CPRC in the News: Daily Caller, Townhall, MRC NewsBusters, Fox/CBS TV Indianapolis, and much more
The letter asks several questions to the FBI, such as if they omitted any data from various major cities, how many agencies provided incomplete data and if the data would be retroactively adjusted to reflect an increase in violent crime, like it had in 2022 according to the Crime Prevention Research Center. In 2022, over 6,000 agencies did not report data to the FBI, accounting for 32% of all police departments in the U.S., according to the letter. . . .
Crime and public safety are major issues for Americans in this year’s election, which is probably why the Democrats and mainstream media are pushing the narrative that things aren’t as bad as you think and crime is actually going down under the Biden administration. In the words of former President George W. Bush, they’re using “fuzzy math.”
Critics like John Lott Jr. with the Crime Prevention Research Center say the media is using misleading stats to perpetuate the crime-is-down narrative. ABC News anchor David Muir admonished former President Donald Trump during the last debate that “the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.” Technically that is true, but Lott points out the FBI statistics Muir is relying on only measure reported crimes. “While there has been a 5% drop in reported violent crime since the Biden administration took office, the national crime victimization survey shows there has been a 55% increase in total violent crime over that period of time,” he tells KTRH. “There’s never been such a large percentage increase over any three-year period in the 51-year history of that survey.”
Since many victims don’t report crimes, and many local police departments don’t give accurate or timely crime info to the FBI, the crime victimization survey is considered a more accurate gauge of crime statistics than FBI numbers. But even the “official” FBI stats are often underreported, as was the case last year when the FBI revised its numbers on reported violent crimes from a 2% decline to a 4% increase. Of course, the revised numbers are often ignored by the media.
“When the FBI’s data initially came out, you had headline after headline saying that violent crime is falling,” says Lott. “And none of them pointing out it’s just reported crime as opposed to total crime, nor that the FBI revised its numbers from last year and that even reported violent crime had gone up.”
Corey Olson, “Numbers Game: Dems, Media Distort Crime Stats,” KTRH, September 26, 2024.
“In 2022, for example, 31% of police departments didn’t report any crime data to the FBI. Another 24% only partially reported data,” said John Lott, President of the Crime Prevention Research Center. “You had less than half of all police departments reporting complete data.”
A couple of years back Indianapolis’ crime statistics were not represented in the annual FBI report because IMPD’s data system did not interface with that of Indiana State Police which was designated as the reporting agency for the state.
Lott also noted that a nationwide policing shortage has left departments short of officers and necessitated changes in the reporting of crime, often depending on victims to visit local precincts or agency headquarters or logging onto websites to file their information.
“If you make it more difficult, more time consuming, for people to go and report crimes now than it was a few years ago, you’re gonna have some people who are gonna say, ‘You know, not only is the arrest rate lower, but its taking a lot more time on my part and its just not worth it for me and go to report crimes,’” he said. ”Whether people report crimes to the police depends in part on whether they think the criminals are going to be caught and punished. We’ve had huge drops in arrest rates in large cities over the last few years. If you look at cities over a million in the five years before COVID, 44% of violent crimes resulted in arrests. It fell by 55%. It was down to 20%.”
Lott cited a 6.6% swing in corrected FBI data from 2022 that he said showed an actual increase in reported crime and figures from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, drawn from population surveys, that showed the 2023 rate of violent victimization nearly identical to the 2022 rate.
The researcher noted the divergence of the parallel data sets from the FBI and the BJS began in 2020.
Lott said there are other disparities in the way the FBI, citing local agency reports, account for homicides as opposed to the statistics collected by the Centers for Disease Control which relies on coroners and medical examiners for its data.
”Only about forty percent of violent crimes are reported to police,” said Lott. “Only about thirty percent of property crimes are reported to police and the rate at which people are reporting crimes has fallen over the last few years. As law enforcement has collapsed in many parts of the country, people just don’t see the benefit of going to take the time to go and report to police.”
IMPD is more than 300 officers short of its authorized workforce level.
The IMPD statistics, as reported to the FBI, show Indianapolis’ violent crime rate has dipped significantly lower than late 2019 levels, though there was a spike last summer.
Lott contends that some crimes, like vehicle and retail thefts, have risen either statistically as agencies have been plagued by stolen car reports led by the Kia hack popularized on YouTube or anecdotally as shoppers notice more locked product displays in stores to deter shoplifters.
”You may get robbed, but it’s not like an insurance company is going to reimburse you. With a car you have to go and put in a police report in order to be able to go to your insurance company to get your $20 or $25 or $30,000 car replacement there. In some sense we have a more accurate measure of motor vehicle thefts because they are reported to police at a much higher rate than other types of crimes are,” he said. ”Everything in the store is now behind plexiglass. That wasn’t true a few years ago. If you want to go and buy a product in those stores you have to wait for a salesperson to come over, unlock the plexiglass and then stand next to you as you read the packages and try to decide what to buy.”
Russ McQuaid, “Indy crime stats match national downward trend,” Fox 59 (Indianapolis, Indiana), September 24, 2024. and CBS 4 (Indianapolis, Indiana), September 24, 2024.
