Even More Coverage of Our Real Clear Investigations Report, CPRC in the News: The Daily Wire, The Federalist, American Thinker, Broad & Liberty, Patriot Post, and More
Multiple legacy media outlets that covered the FBI’s report on violent crime going down in 2022 have ignored the bureau’s major revision,which shows that violent crime increased that year.
In September 2023, the FBI claimed that data showed violent crime decreased by 2.1% in 2022 compared to 2021. A report from RealClearInvestigations (RCI) on Wednesday, however, revealed that the FBI “quietly revised” those numbers to show that violent crime increased by 4.5% in 2022. USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press covered the FBI’s report last year, but as of Thursday afternoon, none of those legacy outlets have published any reports — or provided any notes on previous stories — after the FBI revised its data to show that violent crime increased.
The FBI also tried to keep the revision under wraps as RCI only “discovered the change through a cryptic reference on the FBI website.”
“But there is no mention that the numbers increased. One only sees the change by downloading the FBI’s new crime data and comparing it to the file released last year,” John R. Lott wrote for RCI.
The FBI’s 2023 report has been used by Democrats and the legacy media to counter former President Donald Trump’s focus on violent crime under the Biden-Harris administration. Trump was even “fact-checked” by ABC News moderator David Muir during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris when Trump said that violent crime had gone up under his opponent’s watch. . . .
“During the 2020 presidential campaign, Harris ran to the left of Biden on gun control,” author and gun expert John Lott wrote in The Federalist this summer. “While both supported an assault weapons ban, Harris wanted to force gun owners to sell to the government any firearms that she deemed undesirable. Harris went further than Biden in vowing to use executive orders if Congress did not pass the ban.” . . .
Now that election time is on, is there any such thing as an honest statistic from the Biden-Harris administration?
The indefatigable John Lott at RealClearInvestigations has ratted out another one: [Long quote from Lott’s artcie]
A recent report by Real Clear Investigations showed the FBI had quietly revised their 2023 crime numbers, proving Broad + Liberty’s reporting was correct, with data that showing an increase in violent crimes like murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults by 4.5 percent in 2022.
What’s more suspicious, considering the FBI and their parent organization, the Department of Justice’s recent partisan scandals, issued no statements regarding their revisions in its September 2024 press release. It was in a regular review of this release by former DOJ official John R. Lott Jr., President of the Crime Prevention Research Center, who saw a cryptic reference on the FBI website stating: “The 2022 violent crime rate has been updated for inclusion in CIUS, 2023” without mention that their crime numbers increased.
This important statistical revision can only be discovered by downloading the FBI’s new crime data and comparing it to the file released last year. This presents ethical and political questions for the Biden/Harris administration as a slew of talking points were pushed to the media, reading: “Violent crime dropped for third straight year in 2023, including murder and rape.” Earlier this year, headlines like National Public Radio’s: “Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don’t believe it” were being run. But now, the FBI has itself has quietly admitted its violent crime numbers were way off.
It’s been over three weeks since the FBI released the revised data. The Bureau’s lack of acknowledgment or explanation about the significant change concerns researchers.
“It is up to the FBI to explain what they have done, and they haven’t explained these large changes,” Dr. Thomas Marvell, the president of Justec Research, a criminal justice statistical research organization, told RCI. . . .
“When the FBI originally released the ‘final’ crime data for 2022 in September 2023, it reported that the nation’s violent crime rate fell by 2.1%. This quickly became, and remains, a Democratic Party talking point to counter Donald Trump’s claims of soaring crime. But the FBI has quietly revised those numbers, releasing new data that shows violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5%. The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.” —John R. Lott Jr.
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.
First, Muir heralded the report in the lead-in to the voice-over report from chief Justice correspondent Pierre Thomas: “Next, tonight, one of the issues in this presidential race, violent crime in the U.S. Tonight, the FBI reporting a dramatic drop in violent crime. The latest numbers from 2023 showing murders down more than 11 percent. The FBI says it’s the biggest decline in decades.” . . .
