RUTHFULLY YOURS

‘President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”

That was ABC News’ David Muir “fact checking” Donald Trump during his debate with Kamala Harris.

Two days later, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released the results of its national crime victimization survey, which showed that the number of victims of violent crime was 41% higher in 2023 than in 2020.

There were almost 170,000 more rapes, 300,000 more robberies, 1.4 million more assaults, 300,000 more claims of domestic violence, and almost 400,000 more crimes with a violent weapon.

This wasn’t a surprise. That same survey showed a significant jump in crime victimization in 2022 – something we noted in this space back in July. (“Now They’re Gaslighting Us About Biden’s ‘Accomplishments’”)

And in January,  the Council on Criminal Justice, which tracks crimes in 39 cities, found homicide rates were 18% higher in 2023 than in 2019, aggravated assaults up 8%, gun assaults up 32%, and carjackings up 93%.

Meanwhile, polls keep finding that the public thinks crime is getting worse.

But instead of trying to understand the mismatch, the press just treated the public like idiots. Here’s a tiny sampling of such headlines:

• “U.S. Stats Show Violent Crime Dramatically Falling, So Why Is There A Rising Clash With Perception?”
• “Americans Fear Crime Despite Downward Trends”
• “New Data Shows Violent Crime Dropping Sharply In Major U.S. Cities”
• “Violent Crime Is Dropping Fast In The U.S. — Even If Americans Don’t Believe It”

Why is the press so insistent on claiming that crime is no big deal?

The reason is simple: Republicans have been tapping the public’s legitimate concerns about crime, blaming soft-on-crime leftists such as Kamala Harris, and promising to turn things around.

So, the hopelessly partisan mainstream media feel that it’s incumbent on them to “prove” Republicans are lying.

As Vox.com put it: “The crime wave is over, but Republicans can’t let go.”

Any bit of data the press can grab onto will suffice.

For example, when the FBI said that crime rates had dropped in the first three months of 2024 compared with the first three months of 2023, the media cheered. Many of the headlines above were based on this report.

But that finding is wildly misleading. It’s based on the number of crimes plugged into the FBI’s “Uniform Crime Reporting” database, which not every police department contributes to – a situation made worse after the FBI changed its reporting system in 2021.

What’s more, if police cut back on their efforts to enforce laws – which happened in many “defund the police” cities – it will look as though crime is dropping.

There’s also the fact that many victims no longer bother reporting crimes to the police because they know nothing will be done.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ massive crime victimization survey asks about 240,000 people each year whether they have been victims of crime, and whether or not they reported those crimes to the police. This provides a much more accurate picture of crime in the U.S.

Up until 2020, these two reports – the Uniform Crime Report and the Crime Victimization Survey – generally tracked each other. But “the two measures have diverged since 2020: The FBI has been reporting less crime, while more people say they have been victims,” notes John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.

Try to find one article in the mainstream press, or any network news program, explaining any of this.

The victims of crimes, meanwhile, are victimized twice. Once by the criminals and then by a corrupt media peddling misinformation about crime to help get more soft-on-crime Democrats elected.