THE
CIVILIAN CIVILIAN
A STUDENT PUBLICATION FOR THE LSU LAW CENTER COMMUNITY OCTOBER 2016 | VOLUME 13 | ISSUE 2
When Officer Darren Wilson, having just tended to a baby with breathing problems, spotted Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson on August 9, 2014, the murder statistics Jacob Longman in New York City Staff Writer were on their way down to a record low: 330.[1] [2] “Unit 21. Put me on Canfield with two.” Wilson radioed. “And send me another car.” Seconds later, Brown, hit six times, lay dying in the street and the United States faced its toughest racial litmus test in decades. In the wake of Brown’s death, a divergent effect on criminal activity has emerged. While crime in general has continued
to fall, violent crime has risen. The “Ferguson Effect,” as it has been dubbed by law enforcement officials, academics, and criminologists, encompasses the theory that increased police scrutiny following highly publicized killings like Brown’s has led to less proactive policing, and thus contributed to this marked rise in violent crime. As F.B.I. Director James Comey described it: “There’s a perception, after speaking with police officials, that police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crime – the getting out of your car at two in the morning and saying to a group of guys, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’ ” [3] Heather Mac Donald, a Stanford Law School graduate and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, was one of the
earliest proponents of the Ferguson Effect. Mac Donald believes that “violent crime is up in many American cities because officers are backing off of proactive policing.”[4] [5] Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Mac Donald quoted an officer in New York City; “Any cop who uses his gun now has to worry about being indicted and losing his job and family. 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 non-stop protests.”[6] Mac Donald, and other Ferguson Effect proponents, believes that proactive policing was the primary weapon law enforcement used to reign in the all-out chaos that embodied the crack-cocaine epidemic. CONTINUED ON PAGE 4...