According to a recent study, in American cities where Black Lives Matter protests took place, the number of homicides by the police decreased, but the number of murders increased, reports the left-wing outlet Vox.
The research was carried out by Travis Campbell, a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts, who has so far only published preliminary results, so the study has not yet been peer-reviewed. It is also important to add that it did not examine the effects of last year's Black Lives Matter riots, which focused on the period between 2014 and 2019 and erupted following the death of George Floyd, as not all relevant data are yet available. According to experts, however, Campbell's results are plausible and fit the trends outlined by previous research.
Campbell points out that the larger or more frequent BLM protests took place in a city, the more significantly the number of police killings dropped. The expert believes that there are three possible explanations for this decline, and they are not mutually exclusive. On the one hand, the use of body cameras became more and more widespread, and community policing, i.e. the building of personal bonds between police officers and communities, became more emphasized - the police therefore introduced reforms to reduce measures involving death.
The last two factors, Campbell says, can explain the 10 percent increase in homicides on "BLM sites." In any case, the number of murders and robberies increased by 10-17 percent after the mediatized police killings.
Let's not forget, however: Campbell did not examine the data for 2020, and under the auspices of the Black Lives Matter movement, protests and riots of an unprecedented scale disrupted everyday American life last year.
And 2020 was the year that saw the largest year-over-year increase in homicides nationwide (21 percent) — though the homicide rate was still 40 percent below the record high of the 1990s.
The full article can be read on Mandine.
Featured image: LA-Times
