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The Sentencing Project put out a new analysis this morning finding little support for a so-called “Ferguson effect” on crime in St. Louis, Missouri. The “Ferguson effect” describes a conjecture by some commentators that rising crime rates in some urban areas in recent months are the result of widespread protests against police misconduct and calls for reform.
Those demonstrations spread across the nation in response to a stream of highly publicized killings of unarmed black men and boys by police, starting with the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, last August.
Since Ferguson is part of the St. Louis greater metropolitan area, one could expect that if such an effect exists anywhere, it would be in St. Louis. To determine whether such an effect exists, criminologist Richard Rosenfeld analyzed trend data on homicides, violent crimes, and property crime in St. Louis in recent years.
The report, Was There a “Ferguson Effect” on Crime in St. Louis?, finds that the homicide count in St. Louis was higher in 2014 than in 2013 for most of the year, but the gap between the two years began to increase two months before the events in Ferguson. “We can conclude with reasonable certainty that the events in Ferguson were not responsible for the steep rise in homicide in St. Louis,” the report states.
A four-month increase in crime is not a crime wave, and while the homicide rate in St. Louis rose in 2014, overall it has declined significantly since the 1990s. This report underscores the importance of policies based on rational analysis of crime trends that appreciate the complexity of factors that produce crime.
Was There a “Ferguson Effect” on Crime in St. Louis?
Richard Rosenfeld, University of Missouri – St. Louis
Does widespread and heavily publicized protest activity directed at alleged police misconduct result in higher crime rates? That is the view of some commentators, who attribute recent crime increases to what has been termed the “Ferguson effect.” The idea is that heightened criticism of the police has demoralized, angered, frustrated, or otherwise caused police officers to refrain from vigorous enforcement activity, resulting in more crime (e.g., Mac Donald 2015).
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.
ANALYZING A POSSIBLE “FERGUSON EFFECT”
So, how might we evaluate the so-called Ferguson effect on crime? One way is to go to the source, or close to it, and examine crime changes in St. Louis, located just a few miles from Ferguson, in the months before and after Michael Brown was killed. A superficial glance at St. Louis crime statistics might lend some credence to the view that crime increased in response to the events in Ferguson. After declining or holding steady for several years, the number of violent crimes in St. Louis rose by 5.3% in 2014 over the previous year. The increase in homicide was especially pronounced. In 2014, the police department recorded 159 homicides, a 32.5% increase over the 2013 total of 120. Local officials as well as national commentators attributed the crime increase in St. Louis to the police shooting in Ferguson that led to protest demonstrations in St. Louis as well as Ferguson.
To determine with certainty whether the Ferguson events caused crime increases in St. Louis (or elsewhere), we would have to know what would have happened to crime had the Ferguson events not happened. Proving the counterfactual – whether y would not have occurred had x not occurred – is challenging, to say the least. In this case, however, we can begin by asking whether the timing of the Ferguson effect hypothesis corresponds with observed crime changes in St. Louis. Obviously, the Ferguson events or subsequent police shootings could not have produced crime increases in St. Louis if those increases took place before Michael Brown was killed. If the increases occurred afterward, that would not prove they were caused by the controversial police shootings, but it is a necessary condition for drawing causal inferences.
HOMICIDE RATES
Figure 1 displays month-by-month homicide frequencies in St. Louis in 2013 and 2014. The homicide count was higher in 2014 than in 2013 throughout most of the year, but it is not readily apparent from the figure whether the gap grew after Michael Brown was killed in early August of 2014. To establish whether the police shooting in Ferguson and resulting protests may have triggered an increase in homicide, the month-by-month ratio of homicides in 2014 to homicides in 2013 is shown in Figure 2. Here we see that homicides were far more frequent in the early months of 2014 compared with the same period in 2013. The ratio then decreased but began to rise again in June, two months before Michael Brown was killed, and at no time in the following months did it exceed the levels reached earlier in the year. These results do not support the belief that the St. Louis homicide increase in 2014 was attributable to the Ferguson events.
