FBI Releases 'Study' Of Law Enforcement's Persecution Complex

from the less-work,-more-griping dept

In what may be an attempt to bolster now ex-FBI director James Comey's oft-derided "Ferguson Effect" claims, the FBI has released a "study" that gathers facts feelings from law enforcement officers around the US and attempts to build a narrative somewhere between "life is unfair" and "there's a War on Cops." It's not a study. It's an opinion poll with the word "study" appended to it.

In short, the Ferguson Effect theory is this: cops are afraid to do their jobs because they're undergoing intense scrutiny in the wake of controversial shootings. It's bullshit, but there are plenty of law enforcement officials willing to stake their reputations on assertions that portray their officers as cowards. Faced with heightened public scrutiny, officers are apparently deciding to do less work than before, supposedly to head off any misrepresentation of their tactics.

The FBI's study involved interviewing officers and supervisors at agencies where an officer had been killed in the line of duty. It studied the background of the assailants, but that appears to be the end of any factual basis for claims made. What these stats show is most attacks on officers involved a person who didn't want to be arrested. A smaller percentage of attacks were motivated by a desire to hurt cops.

Despite these conclusions, the FBI's study pushes forward with an officer-driven narrative that follows the War on Cops/Ferguson Effect: supposedly-increased violence towards cops (not supported by line-of-duty death statistics) and "de-policing." I supposed the FBI's "impartiality" restrained it from challenging contradictory and false assertions provided to it by officers. From the study [PDF]:

Since 2014 multiple high-profile police incidents across the country have occurred that law enforcement officials believe influenced the mindset and behaviors of the assailants. Specifically, the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, MO, in 2014, and the social disturbances that followed, initiated a movement that some perceived made it socially acceptable to challenge and discredit the actions of law enforcement. This attitude was fueled by the narrative of police misconduct and excessive force perpetuated through politicians and the media.

This narrative has apparently risen unbidden. It couldn't possibly have been the result of multiple DOJ civil rights investigations and the rise of non-police-controlled cameras. In other words, it couldn't possibly be the result of verifiable evidence, rather than hurt feelings of police officers who fear they're no longer viewed as minor deities.

Law enforcement agencies also complained they're no longer able to provide the only narrative after incidents of abuse or violence.

Due to the coverage of the high-profile police incidents, it appears that immediately following the incidents, assailants were constantly exposed to a singular narrative by news organizations and social media of police misconduct and wrong-doing. In many cases, this singular narrative came from the subject's friends and family, and witnesses to the incident who often knew the subject, long before law enforcement provided their findings to the public.

Reading this is like asking a four-year-old for their opinion on current events. This is so self-centered, self-pitying and bereft of awareness, it's ridiculous. The standard M.O. following the killing of someone by a police officer is to get the dead person's rap sheet into journalists' hands as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the officer's agency will refuse to provide any information on the officer involved (in most cases, not even the officer's name) until everything is thoroughly investigated, which means weeks or months will pass before law enforcement is ready to tell its side of the story.

Both of these bogus assertions lead to a third: the inability of law enforcement to control the narrative has "emboldened" arrestees, making them less compliant, more argumentative, and more likely to engage in violence. The officers surveyed also threw out the following, which is so unmoored from reality, it calls their judgment into question:

Across the country, law enforcement officials link the de-criminalization of drugs to the increase in violent attacks on law enforcement.

If this were even remotely true, the number of officers killed in the line of duty should have dropped dramatically during the late 80s and early 90s when new, extremely-harsh statutory minimums were put into place in response to the crack epidemic. And those numbers should be on the rise in recent years, as marijuana legalization and sentencing reform efforts have taken hold. None of what's asserted by officers is reflected in killed in the line of duty stats. If anything, it shows deaths have decreased as legalization efforts have increased.

And, as officers have felt less support from non-cops and been subjected to unprecedented scrutiny (i.e., more than none), they've felt less and less like doing the job taxpayers are paying them to do.

The above-referenced factors have had the effect of "de-policing" in law enforcement agencies across the country, which the assailants have exploited. Departments - and individual officers - have increasingly made the conscious decision to stop engaging in proactive policing. The intense scrutiny and criticism law enforcement has received in the wake of several high-profile incidents has caused several officers to (1) "become scared and demoralized" and (2) avoid interacting with the community.

Let's just repeat this simple fact: being a law enforcement officer is not compulsory. If you no longer feel you can do the job, or don't like the working conditions, leave. Find something else to do. Taxpayers aren't interested in being under-served by officers who can't stand the heat but are unwilling to leave the kitchen.

I realize this is a facile response. Leaving a job, much less a career, is a very difficult thing to do. But these are facile answers. And they're being given by officers who are finding out they need to do their jobs better in the future, but are clearly unwilling to improve themselves or their agencies. Instead, they'd rather blame everyone outside of law enforcement for their problems, when years of opacity and unquestioned authority have turned them into the officers and officials they are.

We usually see the worst of law enforcement when it comes to the media. But we generally see the worst of all members of the public when filtered through this narrow lens. Police work is a customer service job, albeit one that grants employees an incredible amount of leeway to perform their duties.

The worst will be what's remembered. That may seem unfair, but that's just the way it is. United Airlines may fly millions of passenger miles without complaint, but it will be remembered for a long, long time as the airline that booted a paying passenger from its plane using law enforcement as the stick. (There was no carrot.) The same goes for law enforcement agencies.

The FBI's study contains no indication officers are willing to surmount the challenges of this era of policing. There's no sign officers are interested in making the effort needed to change the public's perception. Instead, it's an open airing of grievances that may have had limited therapeutic value for responding officers, but does nothing to repair the relationship between law enforcement and the public.

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Filed Under: fbi, ferguson effect, law enforcement