Speaking during the White House Press Briefing on Monday, May 6, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre claimed that violent crime is down to its lowest level in about half a century. Though true on its face, context to that claim was quickly added on X, with the Republican National Convention’s “RNC Research” X account leading the charge.
As background, though the ostensible crime numbers have fallen somewhat since a 2020 surge, many on the right argue that those numbers are far from correct as they leave out that about a third of police departments, including departments in big cities, stopped reporting crucial data to the FBI.
The NRA-LIA, reporting on that matter, noted that not only does the data show that numerous police departments are no longer reporting violent crime data, but many victims have stopped reporting crimes to departments, further driving down the numbers. It reported:
According to the CPRC, one factor contributing to the ostensible dip in violent crime is that almost 40% of local law enforcement agencies are no longer transmitting their information to the national Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) database. In “2021, 37% of police departments stopped reporting crime data to the FBI (including large departments for Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York),” and for other jurisdictions, like Baltimore and Nashville, crimes are being underreported or undercounted. This leaves a large gap; by 2021, the real crime data collected by the FBI represented only 63% of police departments overseeing just 65% of the population. When compared to pre-2021 data, the result is a questionable “decline” in crime.
Another factor that undermines the official narrative of less crime is the degree of non-reporting or underreporting of crime by victims. Since 1973, the federal National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) has bypassed police statistics and relied, instead, on interviews with a nationally representative sample of some 240,000 individuals. The information collected includes the frequency and type of crime experienced, including crimes that have not been reported to police.
The CPRC summary of NCVS data states that in 2022 (the most recent survey available), only “42% of violent crimes, such as robberies or aggravated assaults, and 32% of property crimes, such as burglary or arson, were reported [to police]… the [NCVS] shows that total violent crime—reported and nonreported—rose from 16.5 incidents to 23.5 per 1,000 people. Nonreported violent crime in 2022 exceeded the five-year average between 2015 to 2019 by more than 17%.”
In any case, KJP ignored all that when speaking on Monday and attempting to put a cheery face on the crime numbers. She said, “Under the President’s President’s leadership, President Biden, violent crime is at a nearly 50-year low thanks to the extraordinary efforts of law enforcement and community leaders. Americans are safe Americans are safer from violent crime today than they were a year ago.”
Taking her to task for that claim on X, the RNC Research account said, “KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: ‘Violent crime is at a nearly 50 year low!’ UNMENTIONED: A third of the nation’s police departments — including in many of the largest cities — don’t even report their crime data to the feds.”
Watch KJP here:
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: "Violent crime is at a nearly 50 year low!"
UNMENTIONED: A third of the nation's police departments — including in many of the largest cities — don't even report their crime data to the feds. pic.twitter.com/QvzrrFVRct
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 6, 2024
Other commenters chimed in as well, making claims like “Since 2021, 40% of major cities STOPPED giving the FBI their crime date. I’ve got CNBC, Axios, FOX etc articles saying that, to any libs saying it’s not true” and “In 2022, the Biden regime made it no longer “mandatory” to report crime stats to the FBI. The results was over 1/3 (over 6000 precincts) didn’t report any crimes to the FBI. Cities that didn’t report any crime stats to the FBI include NYC, Baltimore, Washington DC, Miami and a ton of entire huge cities. Of course, this was done by the Democrats to hide their soaring crime numbers and easily fool low IQ, dime store Fabio sheep into believing easily provable hogwash. America Has a Crime Reporting Problem.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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