If you’re going to run a story about out-of-control crime, you need a photo of some crime-scene tape. (photo: Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
The 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.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org.
You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com, or write to public editor Margaret Sullivan at public@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTimes or @Sulliview). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Never let the facts, or lack of same, get in the way of a scary story
We are seeing the same kind of vague certainty in California regarding the effects of Proposition 47, passed by voters last year. Prop 47 reduced certain non-violent drug and theft offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, applying the new status retroactively, i.e., releasing some, but not all, of those convicted for such offenses as if they had been sentenced under the new rules. These crimes for which some prisoners served decades in state prisons include shoplifting, bounced checks, and simple possession of drugs.
With the new law implemented, it wasn’t long before all those in the prison industry, from local police departments to those running the vast state prison system, started to notice an Instant Increase in Crime. Such claims are echoed in the media, often without any mention of the lack of proof for any of those claims, much less the “press” conducting any independent investigation.
Much as the TSA, there are those whose pecuniary interests might make the saving of their jobs the number one goal of an industry. If you earn a comfortable living keeping thousands of people locked up, and someone threatens that job, it must be awfully tempting to prevaricate sufficiently to frighten the herd into undoing the threat.
This Prop 47 issue continues today. And we will never see the end of the TSA in my lifetime…or yours.
Its an interesting thesis that criminals might have some sort of pent-up demand for murder. Perhaps waiting in some way for the environment to be right. That might be true for organized crime but I’m thinking (and I’m no criminologist) that murders happen when people are generally angry or their needs are frustrated in some way. Nice article.
“It’s not clear that the rise in homicides that the story is pegged to actually exists as a nationwide phenomenon.” <– I truly wonder about Jim Naureckas' reading comprehension. Nowhere in the story does it say "nationwide phenomenon." From the headline and throughout it says "many U.S. cities." Thirty certainly qualifies as many. You just made up the "nationwide" line to argue against it. Try again.
Gee whiz, when I read the NYT describing “cities across the nation” having an increase in the murder rate, I’m not surprised by “countrywide” and “nationwide” being considered synonymous with that description of the breadth of the supposed phenomenon. I didn’t jump to any conclusion that this rash of murders was appearing everywhere, just in those cities, across the country, which were reporting the increases. Apparently my reading comprehension is as dismal as Mr. Naureckas.
The real story isn’t the bizarre “Ferguson Effect,” but the alleged fatal misuse of the terms “nationwide” and “countrywide.” Apparently one must proved 50 state involvement to use language that bold.
Right, because it’s way out of question to criticize the actual use of language in a story. FAIR never does that ***eyes roll***