on car theft is estimated. The information that have been gathered on the car
thefts in each block of the three selected neighborhood of the city of Buenos Aires. It has been
recorded the presence of Jewish institution in the block and the presence of police in that
institution. It is also recorded the presence of public building or embassy, bank and gas station in
each block. The sample information on these are collected for the nine months period from April,
1994 to December, 1994.
The variables for this study are defined as follow:
observ = block id
barrio = neighborhood
calle = street
altura = street numbering
institu1 = dummy variable with 1 if Jewish institution in the block or 0 otherwise
institu3 = dummy variable with 1 if Jewish institution one block away or 0 otherwise
distanci = block distance to closest institution
edpub = dummy variable with 1 if there is any public building/embassy
estserv = dummy variable with 1 if there is any gas station
banco = dummy variable with 1 if there is any bank
totrob = car theft
mes = month
We want to study here the effect of presence of police on car theft and the effect of time and
place of the car theft on the incidence.
The hypotheses that we want to explore in this article are:
1. Is the presence of police is related with car theft.
2. Is neighborhood is related with car theft.
3. Does car theft varies with months.
4. Is the distance to protected institution is related with car theft.
We present the bar plots of the car theft in respect of different variables. The bar chart of car
theft with...