Critical Review of the Ferguson Effect

Articles Critical Review
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Articles Critical Review
In the United States of America (USA), law enforcement agencies are facing a legitimacy crisis due to the Ferguson Effect. Recently, there has been a public outrage of law enforcers using excessive force, particularly minority groups. On 26th February 2012, Trayvon Martin was shot to death in Sanford, Florida, by Officer George Zimmerman. However, the breaking point of the officer-involved shooting (OIS) was encountered on 9th August 2014, when Officer Darren Wilson from Ferguson City Police Department shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Some witnesses claimed that the victim had already surrendered by raising his arms in the air, but the police officer fired and killed him without hesitation. These heinous incidents by law enforcers sparked public outrage and protest in different cities and global media coverage leading to the “Ferguson Effect.” By considering the Ferguson Effect, the paper compares two articles and discusses how they are related to the topic of law enforcement, civil liberties, and leadership.
“The Alleged “Ferguson Effect” and Police Willingness to Engage in Community Partnership” by Scott Wolfe and Justin Nix significantly contributes to the research topic. Indeed, it focuses on a cross-sectional survey involving 567 sheriffs in the southeastern metropolitan area in the USA (Wolfe & Nix, 2016). One of the primary objectives by researchers was to identify how the Ferguson Effect is linked to de-policing resulting in police officers’ decreased willingness to engage in community partnerships. Additionally, Wolfe and Nix wanted to know whether the Ferguson Effect accounts for the perceived self-legitimacy and organizational justice. The highly-publicized deaths involving police officers shooting unarmed members of the black community have tarnished the public trust of law enforcers.
The authors’ theoretical assumption is that the Ferguson Effect has contributed to the negative publicity of police officers. Law enforcers know that their actions are under public scrutiny and can be recorded by citizens while performing their duties. In that light, they are less willing to perform their duties to avoid the public accusation of excessive use of force or racial profiling (Wolfe & Nix, 2016). Another assumption is that the legitimacy of police officers has dwindled to the point that these individuals are unmotivated to engage in community policing. As a result, de-policing results in increased crime rates.
Joshua Adams’ “I Almost Quit:” Exploring the Prevalence of the Ferguson Effect in Two Small Sized Law Enforcement Agencies in Rural Southcentral Virginia” discusses the Ferguson Effect. The article’s primary purpose was to study police officers’ lived experiences and perceptions of the Ferguson Effect (Adams, 2019). In addition, it focuses on law enforcers’ perceptions of their leadership skills, civil liberties, and organizational justice. The researcher interviewed 9 law enforcers in southcentral Virginia. The main themes included steadfast leade...