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The Ferguson effect
May. 30th, 2015 01:34 pmWSJ:
The entire article reads like a follow-up chapter from Freakanomics. I wonder whether an ethics committee would approve a study where participants are asked how many innocent black people it is ok to kill in black-on–black violence while making sure that there's no innocent deaths in police-related white-on-black situations.
This incessant drumbeat against the police has resulted in what St. Louis police chief Sam Dotson last November called the “Ferguson effect.” Cops are disengaging from discretionary enforcement activity and the “criminal element is feeling empowered,” Mr. Dotson reported. Arrests in St. Louis city and county by that point had dropped a third since the shooting of Michael Brown in August. Not surprisingly, homicides in the city surged 47% by early November and robberies in the county were up 82%.
Similar “Ferguson effects” are happening across the country as officers scale back on proactive policing under the onslaught of anti-cop rhetoric. Arrests in Baltimore were down 56% in May compared with 2014.
“Any cop who uses his gun now has to worry about being indicted and losing his job and family,” a New York City officer tells me. “Everything has the potential to be recorded. A lot of cops feel that the climate for the next couple of years is going to be nonstop protests.”
The entire article reads like a follow-up chapter from Freakanomics. I wonder whether an ethics committee would approve a study where participants are asked how many innocent black people it is ok to kill in black-on–black violence while making sure that there's no innocent deaths in police-related white-on-black situations.
