We all knew it was true. As with the jobs numbers, the crime numbers the administration advertises turn out to be manipulated to make the Democrats look much better.
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The Harris campaign has been touting a substantial reduction of crime under their policies, and as with the economy, our experience contradicts the numbers. We see the increased crime every day, but the FBI and the Biden/Harris team have been telling us “don’t worry, be happy.”
Guess what? Crime isn’t down 2.1%, according to the FBI. They just released a “stealth-edit” update: violent crime is actually up 4.5%.https://t.co/hLRWthHKC0
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) October 16, 2024
RealClearInvestigations just published a piece by John Lott, revealing that the initial numbers have been very quietly revised from a modest decline in crime to a substantial increase in 2022. The “error” was not minor–it was huge.
When the FBI originally released the “final” crime data for 2022 in September 2023, it reported that the nation’s violent crime rate fell by 2.1%. This quickly became, and remains, a Democratic Party talking point to counter Donald Trump’s claims of soaring crime.
But the FBI has quietly revised those numbers, releasing new data that shows violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5%. The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.
The Bureau – which has been at the center of partisan storms – made no mention of these revisions in its September 2024 press release.
RCI discovered the change through a cryptic reference on the FBI website that states: “The 2022 violent crime rate has been updated for inclusion in CIUS, 2023.” But there is no mention that the numbers increased. One only sees the change by downloading the FBI’s new crime data and comparing it to the file released last year.
After the FBI released its new crime data in September, a USA Today headline read: “Violent crime dropped for third straight year in 2023, including murder and rape.”
It’s been over three weeks since the FBI released the revised data. The Bureau’s lack of acknowledgment or explanation about the significant change concerns researchers.
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Thousands of murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults is no small thing. And, at least with the murders, one has to wonder how the FBI missed so many bodies.
“Violent crime is down to a 50 year low. The murder rate its largest ever!” – Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/NLVCNDPB00
— Andrew @ Don’t Walk, RUN! (@DontWalkRUN) October 16, 2024
We already knew that a number of crime-ridden cities quit reporting their stats to the FBI since the George Floyd riots, but a revision this large is striking. A swing of 7% is hardly a statistical artifact. It is a huge miss–and one that benefited the narrative being pushed out by Biden and now Harris as part of their campaign. Discovering the revisions required downloading the data, doing a statistical comparison, and working out the numbers shows the FBI hoped that nobody would notice.
The actual changes in crimes are extensive. The updated data for 2022 report that there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021. There were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, and 37,091 aggravated assaults. The question naturally arises: should the FBI’s 2023 numbers be believed?
Without the increase, the drop in violent crime in 2023 would have been less than half as large – only 1.6% instead of the reported drop of 3.5%.
The FBI isn’t the only government agency that has been revising its data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics massively overestimated the number of jobs created during the year that ended in March by 818,000 people.
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There are always errors in any data, and politicians always spin things. However, data accuracy is one of the characteristics of First World countries- and one necessary for them to function properly. It is no small thing to juke the numbers because trillions of dollars, important policies, and decisions by millions are affected. It’s the difference between a corrupt government and one based on the rule of law.
Those bogus and now edited crime stats were used during the debate to “fact-check” Trump, by the way.
— Rich Baris The People’s Pundit (@Peoples_Pundit) October 16, 2024
Corruption destroys societies.
Another problem with FBI crime data is its reliance on reported crimes. Most crimes go unreported, with only about 45% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes brought to the police’s attention, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey. Since the FBI only tracks reported incidents and this gap is so large, researchers argue that when the media discusses crime rates based on FBI data, they should clarify that it reflects “reported” crime, not give the impression that total crime is changing.
Nonreporting of crime doesn’t affect all crimes equally. Nonreporting of murder and motor vehicle theft is relatively rare. In murder cases, victims can’t be overlooked, and for auto theft, insurance claims require police reports. However, it’s difficult to fully trust even these numbers because the FBI underreported 1,699 murders and 54,216 motor vehicle thefts in 2022, casting doubt on the reliability of the data.
Although recent attention has focused on the decline in murder rates, even with the revised numbers, the 16.2% drop from 2020 to 2023 still leaves murder rates 9.6% higher than pre-COVID levels.
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COVID policies and the reaction to the George Floyd riots caused massive damage to our society, and government officials and politicians want to sweep all that under the rug. Without a reckoning all the mistakes will be repeated, causing yet more damage.
Nobody in Washington seems to care about that, though. They just want to cover their asses.
‘Oops, We Meant To Say UP,’ Explains FBI After Months Of Saying Crime Is Down https://t.co/jj9ltC9vcA pic.twitter.com/U9XiztGHg4
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 16, 2024
