As shootings rose, 911 calls fell in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM says that when a police shooting captures public attention, sparking outrage over police violence, officers respond by pulling back, in a phenomenon known as the “Ferguson effect” (named for a city that saw widespread protests against police misconduct in 2014). Common sense also suggests that when people mistrust the police they are less likely to call them. Criminologists are divided over whether the Ferguson effect actually exists. But a new working paper from Desmond Ang, an economist at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and his colleagues shows that the latter phenomenon is real: after George Floyd’s murder, calls to the police plummeted.