[T]he evidence is not looking good for those who dismiss the Ferguson effect, from the president on down. That group once included Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, who was an early and influential critic. Mr. Rosenfeld has changed his mind after taking a closer look at the worsening crime statistics. "The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect," he told the Guardian recently. "These aren't flukes or blips, this is a real increase."
A study of gun violence in Baltimore by crime analyst Jeff Asher showed an inverse correlation with proactive drug arrests: When Baltimore cops virtually stopped making drug arrests last year after the rioting that followed the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody, shootings soared. In Chicago, where pedestrian stops have fallen nearly 90%, homicides this year are up 60% compared with the same period last year. Compared with the first four and half months of 2014, homicides in Chicago are up 95%, according to the police department. Even the liberal website Vox has grudgingly concluded that "the Ferguson effect theory is narrowly correct, at least in some cities."
Despite this mounting evidence, the Ferguson effect continues to be distorted by its critics and even by its recent converts. The standard line is that it represents a peevish reaction from officers to "public scrutiny" and expectations of increased accountability. This ignores the virulent nature of the Black Lives Matter movement that was touched off by a spate of highly publicized deaths of young black men during encounters with police. As I know from interviewing police officers in urban areas across the country, they now encounter racially charged animus on the streets as never before.
Yes, well, when the BLM chant is, "Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon," one might say the vanguard of the Left has, ummmmm, taken leave of its self-advertised "nuanced analysis."
Nuanced my foot.
Not that it's analysis, either.
And who's scripting the attacks? None other than President Obama's lying (according to Judge Hanen) Justice Department.Accountability is not the problem; officers in most departments are accustomed to multiple layers of review and public oversight. The problem is the activist-stoked hostility toward the police on the streets and ungrounded criticism of law enforcement that has flowed from the Obama administration and has been amplified by the media.
"In my 19 years in law enforcement, I haven't seen this kind of hatred towards the police," a Chicago cop who works on the tough South Side tells me. "People want to fight you. 'F--- the police. We don't have to listen,' they say."
A police officer in Los Angeles reports: "Several years ago I could use a reasonable and justified amount of force and not be cursed and jeered at. Now our officers are getting surrounded every time they put handcuffs on someone." Resistance to arrest is up, cops across the country say, and officers are getting injured.
No, it's not that the police resent criticism and accountability. It's that, as FBI Director Jim Comey has said, unhinged bile means "police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crime--the getting out of your car at 2 in the morning and saying to a group of guys, 'What are you doing here?'"The country's political and media elites have relentlessly accused cops of bias when they police inner-city neighborhoods. Pedestrian stops and broken-windows policing (which targets low-level public-order offenses) are denounced as racist oppression. That officers would reduce their discretionary engagement under this barrage of criticism is understandable and inevitable.
Policing is political. If a powerful segment of society sends the message that proactive policing is bigoted, the cops will eventually do less of it. This is not unprofessional; police take their cues, as they should, from the messages society sends about expected behavior. The only puzzle is why many Black Lives Matter activists, and their allies in the media and in Washington, now criticize police for backing off of proactive policing. Isn't that what they demanded?
Ultimately, denial of the Ferguson effect is driven by a refusal to acknowledge the connection between proactive policing and public safety. Until the urban family is reconstituted, law-abiding residents of high-crime neighborhoods will need the police to maintain public order in the midst of profound social breakdown.
Heather McDonald remains the most brilliant expositor of what's actually behind the historic surge in violent crime.
Bill: You and Ms McDonald are missing an important point. The Ferguson Effect has virtually ended racial profiling in big U.S. cities and therefore constitutes a major victory for social justice. While it is unfortunate that so many minorities are being shot and often killed, the fact is police have ended the disproportionate contact with minorities in high-crime urban districts. For a couple of decades civil rights leaders and more recently Attorney General Eric Holder have demanded an end to this type of profiling. It has finally happened.
I stand corrected! Civil rights are surely in better shape now that more of the people who would like to have them are dead.
Oh...............wait......................
Racial profiling wasn't ended in the past year in most cities, because it was not occurring in the first place. With a few outliers, the majority of empirical studies have shown that profiling simply does not happen very often. See for example NYC (http://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR534.html) and Maryland (http://nicolapersico.com/files/kpt.pdf). Putting officers in high-crime neighborhoods where crime occurs is not profiling, it's good police work.
-Jihan