It’s easy to blame protesters directly for the violent crime wave. But responsibility for the Minneapolis effect, and for stopping it, lies ultimately with public leaders and the powerful. Municipal policymakers have fanned the flames, amplifying radical criticisms of the police and sometimes acceding to activists’ demands to shrink departments. Their alternatives are untested and likely ineffective, and will make violent crime worse. If they don’t want officers to keep leaving their cities, mayors and councilors need to support unequivocally the institution of policing, even as they weigh reforms.
The media have contributed by turning shocking viral videos into referenda on policing. Police use of force is surprisingly rare, and the public routinely overestimates the scale of police killings. Liberals, for example, guess that the number of unarmed black men killed by police in 2019 is somewhere between 100 and 1,000; the true figure is between 13 and 27. Such beliefs are reinforced by media narratives that paint most officers as vicious thugs. These are not only false, but may be costing lives.
At the same time, there is a crisis of police legitimacy, and whether or not officers are fully at fault, leadership is still responsible for solving it. Police executives are moving toward strategies that emphasize police-community relations, and that target those people and places most prone to serious crime. Done right, that can increase public trust and decrease crime, as long as civilian leaders and the media back them up.
Hence the recent Oceania-style pivot, as a form of triage as the midterms loom large.