OTHER VIOLENT CRIME RATES
The picture differs somewhat for other violent crimes. Figure 3 displays the monthly ratio of violent crimes in 2014 to violent crimes in 2013. We see that the ratio grew early in the year, decreased for two months, and then increased again through the end of the year. But that increase began in May, well before the police shooting in Ferguson. The rate of increase in the violent crime ratio, however, does appear to have accelerated beginning in September. The timing of these changes offers mixed support, at best, for the Ferguson effect hypothesis.
PROPERTY CRIME RATES
Figure 4 displays the ratio of property crimes in 2014 over 2013. The monthly change in the property crime ratio offers the strongest evidence in support of the hypothesis that the Ferguson events led to crime increases in St. Louis, at least with respect to timing. The property crime ratio was fairly flat until August, when it began to increase steadily through the remainder of the year. Before August, St. Louis averaged about 15% fewer property crimes in 2014 than in 2013. From August through the end of the year, the city averaged 8% more property crimes than during the same period the year before. By December, the number of property crimes in 2014 exceeded the number in 2013 by 27%. If there was a Ferguson effect on crime in St. Louis, it was most pronounced in the growth of property crimes.
CRIME DATA SUMMARY
Even limiting an analysis just to the timing of these monthly crime changes provides only partial support for the contention that the police shooting in Ferguson and ensuing protest activity spurred crime increases in St. Louis. The increase in homicide in 2014 predated Michael Brown’s killing on August 9. Violent crimes exhibit much the same pattern, although the rate of increase in violent crimes over 2013 accelerated after August. Only the timing of the change in property crimes is fully consistent with a Ferguson effect. But temporal consistency is not a sufficient condition to establish substantive proof. Many factors may have contributed to a rise in property crimes, and perhaps also violent crimes, in St. Louis after August of 2014, and we cannot conduct an experiment to discover whether crime would have increased had Michael Brown not been killed in a controversial police shooting. But we can conclude with reasonable certainty that the events in Ferguson were not responsible for the steep rise in homicide in St. Louis.
CONCLUSION
Whatever their cause, double-digit homicide increases in St. Louis and other cities during the past several months should not be discounted as unimportant or as mere “random fluctuations” in crime statistics – not when so many lives are at stake. But neither should the recent increases be read as a new crime wave, at least not yet. Even with a 33% increase over the previous year, the St. Louis homicide rate in 2014 remained well below the peak levels reached in the early 1990s (see Figure 5). We should watch the new increases carefully and encourage local police departments to apply evidence-based best practices in response. In the absence of credible and comprehensive evidence, sounding alarm bells over a “Ferguson effect” or any other putative cause will not help.
It will be interesting a year or two from now to see if there is a Baltimore effect based on the charging decision made by the DA there that appears to be impacting police practices in Baltimore and possibly elsewhere. Also whether the changed police practices continue or revert back to the way they were. And is there a linkage between the changed practices and the dramatically increased murder rate. Any change in the murder rate also needs to be taken in context to the dramatic population decline in Baltimore from over 900,000 in 1970 to around 622,000 now. So comparing the Baltimore murder rate today to that in the 70’s needs to not the population change.
Another thing to look at is the impact of the demise of “stop and frisk” policies on the murder and other violent crime rates.
I’m about halfway through my analysis of Baltimore policing. But this analysis came out while I was working on it and appeared to be a better first article.
“a conjecture by some commentators that rising crime rates in some urban areas in recent months are the result of widespread protests against police misconduct and calls for reform.”
I would hope that a “conjecture is all that this is”. The argument seems to be that because the police have been criticized, they have seen it appropriate to not do their jobs with due diligence rather than addressing many of the appropriate concerns that have been raised. I do not believe this to be true and certainly hope that it is not. Police are hired for the specific purpose of the protection of the community. It is their sworn duty. It is not their duty only if they like the press that they are getting. It is their job.
Using the doctor analogy since it is what I know best, would anyone condone my not doing my best to protect the life and health of a person brought to me in need, even if that person had written a disparaging article against me, my department or my organization ? I would see it as my duty to do my best for this individual regardless of how I felt about their comments. I truly believe that most police, like most doctors would agree with this sentiment and will do their job to the best of their abilities.
