A poll taken by Pew Research Center shows that 76% of law enforcement officers in the United States are reluctant to use force even when necessary and 72% are less likely to stop suspicious looking individuals.
The poll comes on the heels of an FBI report that reveals a spike of 6% in violent crime over the first 6 months of 2016 with the murder rate increasing 5.2%.
Taken together, the poll and the FBI report strongly suggest that despite protestations to the contrary from the left, the “Ferguson Effect” is real and is having an impact on the violent crime rate and on quality of life in America.
Within America’s police and sheriff’s departments … the ramifications of these deadly encounters have been less visible than the public protests, but no less profound,” according to the Pew report.
Three-quarters of officers say the incidents have increased tensions between police and black residents in their communities. More than eight in 10 officers said police work is harder today as a result of the high-profile incidents.
The survey — conducted between May 19 and Aug. 14 with officers at 54 departments — comes on the heels of a year when several big cities — including Chicago, Indianapolis, Memphis, and San Antonio — dealt with surges in murder rates. In the midst of last year’s spike, FBI Director James Comey suggested an increase in violent crime in some cities may be a result of a less-aggressive law enforcement approach in the face of increased public scrutiny.
Former Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy recently tied the surge in violence in the nation’s third largest city — which tallied 762 murders and more than 4,300 shooting victims in 2016 — to a decline in street stops by cops. McCarthy was fired from his post in December 2015 after the court-ordered release of a video that showed a white police officer firing 16 shots at 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.
That incident, which ignited public backlash, also spurred a Justice Department civil rights investigation of Chicago Police Department’s patterns and practices. The DOJ is expected to issue its findings on its Chicago investigation in the coming days.
Even without the crime stats from the FBI, the attitude of police is proof positive that a Ferguson Effect is definitely impacting law enforcement. It’s probably no accident that in Baltimore and Chicago — two cities where there were widely publicized incidents of unarmed civilians killed by police — violent crime is skyrocketing. Are there any policemen willing to go through what their brother officers had to endure when they were involved in the controversial shootings?
The left will continue to insist there’s no such thing as a Ferguson Effect even while police continue to retreat and crime goes up. They can’t afford to admit that Black Lives Matter is getting people killed and that their protests have forced the police into a far more defensive posture. The narrative that police are out to kill black men and use excessive force far too often cannot be challenged nor can the idea that an increase in crime is a coincidence, not indicative of a trend resulting from attempts to intimidate law enforcement.
The Pew survey shows that the police feel otherwise.
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