‘YouTube effect’ has left police officers under siege, law enforcement leaders say

Chiefs of some of the nation’s biggest police departments say officers in American cities have pulled back and have stopped policing as aggressively as they used to, fearing that they could be the next person in a uniform featured on a career-ending viral video. That was the unifying -- and controversial -- theory reached Oct 7 at a private meeting of more than 100 of the nation’s top law enforcement officers and politicians. With homicide rates soaring inexplicably this year in dozens of US cities, the group convened by new US Attorney General Loretta Lynch concluded with a brief news conference promising a robust response to the reversal of decades of falling violent crime rates. But for hours preceding that, mayors, police chiefs, US attorneys and even FBI Director James Comey privately vented in a Washington ballroom that they don’t really understand the alarming spike in murders and applause filled the room when mayors said police officers’ sinking morale could be a factor.

Chiefs said patrol officers still do their jobs, clocking in and policing their beats. But fewer take extra steps such as confronting a group loitering on a sidewalk late at night that might glean intelligence or lead to arrests, for fear that any altercations that ensued would be uploaded to the Internet. New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton called it the “YouTube effect” that has emerged for officers post-Ferguson and, in New York, after the death of Eric Garner in 2014 after he was put in a chokehold by an officer making an arrest.