Manhattan Institute fellow and author Heather Mac Donald said that a “patently false narrative” that claims there is “systemic police bias” is “putting thousands more lives at risk.”
Appearing on Wednesday night’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to react to the Fulton County District Attorney’s decision to charge the officer who shot Rayshard Brooks with felony murder, Mac Donald predicted a rise of the so-called “Ferguson effect,” where police back off enforcing the law due to fears of being charged with crimes.
“We’re living through a civilization-crushing failure of our elites,” she told Fox News host Tucker Carlson. “This is an absolutely terrifying moment.”
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“Across the board, America’s elites, whether it’s a political class, media, education have embraced a patently false narrative about systemic police bias,” Mac Donald explained. “That narrative is easily disprovable by looking at the most basic facts about policing and crime. But by embracing that false narrative they are undercutting the legitimacy of law enforcement, of our criminal justice system, and in so doing they are putting thousands more lives at risk.”
The conservative researcher predicted that “unchecked criminal behavior, gang-banging” and “drive-by shootings” would put “black lives at risk” most of all as police “back off of proactive policing.”
“We saw this in 2015 and 2016,” she said. “2,000 blacks were murdered thanks to cops backing off from what I called the Ferguson effect.”
“But we are also putting officers lives at risk because by so undermining the legitimacy of law enforcement you are going to increase the type of resistance to arrest that we just saw in Atlanta, because people hate the cops even more,” said Mac Donald. “That is going to result in officers themselves escalating their use of force, possibly to lethal levels and we’re going to enter a vicious cycle where both suspects and officers lives are at risk.”
Mac Donald suggested that if elites truly “cared about black lives” or anyone’s life, they would teach citizens how to properly interact with police. (RELATED: Jesse Watters: Fulton County DA Engaging In A ‘Political Overcharge,’ Police Will ‘Let The Streets Run Wild’)
Carlson and Mac Donald ended the interview by discussing the differences between the George Floyd killing and Brooks.
“This is a different case entirely,” she said. “It bears no resemblance. Somebody who grabs an officer’s equipment, fights him and uses it against him has put him on notice that he’s going to try to kill that cop.”