Are effective police work and constitutional democracy compatible in the US?
Leading US law enforcement officials have been arguing since last summer that America is confronting a new wave of violent crime, caused by what they call the “Ferguson effect”. Police officers, they insist, are reluctant to do their jobs for fear that civilians will record their actions and use the videos to challenge the police version of events.
FBI director James Comey advanced this theory through a widely noted speech in October. A full-fledged controversy has now developed over whether greater scrutiny of law enforcement since the 2014 shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, has made police officers wary of enforcing the law.