If this conjecture is correct, and there are police that have deliberately allowed crime to increase, then I would feel that they are not worthy of the trust that we place in them and they should be replaced by those who will do their job.
I believe we first have the “Eric Holder Effect” – which was implemented before the Ferguson Effect. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department have been tinkering, interfering, and even threatening many local law enforcement agencies.
Part of this had to do with the Progressive View that “stop and frisk” / “broken window” police policies were at least unneeded, or in the worst analysis ineffective and racist. Defenders of such policing policies, which also included mandatory sentencing and three strikes you’re out laws, pointed to dramatically reduced violent crime levels. Progressives see their impact as minimal or coincidental. The Eric Holder Justice Department interfered or halted such tactics based on their theories of crime and police enforcement. Crime was already on the rise due to this Eric Holder Effect.
Seattle is one case study of these new Progressive law enforcement measures. In Seattle, Holder and his contemporaries saw ethnically disproportionate crime statistics – which occur consistently across our nation – as problematic. Holder’s DOJ implemented federally mandated reforms in 2013 which included cumbersome “use of force policies” that critics refer to as “de-policing“. The intense Justice Department scrutiny has had a chilling effect on Seattle. The effect has been that police have reduced by 45% their engagement in “minor lawbreaking” like drug markets and homeless encampments. Officers are so confused by the new policies, they’ve even turned in tazers due to unclear or subjective rules of use. Last year, rank-and-file officers took the happy face off the situation when 120 officers filed a lawsuit against Holder and the DOJ.
Crime in 2014? Violent crime was up 14%, and auto thefts were up 44%.
Baltimore – 5th in the country in homicides – allegedly had a similar increase in crime thanks to the DOJ before their recent riots. Baltimore post riots set a 40-year record for homicide, not sure how the pundits will sweep that away.
Holder and President Barack Obama have consistently criticized law enforcement agencies as a first reaction, even before facts are at hand.
Next comes the “Ferguson Effect”, which I believe Tia mangles in her analysis. Tia is either unaware or conveniently skips the AG’s office putting pressure on local law enforcement agencies to change their proven strategies and tactics. See Seattle and New York.
David unfortunately mis-characterizes these recent police engagements. When Michael Brown grabbed a police officer’s gun and attempted to kill him, he was armed. When Trayvon Martin attacked a neighborhood watchman – he could have run away – and slammed his head into the pavement, he instigated the attack. There also seems to be a record level of police being targeted and defacto assassinated.
The media also loves to spin the racial angle to help sell newspapers or website views. When unarmed white citizens are killed by white or black police officers, where is the media? Officer Vanessa Miller shot and killed unarmed driver Ryan Keith Bolinger in Iowa. The media also avoids the fact that many of these “victims” are high on drugs (often pot) when confronted by law enforcement or while committing their crimes.
Tia should re-read her own post recently where she said that medical care improved when doctor’s were less fearful of being sued.
an eric holder effect? you need some empirics here. you don’t have any.
you made the comment about seattle. it wasn’t just the disproportionate stats, it was two fold: it was excessive force coupled with the refusal by seattle police to deal with the problem that brought about the consent decree. are you suggesting that the justice department was not justified in seattle?
you say “The intense Justice Department scrutiny has had a chilling effect on Seattle. The effect has been that police have reduced by 45% their engagement in “minor lawbreaking” like drug markets and homeless encampments.”
this is the problem that we’re seeing across the board – police when scrutinized instead of reforming start to refuse to their job. new york times article this weekend shows that as baltimore’s crime rate goes up last month, arrests are down. not just a little down by in some places 50 to 90 percent. woah.
you want to play your politics with this but the bottom line from what i can see is that the feds were responding to legitimate problems, the locals were unwilling to work with the feds, they went to a consent decree, and the police took their ball and went home.
