Media, Harris caught lying about true crime statistics - and here are the receipts to prove it

WASHINGTON, DC - The gaslighting, state-run media, America’s version of Russian state media Pravda, is once again carrying water for the Biden-Harris administration by claiming that murder and other violent crime has “dropped” across the United States. An NBC report, citing FBI data, makes that bizarre claim. In other words, don’t believe your lying eyes. 

According to the FBI’s “Summary of Crime in the Nation” report cited by NBC, the claim is violent crime was down 3% from 2022 to 2023, while property crime allegedly dropped 2.4%. Moreover, the report claims that the most serious crimes, such as murder and non-negligent manslaughter, fell an estimated 11.6%, which NBC breathlessly reports as the “largest single-year decline in two decades.” A similar claim boasts that rape decreased by an estimated 9.4%. 

Some less serious crimes, such as auto theft, increased an estimated 12.6% between 2022 and 2023. “Recorded” incidents of shoplifting also rose from nearly one million to 1.14 million in 2023, approximately equal to the incidents reported pre-pandemic in 2019. NBC, however, attempts to explain that away by saying, “store closures and COVID-19 security measures likely decreased shoplifting in 2020 and 2021, and ‘may’ have affected 2022 incidents as well.” 

Not everyone is buying it, however, and believe the FBI statistics are skewed, including an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. That hasn’t stopped Democrats and left-wing media from repeating it, as was seen during the ABC debate when “moderator” David Muir cited FBI statistics in refuting claims made by former President Trump that crime is running rampant. 

This month, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), overseen by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and administered by the US Census Bureau, was released. Dating back to Richard Nixon's presidency, it is one of the most extensive federal surveys on any topic. 

The survey questions almost a quarter million U.S. residents annually about their experience with crime. If they answer in the affirmative, they are asked about the nature of the crime, if it was reported to the police, the demographics of the suspect, and other related information. 

The NCVS paints a starkly different picture, contradicting the information compiled by the FBI and echoed by the mainstream media. This contrast in crime reporting methods is crucial for our understanding of the true crime situation in the country. 

According to the report for 2023, there was “no statistically significant evidence that violent crime or property crime is dropping in America,” the WSJ piece reported. When removing simple assault, which is typically not charged as a felony, the violent crime rate in 2023 was 19% higher than in 2019, before Kamala Harris and her cronies launched their calls to defund the police. 

The NCVS also noted that there is no “equity” where crime occurs. The recent spike in criminal activity has been concentrated in urban areas, ironically where leftist prosecutors, many helped into office by Marxist billionaire George Soros, are located. These are areas where police have been excoriated and where resulting lax enforcement and prosecution are commonplace. 

What has been the result that Democrats and their Pravda media ignore? The NCVS found that the urban violent crime rate increased by 40% from 2019 to 2023. Excluding simple assault, the rise was a staggering 54% over that time frame. Moreover, there was little increase between 2022 to 2023, so that would indicate, the writer believes, that “higher crime rates appear to be the new norm in America’s cities.” 

The property crime rate isn’t faring much better. It increased from 176.1 victimizations per 1,000 households in 2022 to 192.3 in 2023, a 26% increase in urban property crime rates since 2019. Retail theft isn’t included in the NCVS survey since it samples households and not businesses. 

Conversely, violent crime rates in suburban and rural areas have remained virtually unchanged since 2019. In 2019, there were 22.3 violent crime victimizations per 1,000 persons 12 or older in suburbs, compared with 23.3 in 2023, which is statistically insignificant. In rural areas, the rate was 16.3 in 2019 and 15.3 in 2023, again negligible statistically. The recent explosion in crime has primarily impacted cities, many of which are run by Democrats in blue states. 

The Wall Street Journal writes that there are several reasons why the NCVS is more reliable than the FBI’s statistics, which the mainstream media and Democrats gloat over. 

First, the NCVS represents final statistics, not partial-year preliminary figures that the FBI releases. 

Second, in 2021, the FBI switched to a new reporting system that made it nearly impossible to compile year-to-year comparisons between before and after the change. 

Third, the NCVS represents a nationally representative sampling. At the same time, the FBI did not obtain data from a large number of law enforcement agencies, including the Los Angeles Police Department, which is the third-largest police department in the country. Moreover, it doesn't use the same mix of agencies year to year. 

Fourth, unlike the Census Bureau, “the FBI isn’t considered a principal statistical agency” by the government; therefore, the WSJ reported that its ability to compensate for missing data is limited. 

Finally, FBI statistics rely on data where the victim reported the crime to police, while the NCVS includes crimes whether or not they are reported to the police. For example, in the 2023 NCVS survey, 55% of violent crime victimizations were not reported to the police, while 70% of property crime victimizations were not reported. Therefore, the FBI doesn’t capture a majority of the actual crimes. 

Despite the gaslighting by the mainstream media and the Democrats, the US has experienced a significant crime spike since the 2020 “summer of love” spurred by the George Floyd overdose in Minneapolis. The figures included in the NCVS do not show that number leveling off any time soon. In fact, given the invasion of violent gangs such as Tren de Aragua, MS-13, and others, the 2024 NCVS may show a more significant spike. This should be a cause for concern for all of us.

As the WSJ piece notes, the social experiments of the 1960s and 1970s led to a significant increase in crime in those decades, fueled in part by social unrest over the Vietnam War. Similar social unrest is taking place now, with pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protests that sometimes turn violent, impacting cities nationwide. 

The crime wave of the 60s and 70s was abated when police adopted the so-called “broken windows” theory of policing and dealt with the low-level crimes that often lead to more serious crimes. Instead of going soft on crime as Democrats and their media mouthpieces insist, it is time to go back to the successful policing model of the 1990s and early 2000s. Otherwise, we will continue to endure fear in our cities, eventually spreading to the suburbs.