By Donald Jeffries
Recently, the Biden administration has made the extraordinary claim that the statistics for violent crime have plummeted to the lowest rate in 50 years. In truth, however, this seems like an even more fantastic distortion of reality than other myths espoused by Biden and his apologists, such as “inflation is caused by corporate profits, and new jobs are exploding.”
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At a recent White House event honoring law enforcement, Biden declared, “Last year, the United States had one of the lowest rates of all violent crime—of all violent crimes in more than 50 years. Murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery all dropped sharply, along with burglary, property crime, and theft.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland, recently cited with contempt by Congress, added:
This data makes clear that last year’s historic decline in violent crime is continuing. This continued historic decline in homicides does not represent abstract statistics. It represents people whose lives were saved—people who are still here to see their children grow up, to work toward fulfilling their dreams, and to contribute to their communities.
The Biden administration claims that official statistics from the Uniform Crime Report show that the murder rate fell by 26.4%, reported rapes dipped by 25.7%, aggravated assaults fell by 12.5%, and the overall violent crime rate went down by 15.2%. Biden’s boast that, “holding violent criminals accountable” has been a top administration priority is contradicted by all the George Soros-funded prosecutors across the country, who have made “reforms” such as allowing those accused of violent crimes back out on the street without bail, and by making shoplifting essentially legal in many places.
The original source for the dubious claim that crime is at its lowest rate in 50 years was the Substack blog of millennial criminologist Jeff Asher, whose consulting and analytics firm strives to create “a more equitable criminal justice system,” a term used often by “woke” advocates of bail “reform.” Asher first popped up in the mainstream media in 2020, to attribute the rise in crime to Covid, warm weather, and “randomness,” rather than the questionable policies of all those Soros-funded prosecutors.
The 50-year claim is easily disproven by the same official statistics. The FBI recorded over 16,000 murders in 2018, for example. The new “50-year low” numbers for murder are 18,450. Asher’s declaration that, “Detroit is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1966” has to be considered in the context that the population was more than double back then. The per capita rate of murder in the motor city has actually gone up significantly.
As Front Page magazine noted:
Virtually all of the media’s reporting on the good news about crime rates has come from Asher and AH Datalytics. Relying on a single source for reporting on a national phenomenon would have traditionally been frowned upon, but the media has long since discarded such journalistic hangups. And media outlets have asked Asher no substantive questions about his research.
Asher’s reliance on FBI statistics should be viewed skeptically. Certainly, the politicized FBI has a vested interest in painting the most positive picture possible of the Biden presidency, since his opponent, Donald Trump, has alleged the FBI is corrupt to the core and wants to reform it. The magazine also points out that cuts in police forces could very logically have resulted in lower police response, and thus lower crime rates.
As was pointed out on the “Law Officer” blog, under Biden, almost half of all crime is not being officially reported to the FBI, which then distributes the bogus numbers. “Law Officer” reported:
In 2019, 89% of municipal police departments, consisting of 97% of the population, submitted crime data to the FBI, but, by 2021, the population represented in the crime data had dropped to 65% when just 63% of the agencies reported their crime.
New Jersey reported crime from just 177 of their 578 agencies, and Pennsylvania only reported crime from 40 of the 1,504 agencies. Only half of crimes were reported in California. “Law Officer,” observing that the “worst offenders” in this regard are in decidedly unsafe areas, noted, “But don’t worry. The FBI has a 100% compliance from the mean streets of Connecticut and Delaware.”
The government’s fanciful figures, promoted incessantly by a fawning state-controlled media, are contradicted by those from the Major City Chiefs Association, which showed a significant increase in crime. In addition, the National Crime Victimization Survey reported a 30% rise in robbery and a 25% increase in all violent crime, despite the fact the FBI was claiming it was reduced by 18%.
Coming off 2020, one of the most violent years in American history, the FBI simply altered the official crime data, like the unemployment numbers were altered in the 1990s to make the job market look better. This changes significantly the way crime information is being reported to the people.
The truth is, violent crime is not at 50-year lows. Instead, the way crime is being reported under the “woke” rules in place today has changed.
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