The Minneapolis Effect and America’s Murder Explosion

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My longtime friend and former colleague (in the US Attorney’s Office for EDVA) Paul Cassell has a must read op-ed out today.  Its title is, “Homicide Stats Show ‘Minneapolis Effect’.”  The subtitle is, “In cities across the U.S., the shooting started when anti-police protests led officers to pull back.”

Here are some excerpts:

Cities across the country suffered dramatic increases in homicides this summer. The spikes were remarkable, suddenly appearing and widespread, although often concentrated in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This year is on track to be the deadliest year for gun-related homicides since at least 1999.

The homicide spikes began in late May. Before May 28, Chicago had almost the same number of homicides as in 2019. Then, on May 31, 18 people were murdered in Chicago—the city’s most violent day in six decades. Violence continued through the summer. July was Chicago’s most violent month in 28 years. As of Sept. 1, murder is up 52% for the year, according to Chicago Police Department data.

Chicago’s shooting spike reflects what is happening in many major cities across the country. Researchers have identified a “structural break” in homicide numbers, beginning in the last week of May. Trends for most other major crime categories have remained generally stable or moved slightly downward.

What changed in late May? The antipolice protests that began across the country around May 27 appear to have resulted in a decline in policing directed at gun violence, producing—perhaps unsurprisingly—an increase in shootings.

The sequence of events is straightforward. George Floyd’s death while in police custody in Minneapolis produced demonstrations against the police in major cities from coast to coast. As a result, officers in most cities had to be redeployed from their normal duties to help manage the protests, some of which turned violent.

Even as the demonstrations abated, what is commonly called “proactive” policing declined. Police department data show that street and vehicle stops in Minneapolis and Philadelphia dropped sharply in June. In Chicago and New York, arrests declined steeply. And in cities around the country, both law-enforcement and citizen reports suggest a general reluctance by officers to engage in hot-spot and other enforcement efforts that are most effective in deterring gun violence.

The idea that reductions in policing might be leading to more shootings has historical precedent. Heather Mac Donald proposed a “Ferguson Effect” in May 2015 to explain homicide increases in the aftermath of antipolice protests following Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Mo., the previous year. Similarly, my research with Richard Fowles identified declines in police street stops as the triggering event for the 2016 homicide spike in Chicago. Beginning in late 2015, pursuant to an agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union, Chicago police significantly reduced stop-and-frisks in the city. The result was a deadly homicide spike the following year.

Paul, a former United States District Judge who resigned a lifetime appointment to become a victims’ rights advocate, then goes on to crunch the numbers.  He finds that reduced proactive policing “resulted in about 710 more homicides and 2,800 more shootings in June and July alone. The victims of these crimes are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic, often living in disadvantaged and low-income neighborhoods.”

So what do we have here?  We have the repeat of a depressingly familiar, bloody pattern.  Criminal justice “reformers” seize on an appalling (and anomalous) episode  —  the George Floyd incident  —  tendentiously inflate its frequency and import, then use it as a cudgel to advance their long pre-existing ideological agenda of weakening the police.  We and they know where this leads  —  to more murder, with the huge majority of the additional murder victims being African American.  This all happens at the same time they continue to berate their opponents for being  —  ready now?  —  racists.