Playing politics with this? It was President Obama who in regards to a little snit between an arrogant Harvard professor and a Boston police officer said that “It was clear that the police acted stupidly.” Our President hadn’t even read the police report, the story was merely unfolding.
It was the President who said, “If I had a son, he might look like Trayvon”. Did he know Trayvon attacked and slammed Zimerman’s head into the concrete?
Al Sharpton has met with Obama and Holder dozens of times. Politics much? It was Holder who said we are a nation of “cowards”.
I believe the “locals” didn’t agree with the extreme interpretation of the Progressives analysis of crime data in Seattle.
DP, I thought this is what you and Tia wanted? Seattle stopped “stop and frisk”, they stopped enforcing misdemeanor offenses, and now we see the results.
you can’t really claim not be playing politics and then list off a whole bunch of extraneous politicians.
“DP, I thought this is what you and Tia wanted? Seattle stopped “stop and frisk”, they stopped enforcing misdemeanor offenses, and now we see the results.”
i think this sentence most illustrates that you have no idea what at least i want. i’ll let tia fend for herself here. there is a difference between stop and frisk and enforcing laws. in baltimore it’s not just that they stopped enforcing misdemeanors, but apparently all offenses. i don’t recall ever advocating that we stop doing that. so no, you have mischaracterized my views – either intentionally or because you don’t understand the nuances of the issues.
re: “police when scrutinized instead of reforming start to refuse to their job”
police in major cities are indeed in a precarious position. Two factors which have changed:
(1) Many criminals now feel emboldened to challenge the police; to get in their faces.
(2) Charges of excessive force and racism have been leveled and are being leveled due to political pressure, even when there is little or no evidence to support the claims (though sometimes there has been plentiful evidence to support claims of excessive force; I have yet to see clear evidence of racism, though no doubt there have been some instances where racial bias has been a component).
Seems to me the police have legitimate reason to back off a bit; they have to some extent been put in a no-win situation. The Ferguson officer has had his career ruined, due to whupped-up racial hysteria with no clear evidence of any wrongdoing by the officer. Whether the baltimore officers are convicted or not, their careers are over (I don’t deny that there may have been some reckless disregard or negligence by some of the officers, we’ll see what evidence turns up when autopsy results are released and during the trials).
TBD
No, I believe that you should read my post again. What I said was that medical care improved when medical teams changed the paradigm from one of blame to one of systems assessment rather than scapegoating individuals. I have no way of knowing whether doctors are less fearful of being sued. I know many who live with this fear, and many others such as myself who do not live in fear of lawsuits.
“…and there are police that have deliberately allowed crime to increase, then I would feel that they are not worthy of the trust that we place in them and they should be replaced by those who will do their job.”
There’s gambling at Rick’s, too.
;>)/
this just bolsters the analysis from last week that crime was ticking up before ferguson existed. if anything the police are contributing to the problem not only through aggressive policing in some places but through slowdowns elsewhere.
I suggest we adopt Singapore’s approach to crime as someone has also suggested it as a model that we should adopt in our US economic transformation.
A quick search finds that the only people who have recommended Singapore for anything are you and TrueBlueDevil.
So if you want Singapore as your model, you will probably need more rules and stronger law enforcement to get Singapore social and economic outcomes.
If Finland is your model, better start cleaning the US of all its ethnic and cultural diversity to get those outcomes.
Who wants Singapore as the model? Who wants Finland? Who are you debating with? How many strawmen can dance on the head of a pin?
Strawmen are better than the vapor-men you throw out there on the topic.
The point I am making related to the article is really that we should expect crime to increase with softer law enforcement given our immigration mess over the last 25+ years. Put a bunch of people together subscribing to different cultures and there will be more crime because there is less feeling of individual ownership of the community that would be damaged by the crime.
Those making the case that there is no Ferguson effect are premature and likely to have to eat crow unless law enforcement ramps back up to its previous standard intensity in time to prevent a sustained increase in crime.
So your hypothesis is that the rate of crime in St. Louis is correlated to an increase in immigration to that city?
