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F.B.I. Director Says He Won’t Rush Inquiry on Hillary Clinton Emails F.B.I. Director Says ‘Viral Video Effect’ Blunts Police Work
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — The director of the F.B.I. said on Wednesday that he would not be rushed into finishing his agency’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails on an election timetable. And he would not say whether the inquiry would be wrapped up by the November presidential election. WASHINGTON — The director of the F.B.I. reignited the factious debate over a so-called “Ferguson effect” on Wednesday, saying that he believed less aggressive policing was driving an alarming spike in murders in many cities.
“We want to do it well and we want to do it promptly, so I feel pressure to do both of those things,” James Comey, the F.B.I. director, said. James Comey, the director, said that while he could offer no statistical proof, he believed after speaking with a number of police officials that a “viral video effect” — with officers wary of confronting suspects for fear of ending up on a video — “could well be at the heart” of a spike in violent crime in some cities.
“I don’t tether to any particular external deadline,” he said, “so I do feel the pressure to do it well and promptly, but as between the two, I always choose well.” “There’s a perception that police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crime the getting out of your car at 2 in the morning and saying to a group of guys, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’” he told reporters.
While Mrs. Clinton has characterized the investigation as a “security inquiry,” Mr. Comey said he was “not familiar with the term.” Mr. Comey was wading back into a dispute from last fall that pitted him against some of his bosses at the White House and the Justice Department and one that roiled racial tensions over confrontations between police officers and minorities.
The F.B.I.’s case began as a security referral from the inspectors general of the State Department and the nation’s intelligence agencies, who were concerned that classified information might have been stored outside a secure government network. But multiple law enforcement officials said the matter quickly became an investigation into whether anyone had committed a crime in handling classified information. He first raised the idea in October that a “chill wind” had deterred aggressive policing. But Obama administration officials distanced themselves from Mr. Comey at the time. They said they had seen no evidence to support the idea of a “Ferguson effect,” named after the 2014 shooting by a police officer of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Mo., which sparked widespread protests.
Mr. Comey said he was receiving regular briefings on the status of the investigation, which has included interviews with some of Mrs. Clinton’s closest aides at the State Department on her decision to use a private server for all her government business as secretary of state. Some emails that went through her server appear to have been classified at various security levels because of sensitive information. Obama administration officials declined to comment on Wednesday about Mr. Comey’s latest remarks, which were sharper in tone than his previous statements. But some dissenters said he was needlessly stirring up an unproven and divisive notion.
In his most in-depth discussion with reporters in more than six months, Mr. Comey also said he was deeply concerned about a spike in murder rates in many American cities, including Chicago and Las Vegas, and said he believed the police may have backed off from aggressive tactics for fear of showing up in videos that are widely spread online. “He ought to stick to what he knows,” James O. Pasco Jr., executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said in a telephone interview. The organization has more than 330,000 members.
He said he had received a briefing on Wednesday about the rising murder rates in several dozen cities. “Holy cow, do we have a problem,” Mr. Comey said. “He’s basically saying that police officers are afraid to do their jobs with absolutely no proof,” Mr. Pasco said.
Mr. Comey’s remarks were prompted by a private briefing he received on Wednesday about rising crime rates in more than 40 cities during the first quarter of 2016.
He said the new statistics, which have not been made public, showed a significant jump in murder rates in many cities. The numbers rose even more quickly than last year, Mr. Comey said. In 2015, rising murder tallies in Washington, Baltimore, Milwaukee, St. Louis and other cities made national news.
The two cities Mr. Comey singled out in the latest tallies were Las Vegas and Chicago. He said most of the murder victims were either black or Hispanic men, although F.B.I. officials declined to provide specific figures and said the data would likely be released later this week. In Chicago, where violence and police shootings have angered the city, officials say that as of April, murders were up 54 percent from last year, and shootings were up by 70 percent.
Mr. Comey said that he could not fully explain the trend or the major differences from one city to the next.
“I don’t know what the answer is, but holy cow, do we have a problem,” he said.
“It’s a complicated, hard issue, but the stakes couldn’t be higher. A whole lot of people are dying,” he said.
He said that the spike in violent crime deserves more national attention from scholars, the media, and the public.
“Something is happening,” he said. “A whole lot more people are dying this year than last year, and last year than the year before and I don’t know why for sure.”
Asked about his past views on the “Ferguson effect” as a possible explanation, Mr. Comey said he rejected that particular term, but added that he continued to hear from police officials in private conversations that “lots and lots of police officers” are pulling back from aggressive confrontations with the public because of viral videos.
He said that the phenomenon “could well be an important factor in this.”
More than many of his predecessors at the F.B.I., Mr. Comey has not hesitated to use the prestige of his office to draw attention to difficult and sometimes unpopular issues involving race and crime.
Last year, he gave an unusually candid speech at Georgetown University about the tense relationship between police and blacks, saying that minorities are scrutinized more closely than whites because of bias. In the talk, he cited a song from a Broadway musical called “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist.”
That won him praise from some advocates of minorities, but in the debate over the Ferguson effect, he has angered some minority leaders who say the real problem remains policing in their communities that, if anything, is too aggressive, and far short of passive.
One reason for the sharp disagreement is that there is little reliable national data on the topic, even at the F.B.I.
The F.B.I. has promised to build a database compiling police shootings and confrontations with members of the public, but Mr. Comey said that project was at least two years from completion.
“That does frustrate me,” he said.