John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, looked at most AI programs out there, and what he found is interesting: [A long quote from our piece at The Federalist]
On Monday, ABC’s World News Tonight anchor David Muir felt compelled to double down on his fake fact check of former President Trump from the September 10 debate by touting a new FBI report claiming “a dramatic drop in violent crime” and contrary to what voters feel.
But, as per the great John Lott Jr. of Crime Prevention Research Center, it’s not as simple as the pro-Kamala Harris media want you to believe. . . .
Lott had a post breaking down the issues with this wholesale declaration (which, as he noted, is similar to how jobs numbers often are revised up or down) (click “expand”):
The newly released FBI data…should be compared to the Bureau of Justice Statistics data, which showed 4.1% increase in reported serious violent crime in 2023 (rape, robbery, and aggravated assault, but even though murder isn’t included, it covers only about 1 percent of reported violent crimes and even less of total violent crimes).
USA Today’s headline on the new FBI reported crime data claims “Violent crime dropped for second straight year in 2023, including murder and rape.” There are two errors in their headline. First, that it is the FBI’s measure of reported crime that fell, but that is not the same as all crime nor is it the only measure of reported crime. So they could have written, the FBI’s measure of reported violent crime fell in 2023. The second error is that they are wrong claiming that this was the second straight year, where an adjustment in the data showed a 4.5% increase in 2022. Originally, the FBI said that violent crime had fallen by 2.1% and now they say it increased by 4.5%. Just like the Bureau of Labor Statistics overestimated the number of jobs created. . . .
After running through a serious of liberal media headlines, he pointed out that “[n]one of these stories mention that less than two weeks ago the Bureau of Justice Statistic’s National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) showed a 55% increase in serious violent crime (rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) that most closely matches the FBI data since 2020 and a 19% increase since 2019.”
And there was also this crucial tidbit: “[W]hile murder fell by 16.2% from 2020 to 2023, it is still above the pre-COVID levels by 9.6%.
Experts like John Lott, President of the Crime Prevention Research Center, are quick to point out that this makes the NCVS a more reliable indicator of the real crime situation on the ground. “What the FBI measures is that reported crime went down, and that’s a big difference between total and reported crime,” Lott told Fox News Digital. . . .
As Lott put it, “If people don’t think that the criminals are going to be caught and punished, it reduces the returns for some people reporting the crimes to the police to begin with.” . . .
Secretary of State Chuck Gray also testified Thursday, reiterating his strong belief that gun-free zones should be eliminated for safety reasons, and that something should be done sooner, rather than later. Gray cited the research of John Lott, an influential economist in gun-friendly spaces, whose work has been questioned in academic circles.
“This has been debated for a decade, and the time for excuses that contradict each other has passed,” Gray said.
Schuler asked Gray about his thoughts on local control and letting schools decide what to do, and Gray said he believes in and encourages public engagement, but still supports state-level efforts in this case.
“I realize that there’s the local control argument, but I think that this is an important thing, protecting our Second Amendment rights, and that’s where I fall on it,” he said. . . .
Portuguese (Brazilian)
“Quando David Muir diz que o FBI mostra que a criminalidade diminuiu, não é isso que o FBI está a medir”, disse John Lott, presidente do Centro de Investigação de Prevenção do Crime, numa entrevista à Fox News Digital esta semana. “O que o FBI mede é que o crime denunciado diminuiu, e isso é uma grande diferença entre o crime total e o denunciado. Sabemos que a maioria dos crimes não é denunciado à polícia. .Eles acham que os meninos estão indo Preso ou não“
Lott observou que as taxas de prisão caíram, com dados de 2022 mostrando que apenas 20% dos crimes violentos relatados resultaram em prisões nas principais cidades.
“Portanto, se as pessoas não pensam que os criminosos serão capturados e punidos, isso reduz os retornos para algumas pessoas denunciarem crimes à polícia”, argumentou. . . .
Translated into English
“When David Muir says the FBI shows that crime has gone down, that’s not what the FBI is measuring,” John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, said in an interview with Fox News Digital this week. “What the FBI measures is that reported crime has decreased, and that’s a big difference between total crime and reported crime. We know that most crimes are not reported to the police.. They think the boys are going to jail or not”
Lott noted that arrest rates have dropped, with data from 2022 showing that only 20% of reported violent crimes resulted in arrests in major cities.
“So if people don’t think that criminals will be caught and punished, it reduces the returns for some people to report crimes to the police,” he argued. . .
Now watch Walz, the self-described longtime hunter and war veteran. In this video posted by John Lott, he lies about his service, saying, “And we can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.”
The statistic is similar to a 2014 report from the Crime Prevention Research Center that former President Donald Trump cited in 2018. This report says from 1950 to 2016, 98% of mass shootings were in gun-free zones.
“The oft-cited figure comes from a study by a gun rights advocacy group that gun violence experts say is flawed,” according to The Associated Press.
“There is no definitive data on how many ‘mass shootings’ occur in ‘gun-free’ zones, because there is no consensus on how to define either term, experts said,” according to a fact-check article by AP News said. . . .
