
Lt. Bob Kroll (center), heads the Minneapolis police union. Renee Jones Schneider/Star Tribune
Two of Minneapolis' top law enforcement officials have waded into the highly charged debate over the existence of the so-called "Ferguson effect."
Police union chief Lt. Bob Kroll said in a radio interview that heightened scrutiny following unrest after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Missouri last year has made some cops more hesitant to use force, even when the situation calls for it.
Speaking with with Boston's WBUR last week, Kroll said that criticism of police behavior following the death of Michael Brown is largely responsible for the rise in violent crime in Minneapolis.
"In my 27 years, morale is at an all-time low and officers don't go into this job to work that way," Kroll said in the interview, which aired last week, "they go in to be aggressive, work hard, proactive patrol, and be clear: they're not afraid of the criminals, they're afraid of fallout and maintaining their job."
He continued: "There's no measuring what officers do or don't do when they're supposed to be working proactively. Of course they're going to take their calls, but the proactive police activity has really dropped off."
Kroll previously told KSTP-TV that he assumes that some cops are "second-guessing themselves, thinking, 'Should I engage? Should I do this, or should I not?'"
Kroll said he agreed with the recent comments of FBI director James Comey, who suggested that police anxiety in "the era of viral videos" was one possible explanation for the jump in violent crime in several large U.S. cities. Although he conceded there was little evidence to support the claim, Comey's remarks at a policing conference in Chicago last month reignited public debate on the issue.