The notion that the unjustified use of force by police officers is concentrated among a few “bad apples” is a popular descriptor that has gained traction in scholarly research and achieved considerable influence among policy makers. But is removing the bad apples likely to have an appreciable effect on police misconduct? Leveraging a simple policy simulation and data from the Chicago Police Department, we estimate that removing the top 10% of officers identified based on ex ante risk and replacing them with officers drawn from the middle of the risk distribution would have led to only a 4–6% reduction in the use of force incidents in Chicago over a 10-year period.

中文翻译：

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使几个“坏苹果”丧失工作能力，可以减少多少对警察的投诉？

警察不正当使用武力集中在少数“坏苹果”身上的观点是一个流行的描述，在学术研究中获得了牵引力，并在政策制定者中产生了相当大的影响。但是，消除坏苹果是否可能对警察的不当行为产生显着影响？利用来自芝加哥警察局的简单政策模拟和数据，我们估计根据事前风险确定的前 10% 的警官并用来自风险分布中间的警官取而代之，只会导致 4–芝加哥使用武力事件在 10 年内减少了 6%。