Astral Codex Ten

Ferguson

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Ferguson

Article

Ferguson is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between June 29, 2022 and July 08, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in August 2014”; “Ferguson is a suburb of St. Louis”; “pre-pandemic stuff in Baltimore and Ferguson”. It most often appears alongside Baltimore, George Floyd, Minneapolis.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: June 29, 2022
  • Last seen: July 08, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

What Caused The 2020 Homicide Spike?
June 29, 2022 · Original source
Although the George Floyd protests in May 2020 were the largest round of Black Lives Matters protests, there had been several previous rounds. Most notable were the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO in August 2014, and the death of Freddie Gray in police custody in Baltimore in April 2015. If Black Lives Matters protests can cause homicide spikes, we would expect to see one around this time also.
This was definitely observed by many people, and given the title “Ferguson Effect”. Every official source on the Ferguson Effect is careful to say we can’t be sure it is real / was caused by the protests, just as every source on the recent homicide spike is careful to say the same thing. But let’s look at the evidence:
Inline links: Ferguson Effect
Other skeptics point to this study, which claims an overall effect on crime did not occur. The study does claim this, and even says there was no statistically significant break in the homicide trend around 2014. I have no explanation for why their statistics give such a different result than just looking at the graph above. But they do say that when they disaggregate by cities, they find a clear increase in homicides in cities with large black communities, with the two highest being St. Louis (Ferguson is a suburb of St. Louis) and Baltimore (where the Freddie Gray incident happened). My guess is that homicides rose in all cities, and it only reached statistical significance in mostly-black cities and the cities where the protests were most concentrated.
Inline links: this study
Highlights From The Comments On The 2020 Homicide Spike
July 08, 2022 · Original source
This is just as compatible with the timing of the evidence you've described, including the pre-pandemic stuff in Baltimore and Ferguson.
Scott, you are wrong (about the original Ferguson effect, which serves as a robustness check of your more general claim of protests -> homicides)! And I can show you why. Why should you read this random comment among a sea of meshugas? Argument from authority: I'm a PhD candidate in one of the top criminology programs. In other words, I'm intimately familiar with both the content area and the issues of time-series analyses. I'm happy to privately verify this and/or share full text articles I source below if they are paywalled. Key points:
a) There is a POSITIVE ferguson effect (aka protest effect) on DEPOLICING (aka less 'active' or 'proactive' policing)