The Ferguson Effect (2015) is the rise in crime in the US caused by police doing as little as possible because of citizen video, especially after the Ferguson and Black Lives Matter protests. That in turn has made criminals bolder.
The Wall Street Journal on May 29th 2015:
The New Nationwide Crime Wave: The consequences of the ‘Ferguson effect’ are already appearing. The main victims of growing violence will be the inner-city poor.
The New York Times on August 31st 2015:
Murder Rates Rising Sharply in Many U.S. Cities
The FBI director, James Comey, on October 23rd 2015 said of the Ferguson Effect:
“I don’t know whether that explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year.”
Later he admitted he had no facts to back that up, but still maintained that it was “common sense”, that the country needs to talk about it.
There is no nationwide crime wave: The New York Times, for example, looked at the homicide rates in 10 of the 60 largest cities in the US. It did not say how it chose those ten. It only looked at 4 of the 20 largest cities, even though there is public data for 16 of them. If you look at all 16, there is no clear overall increase in the murder rate.
Not even in Chicago: Of the four largest cities that the New York Times did look at, only one had a statistically significant increase in the homicide rate: Chicago. But even that does not seem to mean much when you compare it to other years:
Change in the Chicago homicide rate:
- 2010: +5.1%
- 2011: -13.1%
- 2012: +28.5%
- 2013: -16.4%
- 2014: -3.4%
- 2015: +11.3%
One year does not a trend make. If there is some kind of Ferguson Effect, it will not be clear for several years.
The police, if anything, are becoming more violent. The US keeps terrible records on police killings, but as far as we can tell it is getting worse:
- In December 2014, The Economist reported that US police shot and killed 458 people in the latest year for which data was available. Germany, meanwhile, killed 8; Britain, 0.
- In October 2015, The Guardian reported that US police had shot and killed 833 people so far in 2015. At that rate, it will be over 1,000 by the end of the year.
The Killed By Police database shows an increase in both 2014 and 2015. So much for the “chill wind”.
No clear relationship between policing and crime: The Ferguson Effect rests on the idea that there is some kind of clear-cut relationship between policing and the crime rate. It is nowhere near that simple. There has been a huge drop in crime rates across the West over the past 20 years. Not just in the US, but even in countries that do not have such brutal police. Criminologists do not know why.
Like “All Lives Matter” and “Black-on-Black crime”, the Ferguson Effect is yet another argument to excuse police brutality, to not respect Black lives or the US Constitution.
– Abagond, 2015.
Sources: Mainly The Marshall Project (2015), The Guardian (2015).
See also:
- “All lives matter”
- Black-on-Black crime argument
- Ferguson
- Black Spring – that supposedly brings the chill wind
- knockout games – another bogus “crime trend” blamed on Blacks
- What if police brutality was seen as a crime?
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Abagond 
I’ve never heard of this “effect” before, but now if someone brings it up, I’ll know what to say.
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I think the argument that people like that are trying to begin is that if Crime gets bad enough, we’ll stop this foolish BLM stuff and beg for the police to come back into our neighborhoods. What they fail to take into account is the counter-argument that being killed by police is not an alternative to being killed by neighborhood gangbangers.
And yes, the police have gotten worse since Ferguson. I imagine police departments have been flooded with inferior applicants that want to get in on the whole “Kill a N*/Be a Hero Action”.
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So the solution to this “rise in crime” would be to ban citizens from filming the police. lol
I bet some politician will introduce a bill to do just that.
Crime has dropped in L.A. over the last twenty years and the media has given the police credit for that. I’m skeptical that the “good policing had anything to do with the drop.
The drop in part might have to do with the legalization of pot here. Local gangs grow for L.A. dispenseries which means they don’t have to rely on crime to feed their families. It also means less drug related crimes recorded because of legalization thus a drop in crime statistics.
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This is a good article that looks at the number of people killed by the police so far this year. The numbers show that Blacks are being killed at much higher rates then whites even though more whites are killed overall.
http://www.mintpressnews.com/776-people-killed-by-police-so-far-in-2015-161-of-them-unarmed/209127/
The Guardian also has a data base set up tracking deaths by police called “The Counted”.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database#
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[…] The Ferguson Effect https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/the-ferguson-effect/ […]
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This is YOUR problem. After Furguson, I spoke to my chief of police to have any officer interested come to my clubs to meet and listen to those most victimized by the excessive force trend. Crime has not gone up nor down but the citizens feel as though they have direct contact and influence on how they are policed. I have straight up dope-boys talking about, ‘man… that’s a cool white boy.’. Complaining and writing about these issues does nothing – putting one’s social capital (at the expense of being called an ‘Uncle Tom) is at least making an effort to find a solution (even if it’s only on the local level).
