Did 'Ferguson Effect' Cause Murder Wave? No. Is There a Murder Wave? Unclear

By Jim Naureckas, FAIR

03 September 15

he New York Times (8/31/15) wondered on its front page whether criticism of police violence was responsible for “cities across the nation…seeing a startling rise in murders after years of declines.”

“Among some experts and rank-and-file officers, the notion that less aggressive policing has emboldened criminals — known as the ‘Ferguson effect’ in some circles — is a popular theory for the uptick in violence,” wrote reporters Monica Davey and Mitch Smith. “Some officials say intense national scrutiny of the use of force by the police has made officers less aggressive and emboldened criminals, though many experts dispute that theory.”

The Times story points out a basic problem with this theory: In St. Louis, where one would most expect a “Ferguson effect” to manifest, a rise in murders was visible before the heightened scrutiny of police violence:

Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist from the University of Missouri/St. Louis, said homicides in St. Louis, for instance, had already begun an arc upward in 2014 before a white police officer killed an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, in nearby Ferguson. That data, he said, suggests that other factors may be in play.

Ta-Nehisi Coates (Atlantic, 9/1/15) criticizes the Times story taking seriously the idea that protests against police violence caused a rise in homicides that began before the protests, calling it an example of “false equivalence”:

“False equivalence” runs contrary to the mission to journalism—it obscures where journalists are charged with clarifying. A reasonable person could read the Times’ story and conclude that there is as much proof for the idea that protests against police brutality caused crime to rise, as there is against it. That is the path away from journalism and toward noncommittal stenography: Some people think climate change is real, some do not. Some people believe in UFOs, others doubt their existence. Some think brain cancer can be cured with roots and berries, but others say proof has yet to emerge.

But there’s a more fundamental problem with the Times story than suggesting that criticizing police violence is (maybe) responsible for a rise in homicides: It’s not clear that the rise in homicides that the story is pegged to actually exists as a nationwide phenomenon.

The evidence for this supposed murder wave seems to be the responses the Times got when it called police departments across the country. After the story’s lead detailed a rise in homicides in Milwaukee, the story continued: “More than 30 other cities have also reported increases in violence from a year ago.” That’s 30 out of a number that the New York Times does not disclose, making it a numerator without a denominator—though the story makes reference to the (steady) crime rate in Newark, which is the 69th largest city in the country, so depending on how thorough the Times‘ survey was, it’s possible that half or more of the cities it contacted did not report any increase in violence.

And when the story rephrases the data, it’s clear that “increases in violence” is a flexible concept: “Yet with at least 35 of the nation’s cities reporting increases in murders, violent crimes or both, according to a recent survey, the spikes are raising alarm among urban police chiefs.” How many cities actually had a rise in homicides–the statistic that justifies the story’s lead about “cities across the nation…seeing a startling rise in murders”? Remarkably, the Times story doesn’t say.

As a report from the Sentencing Project noted in response to an earlier wave of “Ferguson effect” claims:

Is there evidence that crime rates are, in fact, increasing around the country? It depends on where you look. In some cities, some types of crime are up over last year and other types are not, while other cities have not recorded increases in any major crime category. Unfortunately, we cannot rely on the nation’s leading crime data systems for a comprehensive view of recent crime changes. The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey does not produce city-level crime data. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports does provide crime data for individual cities, but the data are not timely enough for monitoring crime changes over the past several months. So, everybody’s data is anecdotal, a cherry picker’s delight. If you want to tell a story of crime increases, you can. If not, just pick from a different tree.

After acknowledging that experts dispute the claim that protests against police violence have unleashed a countrywide wave of murders, the Times article asserted: “Less debated is the sense among police officials that more young people are settling their disputes, including one started on Facebook, with guns.” Maybe that needs to be more debated—because there is, as yet, no real evidence that it’s true.