Gentle reader, you may be forgiven if you’ve come to think I write about nothing but the “Ferguson effect,” i.e., the current tendency among many police officers to refrain from proactive police work or else risk a life-altering confrontation while trying to make an arrest. My previous four columns (find them here) have covered this topic, and now here I am again, banging on that same tired drum. I don’t do this for lack of desire to write about other things. Rather, this phenomenon is simply the most important development in police work since the advent of data-driven police work some 25 years ago. In 1990 there were 2,245 murders in New York City; in 2014 there were 328. In Los Angeles, there were 1,092 murders in 1992; in 2014 there were 260.

More than any other factor, it was data-driven police work, carried out by well-trained, well-informed, and well-motivated cops that brought these grim numbers to their currently more tolerable levels. But now it’s all being undone, and in city after city the trend is once again pointing toward higher crime. America’s police officers are today just as well trained and informed, but they are less motivated to do the proactive police work that keeps criminals in check.

And, as I’ve written before, over and over again, the Ferguson effect and the Black Lives Matter movement that gave rise to it are based on the poisonous lie that the greatest peril to young black men in America is that posed by racist, trigger-happy cops. Put aside for the moment the fact that for every black man killed by a police officer there are dozens killed by other black men. There is now evidence that police officers are less likely to shoot a black suspect than a white one.