Elshehawy, Ashrakat, Frey, Arun, Haas, Violeta, Riaz, Sascha and Roemer, Tobias (2025) The Police as Gatekeepers of Information: Immigration Salience and Selective Crime Reporting. TSE Working Paper, n. 25-1693, Toulouse

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Abstract

What drives the supply of crime news? While prior research focuses on the news media, we study a crucial upstream gatekeeper of information: the police. We argue that the police act as strategic bureaucrats who increase the disclosure of out-group cues (ethnicity, nationality) when immigration is salient to signal competence and transparency to the public. To test this, we use LLMs to annotate a novel dataset of about one million press releases published by local police stations across Germany between 2014 and 2024. Using a regression discontinuity in time design, we demonstrate an increase in out-group cues in police communications (1) following a nationwide shock to immigration salience (the 2015/16 Cologne New Year’s Eve assaults), and (2) in the days before regional elections in which immigration is a salient campaign issue. Our findings demonstrate how bureaucratic discretion shapes the supply of politically charged information.