The Ferguson Effect Leading to Trauma/Stress for Officers
Stress/trauma in law enforcement has been growing throughout the years as many would agree to profession becomes increasingly difficult every single day. One reason discussed is that police officers are potentially less likely to pursue crime and conduct proactive policing due to the ever–growing national scrutiny on police officers during justified or unjustified uses of force. This argument suggests that officers could be less willing to conduct proactive policing, which can create the opportunity for more crime to take place – such as gun violence that leads to murder. Officers are less willing to conduct themselves in this manner for many reasons, but one mainly being the trauma/stress from legal litigation resulting from proactive policing which lead to a use of force incident. This argument has been deemed “The Ferguson Effect,” in reference to the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, (Davey, Smith. 2015).
While I believe that most officers in these high crime rate cities have pure intentions, I believe they could be afraid to pursue crime aggressively due to the chance of possible public pushback and national news coverage, should their pursuit result in a use of force incident. This national news coverage would create massive trauma/stress as well as a chance of PTSD for the officers involved as well as the whole department involved. From this theory officers are conducting less stops and interviews and being less aggressive in their policing in hopes of not being part of situations which would lead to trauma for all involved.
While many states currently have legislation attempting to take away qualified immunity from officers, I believe that trauma and stress in law enforcement is at an all time high and has risen since the incident in Ferguson and the effect it has left. Officers are less likely to conduct proactive policing fearing the trauma and stress that could take place from any routine motor vehicle stop or interaction. The murder of George Floyd led to weeks of rioting and malicous assaults on police officers nationwide. Many departments went into a strictly reactive rather than proactive approach in an attempt to keep their officers safe both mentally and physically. While I do not believe there is a way for police to do their jobs without stress, I believe that officers receive a very large amount of unwarranted criticism from the media and civilians from justified uses of force. When unjustified uses of force occur instead of focusing on the one officer who committed these crimes like in the case of the murder of George Floyd it led to weeks of rioting, violence, and destruction of property. This all has a massive impact on the overall health and wellness of law enforcement officers.
Works Cited:
Davey, Monica, and Mitch Smith. “Murder Rates Rising Sharply in Many U.S. Cities.” The New York Times, 31 Aug. 2015.