You tend to dismiss any commonality of American culture. You insist that America is some undefinable amorphous mess of any multi-culture …belonging to anyone that happens on US soil. My point is that when you have a country that has exploded with so many immigrants that combined with the rise of this liberal media narrative that basically rejects the traditional American values system that has been the pervious glue that held us together… you have a bunch of disconnected people. People that really don’t feel like part of something bigger. People that feel like strangers in their own land. People that don’t hold their communities in high reguard. People that would lie, cheat, steal from and even kill their neighbor to get ahead… without much consideration of the damage they inflict on their own community and their own country.
So we need strong law enforcement.
Ah, more of your usual inflammatory rhetoric which simply demonstrates your extraordinary attitudes about people who aren’t like you. There are a lot of “traditional American values” that you and I don’t share. Pretty sure we come from different backgrounds. But we’re both Americans.
How about: we need law enforcement officers hired from within the communities that they are policing?
Frankly: …we should expect crime to increase with softer law enforcement given our immigration mess over the last 25+ years.
If we’re talking about St. Louis, please highlight how immigrant populations have led to the growth of crime in that city. Which immigrant populations have grown over that time?
Because unless you know something that I don’t, I think your speculation on this topic has outrun a solid grounding in facts.
More strong points by Frankly. Massive unplanned immigration and planned immigration is upending our culture. How much assimilation do we have today?
Firebrand Pat Buchanan wrote yesterday that “diversity” hasn’t been very successful for many countries, including the Balkans. I believe the essence of his article was that the “diversity” angle has been oversold and overmarketed without real critical analysis, that most Americans came from an area twice the size of Texas.
re: Frankly’s 9:15 pm post & disconnected people.
Yes, it seems to me also that many social commonalities have been lost in the USA. It seems to me much of the black community as well was moving toward adapting to/adopting much of white cultural attributes that led to success; but after the black identity movement gained strength much of that momentum was lost. The melting pot is a time-proven way for society to function; I don’t think any ‘multicultural’ society has not been beset with frictions and problems between the different identity groups; often culminating in balkanization.
If nothing else, policing a multicultural district is much more complex; the officers must be familiar with the ways of all the different cultures–difficult enough to control crime in a district with a more uniform culture! I agree with Dons suggestion of more minority policemen in minority neighborhoods, this could help a lot.
I think the big financial/corporate establishment perceives a benefit from the increasing atomization of individuals away from a sense of social cohesiveness
(1) It promotes more hyper-competition–in the absence of social cohesion, it is every man for himself, increasing the pace of the rat race, and at least in the short term (but I would argue not in the long term) leading to some increase in productivity.
(2) By promoting multicuturalism, identity politics, and all the frictions between groups that will inevitably result, the citizens are kept busy squabbling with and blaming other cultural groups for their problems, or that the system is unfair to their own cultural group; which distracts/diverts their energy and attention away from the real game going on behind the scenes–the ongoing consolidation of a greater percentage of the nations wealth into the hands of a smaller and smaller percentage of the population; i.e. the ongoing strengthening of the oligarchy–hopefully at some point the different cultural and ethnic identity groups can lay aside their quarrels with each other and unite to help reverse this consolidation, the main source of their economic and related social woes!
TBD: More strong points by Frankly. Massive unplanned immigration and planned immigration is upending our culture. How much assimilation do we have today?
No, that’s a very weak point, actually. Census data show that St. Louis has not attracted much of any immigrant residents in the past couple of decades.
Yes, but Frankly is certainly upholding a longstanding American tradition: blaming the immigrants.
Ayn Rand, Joe McCarthy, and now Ann Coulter? This is who conservatives listen to and admire?
Frankly
“ People that would lie, cheat, steal from and even kill their neighbor to get ahead… without much consideration of the damage they inflict on their own community and their own country.”
I am not sure who you are referring to here. Are you referring to common criminals on the streets, or to the police and their allies who use minor traffic stops, property forfeitures and other judicially sanctioned means of improving their cash flow, or perhaps maybe those who have done the numerically greatest amount of “cheating and stealing” in the form of those who have succeeded in economic manipulation. Moving their companies off shore where they are not limited by those pesky labor regulations, which yes, has resulted in the deaths of many workers. True, the deaths aren’t here so maybe you think that those don’t count, but it is certainly without “much consideration of the damage they inflict on their own community and their own country in the form of lost jobs.
