When a suboptimal outcome is the best that can be achieved.

There is a delicate balance which a dysfunctional and unreliable media/academia environment exacerbates to the point of making it impossible to empirically determine answers that are useful to individuals and to society.

In this instance, I am thinking about the broad empirical truth that more policing (especially targeted policing by trained and experienced police officers from a police department with adequate controls, checks and balancers, and a commitment to transparency with civilians) leads to reduced crime, particularly violent crime and property crime.  

There is a lot of data supporting that position but a firm commitment in much of media and academia to deny or shade that truth.

Proactive policing and broken windows window policing gained traction in the early nineties at the peak of the past half century crime way which peaked about that time.  Since that time, police training has improved, police departments have become more sophisticated about broken windows and proactive policing, and the results have been spectacular.  There has been a secular decline in crime anyway but those jurisdictions adopting these approaches have seen factors greater improvement compared those that have not adopted these policies.

Yet in the media and academia, it is not uncommon to see proactive policing and broken windows policing discounting and even declared to have been debunked.  Claims unsupported by the data.

There was a natural experiment in 2014 with the Ferguson Riots across the nation after the death of Michael Brown at the hands of the police officer who Brown had attempted to murder.  

Not all jurisdictions had riots and not all jurisdictions with riots reigned in their police departments in the name of equity or to improve training or simply out of fear of the mob.  But for those departments which had broken windows/proactive policing, had BLM riots, and also had local political leaders who intervened to reduce the consistency and diligence of policing, all of them had dramatic spikes in crime, particularly violent crime between the 2014 riots and crime rates in 2015.  

Eventually most jurisdictions reverted to their prior broken windows/proactive policing practices and crime returned to its secular decline.  

However, the social justice, critical theory and BLM advocacy groups via the press and academia, tried to push the storyline that either there had been no bump in crime or that the bump in crime had nothing to do with political choices to reduce policing.

And now the same thing is happening again.  The same natural experiment has occurred.  In May 2020, following the death of George Floyd from the circumstances of his arrest arising from passing a counterfeit check, drug overdose,  resisting arrest, heart disease, Covid-19, and the means of control during his arrest.  

Within days, violent BLM riots swept the nation but on a more extensive basis than after the Ferguson riots.  

Just as with Ferguson, some police departments maintained policing and others were effectively ordered to stand down.  Many jurisdictions voted to defund their police departments.  In others, police resignations constrained normal levels of policing.  

The sample size of cities responding by reducing policing is larger and the variety of political policy interventions is wider than the Ferguson Effect.  

There have been a number of reports about the staggering increase in murder, primarily in large cities.  The most recent one is Pandemic, Social Unrest, and Crime in U.S. Cities - 2020 Year-End Update by Richard Rosenfeld,  Thomas Abt, and Ernesto Lopez released January, 2021.  

Among the critical findings is that the murder rate has increased by 30% among the major American Cities.  The largest single year increase ever recorded was formerly 12.7% in 1968.  The 30% increase represents an excess of nearly 1,300 deaths from normal policing levels in 2019 and more constricted policing in 2020. 

The dataset is much larger and more robust than the Ferguson Effect in 2014 because changes in policies were much more extensive in more of the big cities across the US.  

The effect is real.  Now it is a matter of agreeing on the mechanisms resulting in that 1,300 increase in deaths.

The popular explanations are:

• General stresses arising from the Covid-19 pandemic
• Societal impact of Covid-19 lockdowns
• Economic disruptions arising from the economic turmoil and global disruption arising from Covid-19  
• Systemic racism in police departments
• Reduced policing due to
• Deliberate reductions in pro-active or broken windows policing
• Movements to defund police departments
• Significant losses of police manpower owing to rises in retirements, decline in recruiting, and resignations as police exit politically hostile environments for more supportive jurisdictons.

The first four explanations are enthusiastically endorsed by academia and the media.  Examples:  Massive 1-Year Rise In Homicide Rates Collided With The Pandemic In 2020 from National Public Radio (Causes: societal boredom and tensions from Covid-19, ineffective gun control, etc.); The rise in murders in the US, explained from Vox (causes: bad economy, ineffective gun control boredom, and general Covid-19 pandemic, de-policing, absence of trust in police, inaccurate murder reporting, overwhelmed medical system, etc.); Murders Are Rising. Blaming a Party Doesn’t Add Up from New York Times (causes: even though the rise in murders is in Democrat controlled cities it is not because of Democrat governance, the rise in murders isn't as bad as it seems, even though crimes of violence are rising, there is a fall in property crimes).  

But when you look at the timing of riots and the subsequent rise in murders, it is pretty clear that the excess murder rates are due to policing strategy policy decisions made by local elected politicians.  See Explaining the Great 2020 Homicide Spike, a data rich article making the case that 

The best, currently available evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the Great 2020 Homicide Spike resulted from the widespread anti-police protests, which in turn lead to a reduction in policing activity directed at fighting gun crimes. To save lives in 2021, we need urgent action to restore proactive policing to its pre-protest levels.

The point is not that one side is right and the other wrong.  The point is that crime and pandemic and poverty and governance choices and policing are all multi-causal complex systems interacting with one another.   There is no single solution fix.

We have to understand all these systems better and there are policies to be considered, trialed, tested and either rejected or accepted.  Based on the outcomes.  That is how we learn and discover truth in its many manifestations.  

I accept the general position that most the 2020 crime is caused by political decisions related to reducing effective policing in an astonishingly large number of cities across the US.  Politicians made bad decisions and we have another 1,300 people dead who should not be.  

The complexity of the underlying loosely linked systems should not be dismissed.  There are some legitimate points among the NYT, Vox, NPR, academic/media arguments.  Not great points but certainly legitimate.

My concern is that NYT, Vox, NPR, academic/media and comparable social justice, critical race theory advocacy groups have weak arguments but are unwilling to argue those points and instead focus on coercive and/or rhetorical arguments.  That is no way to approach a complex problem.  If you are of a Classical Liberal mindset, at some point a bad faith interlocutor effectively needs to be dismissed from the conversation.

Which is not a great outcome but it becomes more likely as long as the opposite side of the debate depends on coercion and rhetoric.