Police shooting unarmed African-American men isn’t exactly a new thing, but ever since Michael Brown’s shooting in 2014 led to widespread protests and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, there’s been increased visibility to police actions that might have otherwise gone without public notice.
From the start, there were those who tried to turn this into a bad thing. First there was the argument that Ferguson had initiated a War on Police in which police, reluctant to use force lest they end up being the subject of protests, were getting killed. But though the War on Police drumbeat continued in 2015, there was still no evidence it was happening.
But that didn’t stop the myth-makers who wanted to keep policing done the old fashioned way: in the dark, without questions.
Among them is FBI Director James Comey. Comey started talking about the “chilling” effect of public accountability last year, when he blamed increased visibility of police actions for a spike in some local crime numbers.
But Obama administration officials distanced themselves from Mr. Comey at the time. They said they had seen no evidence to support the idea of a “Ferguson effect,” named after the 2014 shooting by a police officer of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Mo., which sparked widespread protests.
Comey was at it again on Wednesday, blaming fear of acting in the open for increasing violence.
James Comey, the director, said that while he could offer no statistical proof, he believed after speaking with a number of police officials that a “viral video effect” — with officers wary of confronting suspects for fear of ending up on a video — “could well be at the heart” of a spike in violent crime in some cities.
The critical part of that statement: he could offer no statistical proof. Comey was the Deputy Attorney General in the Bush administration, where facts and figures were not much valued and gut feelings were sufficient to spend a lot of lives and a lot of dollars. He seems to still be living in “we know where to find the WMDs” time.
Director Comey’s “belief” without anything to back it up failed to impress anyone, not even the police.
Obama administration officials declined to comment on Wednesday about Mr. Comey’s latest remarks, which were sharper in tone than his previous statements. But some dissenters said he was needlessly stirring up an unproven and divisive notion.
“He ought to stick to what he knows,” James O. Pasco Jr., executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said in a telephone interview. The organization has more than 330,000 members.
“He’s basically saying that police officers are afraid to do their jobs with absolutely no proof,” Mr. Pasco said.
The War on Police is a myth. The Ferguson Effect is a myth. But by spreading that myth, James Comey is doing real damage to real police departments and ultimately to real citizens.
This isn’t the Bush administration, and Comey’s statements should not be tolerated by President Obama. It’s time for Director Comey to go exercise his deeply held gut feelings at an organization that’s not responsible for objectively analyzing crime statistics or dealing with the real world on real terms.
I’m sure they’d welcome him at Fox.