Still – James Pasco of the National Fraternal Order of Police says rank-and-file officers are offended by the Federal Bureau of Investigation director’s comments.
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Comey described a so-called “Ferguson effect”, in which officers are reluctant to do their jobs effectively because of the rise of anti-police rhetoric and fear an interaction could go viral.
CNN Politics: Federal Bureau of Investigation chief tries to deal with the “Ferguson effect” – “The tensions over policing and crime come when, for the first time in a generation, unusual political forces have aligned and the nation appears on the verge of relaxing tough criminal sentencing laws”.
Former police officer and CEO of Phoenix Risk Assessment Michael Henderson joins us with more. Does he stand for law enforcement?
“You know, the president’s appointed Federal Bureau of Investigation director has said this week that because of a lack of support for politicians like the president of the United States, that police officers are afraid to get out of their cars, that they’re afraid to enforce the law. And that wind is surely changing behavior”.
The White House has said that it doesn’t agree with Comey’s claims. “A theory of government which tells citizens to invest agents of the state with the power to mete out lethal violence, but discourages them from holding those officers accountable is not democracy”, he writes.
But Holder then immediately discounted one possible explanation, saying, “But I don’t think it’s connected to the so-called Ferguson effect”.
“The issue is not officers doing their jobs in an energetic, proactive way”, the editorial states.
“We do have to stick with the facts”, the president said.
Eric Holder told the Huffington Post the factors involved in the crime surge would be difficult to tease out, “It’s hard for us to understand why crime dropped to historic lows over the last 40 years”.
“Comey is voicing legitimate frustrations that a lot of police officers in the field experience when they get out of their vehicle and see a group of people turn their iPhone cameras on them”, says Rob Kane, a Drexel University criminologist and author of “Jammed Up: Bad Cops, Police Misconduct, and the New York City Police Department”.
“Too often law enforcement gets scapegoated for the broader failures of society and our criminal justice system”, Obama said.
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“What we can’t do is cherry-pick data or use anecdotal evidence to drive policy or to feed political agendas”, he added. “Where I disagree with the Federal Bureau of Investigation head is, I don’t think it’s affecting crime. That’s part of wearing the badge”, he continued. “But we can’t expect you to contain and control problems that the rest of us aren’t willing to face or do anything about”.
