FBI director James Comey has said police anxiety in “the era of viral videos” appears to be part of the reason for rising violent crime in several big US cities.



Speaking at a University of Chicago law school forum on Friday night, Comey referred to a spike in violence in cities from Chicago to Dallas. He told several hundred students there could be multiple explanations for an increase in homicides and other violent crimes.

But, he said, officers nationwide had told him they feared the presence of cellphone video everywhere they went.

On Saturday, in response, Amnesty International USA executive director Steven W Hawkins called Comey’s words “outrageous” and called for a national review of the use of lethal force laws by police.

In Chicago, Comey said: “Something deeply disturbing is happening in places across America. Far more people are being killed in many American cities, many of them people of color, and it’s not the cops doing the killing.



“Part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through law enforcement over the last year and that wind is surely changing behavior.

“In today’s YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime?”

In a statement released on Saturday, Hawkins said: “The assertions made by Director Comey are outrageous. By his own admission, these statements are not backed up by data, and there are mixed reports about levels of crime since the heightened scrutiny of police officers began after the protests in Ferguson.”

Hawkins was referring to protests and rioting that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri last year after the decision not to indict a white police officer for shooting dead an unarmed black teen, Michael Brown. A national protest movement, largely under the Black Lives Matter banner, has since grown up around such deaths at the hands of police.

“Rather than making unsubstantiated claims that hinder dialogue and constructive criticism of police practices,” Hawkins continued, “what is urgently needed is an official collection and publication of nationwide statistics on the use of force by police.

“We also need President Obama and the Department of Justice to support the creation of a national commission to conduct a nationwide review of police use of lethal force laws, policies and training and practices, as well as a thorough review and reform of oversight and accountability mechanisms.”

Comey said there were other possible reasons for the jump in crime, but the one that seemed to fit best was a change in police behavior. Part of the change was positive after the national uproar over police killings of unarmed black men, he said, adding that the nation must talk about how and why police use lethal force.

But Comey also said killers must be confronted by a strong police presence involving officers who go out at night and deal with men with guns standing on street corners.

“All of us, civilian and law enforcement, white, black, and Latino, have an interest in that kind of policing,” Comey said. “We need to be careful it doesn’t drift away from us in the age of viral videos, or there will be profound consequences.”

It makes sense to debate the causes of dropping crime rates over recent decades but people cannot lose sight of the role of law enforcement in saving lives, he said.

Falling crime has led to debate over lengthy sentences for some non-violent criminals and the huge numbers of African American men in prison.

Comey said that sentencing reform should be debated but questioned rhetoric about “mass incarceration”.

“Yes, we put a lot of people in jail, but at the same time lives were transformed and lives were saved,” he said.

Comey’s comments echoed Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who recently said Chicago police officers were going “fetal”, pulling back and second-guessing themselves for fear that scrutiny of their actions would get them into serious trouble.