If there is one thing people – especially people in cities overseen by soros-supported District Attorneys – know, it is that crime is rampant.
So why are media reporting that crime has gone down?
The reasons for this disparity are both simple to understand and utterly repulsive, given the statistical gamesmanship necessary to create them.
John Lott’s article for the New York Post lays these reasons out clearly. I urge you to use the link and read every word. In the meantime, though, here is the first part of Mr. Lott’s explanation:
“Make no mistake, violent crime was up under Donald Trump,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz warned in his first speech as Kamala Harris’ running mate.
“If you look this up at home,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg claimed last month, “you will know that crime went down under Biden and crime went up under Trump. Why would America want to go back to the higher crime we experienced under Donald Trump?”
But the opposite is true: Between 2016 and 2020, violent crime fell by 17% under Trump — and soared by 43% under Biden between 2020 and 2022.
Of course, news outlets routinely assert that Americans are mistaken in believing that violent crime is rising.
On Monday, Axios had a typical headline: “New data shows violent crime dropping sharply in major U.S. cities.”
Or from NPR earlier this year: “Violent crime is dropping fast in the US — even if Americans don’t believe it.”
But Democrats and the media don’t understand the difference between the number of crimes reported to police and the total number of crimes.
There are two measures of crime: One, the FBI’s NIBRS, counts the number of crimes reported to police yearly.
The other, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, asks about 240,000 people each year whether they have been victims of crime, in an attempt to measure both reported and unreported crimes.
Since 2020, these two measures have been highly negatively correlated: The FBI has been finding fewer instances of crime, but people are simultaneously answering in greater numbers that they have been victims.
We know that crime victims report only about 40% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes to police.
Prior to 2020, the FBI and NCVS numbers generally moved together.
But every year from 2020 onward, these figures have moved in opposite directions.
Think about it: if you were, say, a store owner in California, and every day you were being robbed of $50 to $100 worth of goods by people who, based on current law, could only be charged with a misdemeanor, would you report it? Why would you even bother?
If your purse were snatched in Chicago, or Saint Louis, or Philadelphia, or Minneapolis, or any of the other cities with a far-understaffed police department, and you knew if anyone showed up at all it would take a long time, maybe hours, would you bother calling it in?
This is what has become of law enforcement, thus the safety of people in numerous locations throughout the USA. And it is why the crime statistics have stopped coinciding with reality.
In short, the people assuring you that crime is down – maybe the same ones assuring you the border is secure and inflation is down – are again playing for for SIPS: i.e. people who are either Stupid, and/or Ignorant, and/or Partisan enough to ignore reality even when it right in front of your eyes.
How many of those three terms define you? None, I hope. And if that’s the answer, then you know better than to buy into the crime “statistics” being sold by politicians whose interest in/concern about you begins and ends at the voting booth.
