An independent review of the FBI’s reported violent crime statistics seems to show that the bureau is falsely reporting the crime Americans are facing.
The Coalition for Law Order and Safety has released its new report entitled, “Assessing America’s Crime Crises: Trends, Causes, and Consequences,” and identified four areas causing an increase in crime in America’s big cities.
According to Fox News: “The lead authors of the report are Mark Morgan, former assistant FBI director and acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection during the Trump administration, and Sean Kennedy, an attorney for the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund. ”
While most cities seem to be beset by rising crime, the FBI has claimed that crime is decreasing in many areas. The crime data don’t seem to jive with what is happening on the ground.
The new study, though, seems to raise serious questions.
Researchers wrote, “to say crime is down is like descending from a tall peak and standing on a high bluff, saying you are closer to the ground – a true but misleading statement.”
The report coincides with a March 2024 Gallup poll which found that nearly 80% of Americans say they personally worry about crime and violence “a great deal or fair amount,” placing it ahead of other issues and on par with inflation.
“Americans’ support for greater law enforcement and stiffer criminal penalties has increased as polls show that the public believes crime has risen, and they feel less safe,” the report noted.
Through aggregated data sets directly from more than 70 of the nation’s largest police departments and victim surveys, researchers claim violent crime has been “substantially elevated in major cities” compared to pre-2020 levels. The group’s research also showed that due to significant under-reporting of certain crimes, the FBI’s official data doesn’t completely capture the full snapshot of crime in the U.S.
“There’s a series of caveats attached to the FBI data that the FBI doesn’t make as clear as they should,” Sean Kennedy, one of the lead researchers, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
Kennedy added that the way the FBI is classifying crimes seems to be amiss.
“If you classify something as an aggravated assault, it’s a violent crime or a felony, but if you classify it as a simple assault, it’s then a misdemeanor and a non-violent crime,” Kennedy said. “That is a world of difference when it comes to how the media is going to portray whether or not your department is fighting violent crime.”
He added that even the bureau adds “caveats” all over its data making it unreliable even though so many assume that the data is the best we can get. Indeed, the FBI seems to constantly fill in gaps in its data with “inferred” assumptions and then they base conclusions on that, misleading the public.
There is much more at the Fox News report.
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