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Violent Crime Surge Is Tragic Proof 'Ferguson Effect' Is Real

Like others in the Obama administration, Attorney General Loretta Lynch has been in denial over the "Ferguson Effect," which suggests there has been a surge in violent crime since the Ferguson riots in 2014. (AP)

War On Cops: The number of violent crimes jumped last year by 4%, a sad indictment of eight years of President Obama's policing and prison-sentencing "reforms" and further bolstering the argument that the so-called "Ferguson Effect" is largely to blame for the upsurge in criminal violence.

If you don't think this rise in violent crime, especially murder, is strange, consider this: While violent crime is soaring — murder and manslaughter in 2015 rose almost 11% from a year earlier — property crimes fell 2.6%, marking the 13th-straight year of decline, according to the latest crime report by the FBI.

That divergence between violent crimes and property crimes comes after eight years of President Obama suggesting that our criminal justice system — from street-level police to our courts to our jails and prisons — are just too hard on criminals.

Worse, over his two terms, Obama has joined with the left-leaning media and progressive intelligentsia to poo-pooh the notion that letting violent criminals out of prison, pulling back from aggressive, "broken-window" policing, and pushing a false narrative that police are engaged in a "war" on young black men have any impact on crime.

The result of this denial, sadly and predictably, has been more crime.

As the data show, the long, steady decline in violent crime rates that took place in the 1990s and into the 2000s has ended. The nation today is increasingly violent and racially divided, in large part thanks to Obama's refusal to rebuke rioters in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore or, most recently, Charlotte, N.C.

This refusal has made it much harder for police to do their jobs, turning what once were routine police contacts in minority neighborhoods into highly fraught confrontations that can turn violent in an instant — and often do. Police are pulling back from aggressive crime control in troubled areas, letting criminals, many freshly out of prison, take advantage of the lack of police presence to commit crimes — most often, with minority citizens as their victims.

Meanwhile, Obama, along with liberal officials at the state level, has promulgated sentencing reforms that led to 400,000 felons being released from state and federal prisons from 2009 to 2014. This has only added fuel to the fire.

Of course, these data bolster a case that has been made increasingly by criminologists and others that the soaring crime rate is a direct result of the "Ferguson Effect," a phrase coined by Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather Mac Donald, "wherein officers desist from discretionary policing and criminals thus become emboldened."

The "Ferguson Effect" followed the outbreak of violence and rioting that erupted in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 after a local man, Michael Brown, was killed by a police officer. Early reports that Brown's hands were up in the air, that he said "don't shoot" and was killed in cold blood proved to be entirely false. As video showed, the 300-pound man fought with police and tried to grab a weapon.

Nonetheless, the lie had legs, and "Hands Up, Don't Shoot!" T-shirts repeating the myth became de rigueur at violent demonstrations around the country. The subsequent withdrawal of police from troubled urban areas has been accompanied by a sharp rise in murders and assaults.

Tragically, the Obama administration largely supported the myth, suggesting the "Ferguson Effect" is baseless: "While certainly there might be anecdotal evidence there, as all have noted, there's no data to support it," Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in November 2015.

Lynch was followed by White House Spokesman Josh Earnest, who said last May, "There's just no evidence to substantiate that (Ferguson Effect)."

Now, despite the vitriol and accusations of racism hurled at Mac Donald and others who have pointed out that Ferguson seemed to have a negative impact on policing and crime, the FBI data concretely back Mac Donald's thesis.

And it's not the only recent study to do so. A study funded by the Justice Department, released in June, sought to explain the disturbing 16% surge in murders in 56 of the largest U.S. cities in 2015. In the study, University of St. Louis criminologist Richard Rosenfeld found "stronger support" for the Ferguson Effect, as the prime cause of the upsurge in murders, than other explanations.

"The other explanations have a difficult time ... explaining the timing and magnitude of the increase we saw in 2015 and continue to see in some cities in the current year," said Rosenfeld, once himself a skeptic of the Ferguson Effect.

We didn't think it was possible, but in addition to trashing the economy and wrecking America's relations with its closest allies, President Obama can now take credit for one more dubious accomplishment — ending a decades-long decline in violent crime in America. Add this to the long list of things the next president will have to fix.

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