In her 2016 book, The War on Cops, Mac Donald argued that Black Lives Matter protests made the police more hesitant to enter and actively engage in minority neighborhoods, thereby leaving the people in those neighborhoods less protected and more vulnerable to crime. Her theory had been the subject of lively national debate. As Neil Gross, a left-leaning sociologist, wrote in The New York Times: “There is now some evidence that when all eyes are on police misconduct, crime may edge up. Progressives should acknowledge that this idea isn’t far-fetched.”