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”): . . .
“When David Muir goes and says the FBI shows that crime is down, that’s not what the FBI is measuring,” Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott told Fox News Digital in an interview this week. “What the FBI measures is that reported crime went down, and that’s a big difference between total and reported crime. We know most crimes aren’t reported to the police. And the rate that people report crimes to the police depends in part on things like whether they think the guys are going to be arrested or not.”
Lott noted that arrest rates have dipped, with 2022 data showing only 20% of reported violent crimes resulted in an arrest in major cities.
“So, 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,” he argued. . . .
Lott, który pełnił również funkcję starszego doradcy ds. badań i statystyk w Biurze Programów Sprawiedliwości Departamentu Sprawiedliwości, napisał w tym miesiącu artykuł redakcyjny dla Real Clear Politics i szczegółowo opisał, że badanie Departamentu Sprawiedliwości wykazało, że całkowita liczba przestępstw z użyciem przemocy będzie o 55,4% wyższa w 2023 r. niż w 2020 r., pod koniec kadencji Trumpa, podczas gdy przestępstwa z użyciem przemocy wzrosły o 42%, rozboju o 63%, a napaści z użyciem przemocy o 55%. Badanie Departamentu Sprawiedliwości nie obejmuje badań dotyczących morderstw, ale ta kategoria jest prawie zawsze zgłoszone na policjęa następnie do FBI – zauważył – i stanowią one około 1% wszystkich przestępstw z użyciem przemocy w USA.
Ten Kwartalne dane FBI Lott wyjaśnił, że w 2023 r. liczba morderstw spadła o 13% w porównaniu z 2022 r., ale wskaźnik ten nadal jest o 5% wyższy niż w 2019 r. sprzed pandemii. . . .
Okay so the FBI has quietly changed its national crime statistics. And it’s not because Hunter Biden had a hot weekend. Originally, the FBI said violent crime fell in 2022 by 2.1%. But as John Lott at RealClear Investigations found out, the FBI has now revised those numbers. Apparently, the stats were more fudged than Brian Stelter’s fingertips. He’s fat. Instead of violent crime going down by 2%, it actually went up by 4.5%. That’s a bigger swing than the one Joy Behar installed over her bed. How else is she going to get up?
Now, this 4.5% increase is on top of the already rising crime. But in an effort to gaslight us into thinking the tide was turning, they lied. There was more violent crime on top of the mayhem we already endured. The libs not only flunk math, but ethics as well. Up is down. Down is up. If libs ever started designing elevators we’re ******.
Now, we got a lot of Dems watching and I want to make sure that they get it. Because for months they’ve told us violent crime has gone down since Biden was elected. Maybe they were confusing crime with his body temperature, but they told us that, like the railing around Joe’s toilet, his policies were making things safer. ABCs’ David Muir actually stopped Trump during last month’s debate to correct him on the crime stats. . . .
An embarrassing bombshell report at RealClear Investigations that the FBI had “quietly revised” its violent crime data for 2022 upward—after Democrats and the Biden-Harris administration bragged about the initially reported decline—has ignited a media fireworks show.
The report, written by researcher and author Dr. John Lott, founder and president at the Crime Prevention Research Center, revealed that faulty FBI data which originally said violent crime in 2022 had dropped 2.1 percent, had been updated to show crime had actually gone up by 4.5 percent. The revelation raised eyebrows across the establishment media because it essentially exonerated former President Donald Trump, who had been skewered by ABC debate moderator David Muir during the debate between Trump and Kamala Harris, when Trump insisted emphatically crime had gone up.
As noted by Lott in his 1,450-word report, the erroneous data became a “Democrat Party talking point to counter Donald Trump’s claims of soaring crime.” So far, Democrats do not appear to have apologized, but they have also been quiet about the report. . . .[More]
