The Pew Research Center recently released a poll surveying more than 8,000 police officers across the country. The survey focused on officers’ perception of personal safety, racial challenges and various job difficulties. It also validated what many have called the “Ferguson Effect.” According to the survey, 76% of police officers are now more reluctant to use force even in instances where it would be deemed appropriate, and 72% said they were now less likely to stop a suspicious suspect. Over 90% of those surveyed said their colleagues have begun worrying more about their personal safety — hardly a surprise given the significant increase in police officers shot and killed on the job this past year.

The general vilification of law enforcement by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and groups like Black Lives Matter through baseless accusations of pandemic racism among police officers has only proved to perpetuate a negative stereotype of police in those communities in which they are most needed. Chicago is a sad example of the Ferguson Effect at work, with shootings and murders having soared to numbers not seen in more than two decades.

And yet the Obama Justice Department just announced its findings that the Chicago Police Department “engages in a pattern or practice of use of excessive force.”

If the argument were simply over the prominent display of a picture of police depicted as pigs — as has become the case in the Capitol building — that would be one thing. But the reality is that people are dying — not because cops are killing them, but because those police officers who put their lives on the line are becoming more worried that no matter what choice they make, they’ll be blamed for awful things. And that’s a terrible place from which to make split-second life-or-death decisions.

(Updated.)