In the week after Alton Sterling was fatally shot by a Baton Rouge police officer— bringing protesters to the streets and placing the department in the national spotlight — drug busts in the city reportedly dropped dramatically.
Crime analyst Jeff Asher, writing for FiveThirtyEight, points to the 77-percent plunge in narcotics offenses as a likely sign that officers in the capital city have stepped back proactive police work since the controversial incident.
Asher, a former New Orleans Police Department crime analyst, said other cities where controversial deaths touched off protests — Ferguson, Chicago, Baltimore — also saw drops in proactive policing, with spiking homicide levels close behind.
It’s unclear if the dip is the result of diverting resources to controlling large protests or from officer reluctance to conduct stops in the volatile atmosphere after the Sterling shooting and the ambush killing of three officers less than two weeks later.
