CHICAGO, (Reuters) – Murder rates are soaring this year in many U.S. cities partly because police are holding back from aggressive tactics, fearful of being taped on smartphones and accused of brutality, FBI Director James Comey said yesterday.
“Something deeply disturbing is happening in places across America. Far more people are being killed in many American cities, many of them people of color, and it’s not the cops doing the killing,” Comey told a group of students at the University of Chicago Law School.
He said the spike in murders across the country, in cities from Sacramento, California to Chicago to Washington, D.C., comes after homicides fell to historic lows in 2014.
“Part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through law enforcement over the last year and that wind is surely changing behavior,” Comey said. “In today’s YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime?”
Officers have told him they feel besieged and are taunted by people holding smartphones, Comey said.
He said there are other possible reasons for the jump in crime, but the one that seems to fit best is a change in police behavior.
Comey said part of the change is positive after a national uproar over police killings of unarmed black men. The nation must talk about how and why police use lethal force, he said.
