Gaslighting? Reports that violent crime in the US is dropping don't include New York, Los Angeles, Phoenix

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WASHINGTON, DC - While most Americans can see with their eyes that crime, especially violent crime, has been escalating since the 2020 “summer of love” spurred by the George Floyd overdose death, Democrats, including Biden, have claimed that crime is dropping.

With the Biden Justice Department through its FBI claiming there is a “historic decline” in violent crime in the first quarter of 2024 compared to 2023. And, if you look at crime statistics, that might appear to be the case. 

For example, figures from the Uniform Crime Report show a 15 percent drop in violent crime, with murder decreasing by 26.4 percent, rape decreased by 25.7 percent, robbery is down by 17.8 percent, and aggravated is down by 12.5 percent. Property crime has also dropped, showing a 15.1 percent decline, according to the FBI. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland, carrying the water for the Biden administration in an election year touted the decline in a statement last week. 

“The data makes clear that last year’s historic decline in violent crime is continuing,” Garland said. “Our work will not be done until all Americans feel safe in their communities.” 

However, according to The Marshall Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that specializes in the criminal justice system, the devil is in the details. 

One factor conveniently left out by Garland is the fact that data contained in the UCR are supplied voluntarily by police departments across the U.S. Moreover, they do not include major metro areas such as Los Angeles and New York, where, according to The Independent, is “historically high.”

It should be noted that LA and New York are the two largest police departments in the country, yet they are not included in the data. 

The Marshall Project notes that no data has been released thus far beyond the short press announcement about the total, nor has data been publicly released for specific states or regions in the US. In fact, the last available figures are from 2022. 

It was noted that in that year, only about two-thirds of 6,000 US police agencies submitted their data to the FBI. 

In 2021, the FBI changed how agencies submitted data to the agency. One issue was that the FBI changed the technology and many police departments in the country had outdated technology that couldn’t be updated in time, which led them to be removed from the agency’s dataset. 

Along with New York and LA, two of the country’s other large police agencies, Phoenix, Arizona and the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Florida were also not part of the statistics. Those four agencies being left out of the crime data likely has a significant impact on the numbers which are likely much higher. The Independent noted that some of the agencies not reporting to the FBI experienced a lower percentage drop, or even an increase in crime in their jurisdictions. 

For example, in March, Los Angeles police announced that violent crime had increased by 2.9 percent from the same period one year before, while robberies had increased by 10 percent. Interim LA Police Chief Dominic Choi told a Board of Police Commissioners meeting that there had been an increase in violent crime, with 73 homicides thus far in 2024 compared to 57 at the same time last year, an increase of 28 percent, Fox 11 reported. 

In February, the NYPD released figures for this past January, which showed drops in murder, rape, burglary and felony assault, resulting in a crime index drop of 2.9 percent. 

However, they also noted a significant increase in crimes committed on the city’s subway system, which skyrocketed by 46 percent. Robbery and grand larceny also were up, by 5.4 percent and 0.4 percent respectively. 

Despite the FBI’s reporting of crime decreases in major crimes, the agency did show that offenses such as hate crime have been going up. Following the October 7 attacks by Hamas in Israel, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes have been increasing. 

Despite the administration claiming crime is dropping, the American people do not seem to be buying it. According to Gallup, in 23 out of 27 surveys conducted since 1993, fully 60 percent of American adults believe there is more crime nationally than the year before. In 2022 and 2023, the percentage was almost 80 percent. 

Preliminary figures released earlier this month indicated violent crime is on the decline, but some experts caution that the declines might not necessarily be as “significant” as is being reported, US News & World Report reported. 

“The FBI’s quarterly data is very preliminary and prone to errors, so it is likely overstating the trends it sees,” Jeff Asher, a data analyst who is an expert in evaluating criminal justice data, wrote in an online post. “That said, the FBI’s data on top of other preexisting data sources paint a consistent story of falling crime in the U.S. in the first half of 2024.” 

Biden of course didn’t waste any time gaslighting the American people and taking credit for the “drop.” 

“This progress we’re seeing is no accident. My Administration is putting more cops on the beat [no they’re not], holding violent criminals accountable [no they’re not], and getting illegal guns off the streets [a hat trick–no they’re not]--and we are doing it in partnership with communities,” Biden “wrote” in a statement. “As a result, Americans are safer today than when I took office.” 

Biden gaslighted again when he claimed the “largest increase” in murders occurred during former President Trump’s administration, but neglected to mention WHEN those murders took place–during the so-called “summer of love” after George Floyd’s overdose death. 

Biden also neglected to mention the invasion at the southern border and the number of violent crimes that have occurred at the hands of those foreign invaders, including the high-profile murders of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley in Georgia, 16-year-old high school cheerleader Lizbeth Medina in Jackson County, Texas, and the murder of Rachel Morin, a mother of five in Maryland, all killed by illegal aliens. There are many, many more violent crimes committed by illegal aliens, as reported by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). 

Biden will have a tough time convincing voters that crime is “way down,” as evidenced by a Gallup poll from November, which reported that 63% of those polled said crime in the U.S. is “extremely/very serious,” ABC 33 News Reported. 

A Harvard CAPS-Harris poll conducted in January ranked crime and drugs fourth out of 30 issues Americans believe are most important, surpassing healthcare, education, and the national debt. 

In 2023, the DEA seized enough fentanyl to kill every American, with an equivalent of 388.8 million doses of fentanyl. The same Harvard CAPS-Harris poll showed only 40% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of crime and violence. 

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