The oft’ repeated claim by the Harris-Walz campaign, the Biden-Harris administration, dozens of Democrat surrogates and mainstream media outlets, that Americans experienced a national decline in violent crime in 2023 based on FBI-reporting has been both debunked and even contradicted in the flawed FBI data itself. This has resulted in a divergent narrative
between conservative and Left-leaning sources, Republicans and Democrats, with the truth on the ground reflecting an actual increase in violent crime.
During the 2024 Presidential debate, President Donald Trump sparred with ABC moderator David Muir when he brought up an increase in violent crime, only to be ‘fact-checked’ by the news anchor citing the fourth quarter 2023 crime report from the FBI, long held to be the standard. When Trump argued that “crime in this country is through the roof,” Muir inserted himself into the debate, jumping to the administration’s defense armed with the FBI data saying, “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”
The report Muir referred to which doesn’t take into account unreported crimes, and is missing data from 38% of law enforcement agencies (the most violent cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City failed to submit data ), showed violent crime had decreased by 15.2% over the first three months 2024 to 2023 according to The New York Post. The outlet further noted that the statistics only included murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault as “violent crimes,” notably excluding: arson, kidnapping, domestic violence, auto theft, burglary, simple assault and battery.
An exposé from The Washington Examiner by Mark Morgan, the former assistant FBI director and acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, published in April presaged the report driving the election narrative as “unreliable at best and deceptive at worst.”
The bombshell report was even covered by Fox News’ Jesse Watters on ‘Primetime’ but has seemingly fallen down the ‘memory-hole.’
Responding to the incomplete data from the FBI report in follow up reporting that followed the debate, several outlets turned to the Bureau of Justice Statistic’s National Crime Victimization Survey administered by the U.S. Census Bureau for a more complete picture of crime in America, unaffected by reports from victims to police or from police to the FBI.
In an Op-Ed to The Wall Street Journal Jeffrey H. Anderson, the former director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2017-21, wrote, “Excluding simple assault — the type of violent crime least likely to be charged as a felony — the violent crime rate in 2023 was 19% higher than in 2019, the last year before the defund-the-police movement swept the country.”
Anderson reported:
“America’s recent crime spike has been concentrated in urban areas. These are the areas in which leftist prosecutors have gained the strongest footholds, where police have been the most heavily scrutinized, and where lax enforcement and prosecution have become common.
The results aren’t pretty. According to the NCVS, the urban violent-crime rate increased 40% from 2019 to 2023. Excluding simple assault, the urban violent-crime rate rose 54% over that span. From 2022 to 2023, the urban violent-crime rate didn’t change to a statistically significant degree, so these higher crime rates appear to be the new norm in America’s cities.
The urban property-crime rate is also getting worse. It rose from 176.1 victimizations per 1,000 households in 2022 to 192.3 in 2023. That’s part of a 26% increase in the urban property-crime rate since 2019.”
Startlingly, the damning numbers even fail to include shoplifting which has become endemic in over a dozen Democrat-run cities, prompting mass-closures of several major retailers, given the survey was administered to households and not businesses.
Anderson went on to explain that the data from the NCVS is more reliable than FBI reporting for five compelling reasons:
* “First, the NCVS figures are finalized statistics, not unpolished, partial-year preliminary figures.
* Second, the FBI switched to a new reporting system in 2021 that makes year-to-year comparisons (from before to after its change) difficult if not impossible.
* Third, the NCVS is a nationally representative survey, while the FBI lacks data from a relatively large number of law enforcement agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department, and it hasn’t had the same mix of agencies reporting data each year.
* Fourth, the FBI isn’t considered a principal statistical agency by the federal government, so its ability to compensate for such missing data is limited.
* Fifth, the NCVS captures crimes whether they are reported to the police or not. In the 2023 NCVS, crime victims conveyed that a majority—55%—of violent victimizations weren’t reported to the police, while 70% of property-crime victimizations weren’t reported. The FBI publishes data only on crimes reported to the police, which means it doesn’t capture most crimes.”
The former Bureau of Justice Statistics director described the narrative that crime is down in America concisely as a “Media myth.”
In a direct ‘fact-check’ of the ‘fact-checkers’ the Trump campaign wrote Sep. 23rd, “A much more accurate picture emerges using data from the DOJ's National Crime Victimization Survey, which shows crime rates remain WAY UP under Kamala — throwing a dagger straight through the heart of claims to the contrary by Democrats and their Fake News allies.”
Breaking it down by direct statistics the campaign wrote “Violent crime is up 37% between 2020 and last year.”
Rape is up 42%.
Robbery is up 63%.
Assault is up 34%.
Violent crime (excluding simple assault) is up 55%.
Domestic violence is up 32%.
Stranger violence is up 61%.
Violent crime (with an injury) is up 10%.
Violent crime (with a weapon) is up 56%.
Motor vehicle theft is up 42%.
The same day the Trump campaign released this data, and two days after Anderson’s scathing rebuke, California Governor, and top Harris surrogate Gavin Newsom posted an MSNBC report based on the already debunked FBI data claiming “NEW: Violent crime DROPPED across America last year. Can't wait to see the Fox News coverage of this.”
Newsom, however, may not have read the actual report before posting this. As reported by The Center Square, the actual report showed the despite the earlier mentioned reporting gaps, the same report showed that crime in Newsom’s own California is up 3.6 percent with over $2 Billion in car thefts alone. The spike was reportedly driven most by major increases in robbery and assault which overtook the reported decreases in rape and homicide and were all dwarfed by the massive spike in stolen cars.
Matthew Holloway is a contributor for Conservative HQ. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@theconservativefreelancer.com.
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