M.N.: "The solution to this "controversy" is very simple: do a good objective independent study" - President Obama is dismissing comments made by his F.B.I. Director James B. Comey, who warned of a post-Ferguson chilling effect on law enforcement that was emboldening criminals nationwide.
President Obama is dismissing comments made by his F.B.I. Director James B. Comey, who warned of a post-Ferguson chilling effect on law enforcement that was emboldening criminals nationwide.
“You know, we have not seen any evidence of that,” Obama replied when confronted by Comey’s remarks in an interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt.
Obama dismissed Comey’s remarks as “anecdotal.”
“I think the F.B.I. Director would be the first to say that he’s heard anecdotal suggestions that may be happening in selective sites, but we don’t know.”
Obama acknowledged that crime had spiked in some cities, but argued that violent crime overall had decreased since he came into office.
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M.N. My own personal hunch is that the FBI Director is correct in his assessment and "Ferguson effect" is undoubtedly present and "real". It is based on simple street observations. And this is not to blame the cops (and I do not think that Mr. Comey implied this at all), this is completely understandable self-protective "withdrawal reaction", not to provoke the public and agitators unnecessarily, although, I think, police continues to perform their duties at their best under the circumstances. I think, Mr. Obama simply "pulls the rank" because it suits his political agenda. His track record in impressionistic assessments of these kind of mass phenomena is not that good: both he and Mr. Biden similarly claimed that increase in incidents of mass shootings "is not real" and just reflects the effect of "instant communications" in the internet era; until it was proved definitively by the statistical studies from the Harvard and other places that this increase is the real phenomenon and did indeed take place.
The solution to this "controversy" is very simple: do a good objective independent study (commission the same team from Harvard, for example, or any other respectable academic institution), with the study design both impressionistic: polling the public, police and others and statistical: number of police-violators interactions, arrests, etc. to determine if the causal connections in this "Ferguson effect" are indeed present. The importance of truth in this issue is self-evident. We cannot politicize or play with the matters of public's and nation's safety.
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