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On June 10, the FBI released its quarterly crime statistics report, and shortly thereafter, people on the left were quick to point out how the Biden administration has reduced crime in America.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes declared that “violent crime has declined every year since Biden took office.” CNN reported that the murder rate is “plummeting.” Attorney General Merrick Garland called the data a “historic decline in violent crime.”
The left expects the American people to simply accept these claims. needle, line and sinker.
President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland in the Rose Garden at the White House on May 13, 2022. (Drew Ungerer/Getty Images)
As a law-abiding citizen and a career prosecutor, I welcome the decline in crime. But in my experience, there is something fishy about the data. A distraction. A kind of “fudge.” There is a strong air of skepticism about Biden’s claims of a decline in the “crime rate.”
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Here’s why.
First, let’s acknowledge that crime data is incomplete. But it has never been more incomplete than it has been for the past three years. Crime data is voluntarily reported to the FBI by approximately 19,000 state and local law enforcement agencies across the country. These agencies may choose to report inaccurate, partial, or no data at all.
Full participation in the FBI’s crime data collection system dropped to 60% in 2021. In 2022, the most recent statistical year, agency participation was just 69%, and there is no reason to believe agency participation has increased since then.
Part of the problem is that the FBI began requiring more detailed crime data from agencies in 2021, creating challenges for agencies and turning cops into statisticians. But it also led to crime data in densely populated areas being withheld, leading cities with large police departments, such as New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco, to either stop reporting crime data altogether or report manipulated crime statistics.
Who will suffer from police budget cuts? Over 1,000 murders remain unsolved in this blue city.
Large police departments receive millions of dollars in federal grants each year to collect and report crime statistics, but the embarrassment of crime occurring within their jurisdictions seems not to have made the effort worth it.
If our nation’s biggest cities are not reporting accurate crime data, there is no point in quoting “crime rates” (crime statistics per 100,000 people). Statistical analysis is only valid based on data. That’s why the raw numbers are more important.
Are you starting to smell it?
Biden’s claims need to be treated with caution Crime Rate In a March 19 statement, Biden claimed credit for a 13% reduction in homicides. Crime Rate The crime rate will decrease by 20% in 2023 compared to the previous year. Official crime data for 2023 won’t be released until later this year, but even if the 13% decrease is true, it’s important to understand the statistical context of Biden’s three years in office.
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If violent crime is truly declining, why is the Biden Department of Justice reporting that the number of violent crime victims has actually increased in 2021 and 2022?
The Biden Department of Justice 42% increase It is projected that there will be 1 million more violent crime victims in 2022 than in 2021, and a 15% increase in property crime victims over the same period. Former President Trump made this point in a recent speech in Philadelphia.
Not only have crime victim numbers gone up under Biden, but arrests have also dropped significantly. Biden and his liberal friends in the media failed to mention the fact that there are fewer arrests under Biden than there were under Trump.
During the four years of the Trump administration, arrests averaged 2.7 million per year. Under Biden, the average is 1.9 million, a 30% decrease in arrests. There is no statistical basis for the Department of Justice’s reports of an increase in crime victims and a decrease in arrests. If liberals continue to err on the side of skepticism and use common sense, this will be “good news for the American people,” as Biden proclaimed.
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Another stinky fact is that Biden has served as president for three of the four most murderous years in the past quarter century, with 2021 being the most murderous. Perhaps that’s what Garland meant when he said “historic”? Living data There will be a reported 22,536 homicides in 2021, 21,156 homicides in 2022, and an estimated 18,400 homicides in 2023. This works out to an average of 20,700 homicides per year.
By comparison, there were 18,206 murders in 2017, 16,937 in 2018, 16,952 in 2019, and 22,414 in 2020, averaging 18,627 murders per year under the Trump administration. The United States is 11% more Biden’s administration has averaged more than 100 murders, and Biden’s administration has also seen the highest number of murders. Raw numbers At least 25 years of murder.
It is statistically (and purposefully) false to claim, as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and others on the left have argued, that violent crime has decreased “year after year” under Biden.
Ah, the stench!
We should all be aware that liberal pundits who repeat the Biden Administration’s claims and boasts about historic declines in crime never mention nonviolent crime, probably because the crime statistics under Biden are also terrible.
NBC News told Americans it was a “mistake” to think crime was on the rise, and blamed the media for “conditioning.”
On average, the number of victims of nonviolent crimes is four times, or more, the number of victims of violent crimes. Under the Biden Administration, property crime has increased in each of the past two years, marking the first time since 1991 that property crime has increased nationwide for two consecutive years.
Auto theft, widely considered by law enforcement to be a leading indicator of crime trends (because unlike most other crimes, nearly all auto thefts are reported), has increased 30% since Biden took office in 2021.
Investors valuing companies are not going to be impressed if a company posts its biggest ever loss in sales in 2021, even if the losses are slightly smaller in the following years. Parents are not going to be happy to learn that their school has had a 13% improvement in reading proficiency in 2023 if it has had record illiteracy rates in the past two years. Sports fans are not going to buy it when a coach brags about another losing season, just because it was 13% better than last year’s record losses.
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The data is often imperfect. Legitimate statistical analyses would caution against results with standard errors or margins of error. But no such warnings came from the megaphones of this administration or late-night liberal bombast. The celebration of wildly imperfect data is an intentional distraction, designed to distract Americans from the facts and present an alternative world to crime in America.
That’s Biden’s “blue herring”… and it stinks.
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