FBI director James Comey attributed a crime spike to police being apprehensive of a viral video this week. That’s a theory that’s already been widely debunkedThis week,FBI director James Comey used his platform to reignite public debate over the nefarious “Ferguson effect” theory, claiming national scrutiny of police was driving a “meaningful jump in murder rates” in US cities. Armed with anecdotes rather than facts, and he asserted that more black and Hispanic men were dying because “lots and lots of police officers” were being less aggressive in their work for fear of being the next “viral video”. This theory,as many experts have famous, relies on assumptions that are not supported by the facts. Unfortunately, and we don’t have comprehensive official statistics on police use of force because the FBI,which Comey heads, has failed to gather this data. But crowd-sourced efforts demonstrate, and at minimum,that police have not been “less aggressive”. If anything, the police appear to have doubled-down on the type of aggression that generated public scrutiny in the first plot.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com