“we should expect crime to increase with softer law enforcement “
Certainly. But who chooses the route of softer law enforcement ? You dislike people being thin skinned, or having their “feelings” hurt. And you believe that we should expect “softer law enforcement”. Really ! Do you believe that our police officers are so soft, tender, and weak willed as to wilt under accusations of “excessive force” or even “racism” ?
If the accusations do not apply to them as individuals or as a department., they should choose to ignore it and continue with the job that they have sworn to do. If it does apply, it should sting…..and then it should be used as a just criticism, and reason to improve. In either event, in my opinion there is no, repeat, no justification for a slow down because they do not like the press they are getting.
I like to think that our police officers are intelligent, competent adults and as such fully responsible for their own actions. This should be equally true of our press and politicians. But some of those who are usually very vocal in defense of our police, seem to see them as weak willed victims with no option but to stay inside and sulk when they are verbally offended. Please note that neither politicians nor the press cause a police “slow down”. If that is indeed happening ( and again, I hope not) that is squarely on the police who choose to participate and not on anyone else.
“Put a bunch of people together subscribing to different cultures and there will be more crime because there is less feeling of individual ownership of the community that would be damaged by the crime.”
so you believe that people of different cultures living together are going to produce crime and yet when the issue is raised you deny that race is a leading component of the police violence even though the vast majority of cops are white and the vast majority of their subjects are people of color. there is an incongruity in your thinking.
This does not make any sense to me.
I think you subscribe to this narrative that minorities that are underrepresented in positive social outcomes are victims of racist or racially-biased policing and police.
My point is that cops are the victims. They are the victims of a huge and growing minority immigrant population… one that is too large to effectively mix into and assimilate into American culture… especially because there are many fewer strong economic opportunities for the uneducated and low-skilled these days… and because they don’t effectivley mix into and assimilate into American culture, they have a limited affinitiy for America and their communities.
Blacks as a group are unique in that they are not recent immigrants. In fact those blacks that are recent immigrants tend to demonstrate much stronger positive outcomes. But blacks as a group are failing to grab enough of the American dream and move up to enough of a good life that they begin to value their country and community, and emulate those traditional American values that are the basis for success. They are being squeezed by the flood of immigrants demanding the same resources that would otherwise go to provide the opportunities for blacks.
And so blacks are disenfranchised with the system. They feel less and less a part of it instead develop their own black urban subculture and retreat into it.
It is not the cops causing this problem, it is too much immigration of poor and uneducated people and not enough economic growth to generate economic opportunity for all. Blacks are being squeezed primarily by liberal progressives, and cops are having to deal with the mess.
Liberal progressives tend to dislike or reject traditional American values like disenfranchised minorities. But liberal progressives tend to be white and well-educated privileged people. So they don’t make this connection.
The population of foreign-born persons in St. Louis is 6.7%. That’s your explanation for the crime rate?
I believe Frankly was referring to effects nationwide.
Of coarse the mainstream media, which is in lockstep with Democrats / Progressives, won’t let us know any negative information that runs counter to their narrative. One example, I recently stumbled upon a DEA website with the “most wanted” for San Francisco / Northern California. Guess what… it is virtually 100% Mexicans who appear to be Mexican nationals! But the open borders crowd would prefer to ignore this, besides, they often think drugs are fun.
Ann Coulter is a lightning rod, but apparently in her new book !ADIOS AMERICA!, she confronts the issue dead on. Showing she has brass you-know-what, she goes on a top-rated Latino TV talk show and skewers the host and audience members who throw darts and barbs. I have not read the book, but she claims to document a higher-than-average crime rate by the new illegal immigrant wave from Central and South America.
The sad irony of the mass illegal immigration from south of our border is that it is hammering the black lower and middle class. Their families paid a heavy price, whereas the recent illegal entrants haven’t.