Has There Been Another “Ferguson Effect”?

Author

Megan Majewski

Date of Award

5-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Department

Political Science

First Advisor

Patrick Donnay

Abstract

On May 25^th, 2020, America stood still as they watched the video of Officer Derek Chauvin press his knee onto the neck of George Floyd leading to his death. Protests, riots, and calls to defund the police all ensued in the following months. I focus on how Floyd’s death changed attitudes towards law enforcement and may have contributed to an increase in crime, similar to the idea of a Ferguson effect, perhaps there was a Floyd effect in 2021. I focused this research on 69 cities, using crime data from the Major Cities Chiefs Association. I then measured public concern, by using Google Trends to find the ratio in Black Lives Matter searches and Blue Lives Matter searches. Initial analysis shows that there is a slight Floyd effect seen when taking the Google Trends data as the independent variable and running that with the dependent variable of the percent change in homicides from 2020-2021. Data shows as the ratio from the searches increases, the percentage of homicides also increases. This can also be seen slightly when looking at both robberies and aggravated assaults.

Recommended Citation

Majewski, Megan, "Has There Been Another “Ferguson Effect”?" (2022). Political Science Theses and Capstones. 18.
https://pines.bemidjistate.edu/capstone-polisci/18