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'Viral video effect' explanation for rising murders stirs controversy


FILE - In this Feb. 25, 2016 file photo, FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. Fewer Americans are traveling to fight alongside the Islamic State and the power of the extremist groupÂ?s brand has diminished in the United States, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday, May 11, 2016.  (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 25, 2016 file photo, FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. Fewer Americans are traveling to fight alongside the Islamic State and the power of the extremist groupÂ?s brand has diminished in the United States, FBI Director James Comey said Wednesday, May 11, 2016. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
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Expressing alarm over a spike in murders in several major cities in early 2016, the director of the FBI last week revived his claim that public scrutiny of law enforcement is discouraging aggressive policing and contributing to rising homicide rates.

At a press briefing Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey brought up data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) comparing crime data for the first quarter of 2016 and the same period in 2015 for 63 U.S. cities and 10 Canadian cities.

The data shows that some cities that saw more murders in 2015, like Las Vegas and Chicago, are facing even steeper increases in violence so far this year. Overall, there were 114 more murders in the responding U.S. cities for the first three months of 2016, and reports of rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and non-fatal shootings were also all up.

The increase in murders was not seen in all major cities, though. Many urban areas, including New York, Houston, and Charlotte, saw significantly fewer murders in the first quarter of 2016 than in 2015.

Comey said he called attention to the data because he hopes it will lead to a deeper discussion of the cause of these murders in the media and the general public.

"I worry very much, it's a problem that most of Americans can drive around," he said. "From the Las Vegas Strip, you can't tell that more than 60 people have been murdered in Las Vegas this year."

Comey has previously said there is "a chill wind" blowing through law enforcement agencies where officers fear they could end up being the subject of national criticism and scorn because they get caught on video doing something that looks bad on television.

NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton has called this the "YouTube effect." Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel described officers going "fetal." Many commentators, including Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute, have linked an alleged trend of de-policing to the Black Lives Matter movement and protests against police shootings of civilians.

Comey said he does not like the term "Ferguson effect"--referring to the shooting of Michael Brown that sparked riots in Ferguson, Missouri--because that particular case did not involve video, which he considers to be a significant element of the phenomenon.

"The viral video effect and changes in the way police may be acting and in the way communities may be acting, in terms on how much information they share with police, could well be at the heart of this, or could well be an important factor in this," he said.

While Comey cited anecdotal evidence to support his allegation that this "viral video effect" is causing less aggressive policing, he also acknowledged that he does not know for sure what is causing the increase in murders or what should be done about it.

"It could be, it's simply a collection of individual factors in different cities," he said. "It's hard for me to believe that there isn't something broad that's affecting it. Maybe there could be."

According to Comey, his previous comments on the subject have been misinterpreted by some as a call to reduce accountability for law enforcement officers.

"I'm not against scrutiny of police," he said. "I think that's fabulous and has worked some important changes in the last couple years and I hope it continues to."

The White House, which has criticized Comey for floating this theory before, knocked it down again last week.

"This administration makes policy decisions that are rooted in evidence, that are rooted in science," Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Friday. "We can't make broad, sweeping policy decisions, or draw conclusions based on anecdotal evidence. That's irresponsible and ultimately counterproductive."

Some law enforcement groups and criminologists also criticized Comey for drawing conclusions without concrete evidence.

"I think it's disingenuous and dangerous to law enforcement for him to keep saying these things," said Ronal Serpas, chairman of Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration.

There may be officers out there who feel as Comey described, but Serpas denied that widespread de-policing is occurring. He also questioned the director's "tone deaf" explanation.

"This is how police officers hear this: We're afraid to do our jobs and people are dying," said Serpas, who has worked as chief of police in New Orleans and Nashville and served as chief of the Washington State Patrol.

He disputed any conclusion based on one quarter of data for this year, and he noted that Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Dallas account for most of the rise in murders in the MCCA data. He also observed that some cities where murders might be expected to increase if Comey's theory was correct--like New York, where the fatal arrest of Eric Garner was caught on tape--actually went down.

According to Serpas, Comey risks oversimplifying the issue by focusing on this one factor. There are many different social and economic elements, including gangs, drugs, and poverty, that could be fueling the murders.

"If any of us could figure out how to stop [murder], then there wouldn't be any," he said.

With murder rates in recent years dropping to historical lows, it may be too soon to tell whether the numbers for 2015 and early 2016 represent a meaningful trend or, as one expert described it, "a regression to the mean."

"I believe Director Comey's suggestion is highly speculative," said William Terrill of the Arizona State University School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. "I'm not saying he's wrong, but it's just as likely, if not more so, that homicide rates are increasing mainly due to being so historically low now for a number of years."

A recent study by the Brennan Center for Justice found increases in murders in 2015 in many big cities and speculated that rising poverty and unemployment may be to blame. Police in some areas have also linked the increase in murders to gang activity and drug use.

Other experts argue it is common sense to believe that officers under heightened scrutiny would pull back from taking unnecessary risks with their lives and careers.

Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former Baltimore police officer, argued in a blog post Saturday that lawsuits, policy changes, allegations of racism, and criminal prosecution of officers are redefining police work in a way that has lethal consequences.

"I can't say this enough," he wrote, "but if you think criminally charging six Baltimore police officers for doing their job -- at least five of whom are guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time -- if you think that doesn't have an impact on police discretion? Well, you're living in Cloud Cuckoo Land."

According to Moskos, police are essentially doing what the public and politicians say they want, which is stopping fewer people and shooting fewer people, and that has been accompanied by an increase in murders.

"It's not that police suddenly and collectively decided not to 'do their job,'" he wrote. "It's that police have gotten the message we're sending them: we want less racially biased policing, less use of lethal force, and nothing controversial on YouTube."

An analysis by FiveThirtyEight found that a spike in violence in Baltimore came immediately after the controversy over the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore last April. A similar correlation was found between the release of the video of the Laquan McDonald shooting in Chicago and a rise in crime there.

One criminologist who was deeply skeptical of the "Ferguson effect" theory last summer changed his views after studying the final crime statistics for 2015.

Richard Rosenfeld, a professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, was initially dismissive in part because he had found the start of an upward trend in murders in St. Louis began before the Michael Brown shooting. He has since looked at data for 56 large cities and found a 17 percent increase in murders nationwide in 2015.

According to the Guardian, Rosenfeld's research showed that much of the increase came from 10 cities with large African American populations that had an average increase of 33 percent. He considered other factors that might explain the violence like economic downturns and increased drug addiction, but none fit as well as a connection to the protests and diminishing trust between police and black communities.

"The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect," Rosenfeld told the Guardian.

Heather Mac Donald, whose analysis last year spurred the debate over a possible Ferguson effect, argued in an April 27 speech that an "anti-cop ideology" driven by the Black Lives Matter movement is driving crime up and hurting black communities the most.

"Now police officers are backing off of proactive policing in the face of the relentless venom directed at them on the street and in the media," she said. "As a result, violent crime is on the rise."

While the debate over the impact of anti-police brutality protests on policing will likely continue until more comprehensive empirical data is available, experts and law enforcement officials agree that there is no easy solution to the growing violence that plagues many cities.

"I don't know what the answer is, but holy cow, do we have a problem," Comey said.

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