The only Black man running for sheriff in my town is known to have beaten his ex-wife and girlfriends. I cannot back him. I am currently going to a lot of lunches with the white candidates to try to figure out which one has the best character and who will administer justice fairly.
Honestly, Furguson doesn’t have to happen everywhere.
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This makes a very good point. An equally indefensible argument could be made that the “Ferguson Effect” is the acquittal of Darren Wilson giving police ammunition to be more aggressive, which led to the near doubling of police killings.
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I feel like I just read a good post somewhere about correlation and cause…
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The “Ferguson Effect”. More Establishment psychological operations (psy-ops) on display. The tip-offs are the media sources of reporting on this supposed effect. The NYT and WSJ are considered “papers of record” for the nation. They are often utilized by the Establishment to launch media campaigns against adversarial citizen groups. Then high ranking government, corporate and media officials will repeat the talking points creating an echo chamber effect. Then other high ranking individuals will cite the media reports and call for action against the targeted groups.
It is a highly effective propaganda technique. The beauty of it is that facts are irrelevant. Repetition of the talking points is key. Americans have become conditioned to react to this persuasive wall of sound with emotional judgements instead of reason, logic or a search for facts.
The message to the Black community is: “shut up, quit complaining and suffer this reign of terror in silence—or else!”
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@ Afrofem
Well said.
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@Afrofem
Kind of like the infamous welfare queen that was conjured up by good ol Ronald Regan and his ilk. The policies to effectively demonized the poor.
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This is horrible. Then again, I am not sure police is there to protect black people in the first place. I mean, I understand criminals getting bolder but the fact this is preventing police from doing anything IS kind of a proof that they’re scum.
I don’t know. I was taught to never trust police (they are not to be trusted in my country) so I had no idea there was this ideal about trusting police to protect you among white Americans.
Something has to be done about the police system in the US, no doubt, but I don’t see how. I mean, they keep killing and harming people.
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Last night the Daily Show did a decent piece on the myth of the Ferguson Trend:
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/m248e3/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah-the-ferguson-effect–it-s-hard-out-there-for-a-cop
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@Resw77
That was funny. Truth is is cops were doing their job properly then they would care less about who is filming them.
Have you noticed more white outcry for police brutality lately(or maybe it is the blogs/forums I am browsing)? I have and I think it may have something to do with cops are blurring the line between the black “perp” and the white one.
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@sharinalr
Exactly. And yes, I notice, but I’m not sure it’s “more”. I think we’re just noticing it because there’s more film footage for people to comment on.
I agree about the blurring the line, if I understand you correctly, but for me it comes down to Americans’ love of cops (which is why there are SO DAMN MANY cop shows and movies) and hate for human rights of SUSPECTED criminals.
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Did anyone catch 60 Minutes last week? I sometimes listen to it’s podcast and last weekend they ran a story on what amounts to the “Ferguson Effect” without calling it that. The hook in the story seemed to be that police were being less proactive and more reactive which has resulted in an increase in shootings in Chicago.
They played clips of people upset that the cops weren’t doing enough etc… and didn’t really offer opposing viewpoints. They did go into a little detail about processes, forms and attitudes that are causing the shift, but overall, the whole thing was steeped in the opinion that proactive policing is “their job” and they were avoiding their duties.
I guess I have a different viewpoint… One of their stats was, “In August of 2015, cops stopped and questioned 49,257 people. A year later those stops dropped to 8,859, down 80 percent. At the same time arrests were off by a third, from just over 10,000 to 6,900.” I heard that as increasing their accuracy from 20% to 77% and dramatically reducing the number of negative interactions with civilians. To put it another way, that’s literally 46,298 less incidents of harassment. IN THE MONTH OF AUGUST ALONE. Isn’t that a good thing?
Yes, I get that shootings have increased. I understand how bad that is. I’m just afraid that returning to blatant profiling and stop & frisk is going to be seen as the solution. I’m sorry, but I don’t think it is. The spike in violence will take time to subside and lives will be lost along the way. That’s terrible, but “solving” that by going backwards just doesn’t seem right. Maybe it will take the community’s help in providing tips and leads to the police, giving them something besides bodies to react to… I don’t know, so much is wrong…
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P.S. Oops, not literally 46,298… I don’t know where my head was at as I did that math… it should have been more like 36,000… but whatever… the idea is the same… a crap-load of unnecessary police/civilian interactions were avoided… any of which could have ended very badly.
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