President Biden and his Democratic colleagues are currently attempting to assert that crime rates have decreased according to an FBI report. However, what they are intentionally omitting to mention is that numerous police precincts have simply stopped reporting any crime data to the FBI at all.
Biden told an Everytown for Gun Safety gun control gathering:
“You know, the year before I came to the presidency, the murder rate was the highest increase on record. Last year, we saw the largest decrease of murder in the history of (inaudible). (Applause.) And those rates are continuing to fall faster than ever. Last year, we also saw one of the lowest rates of all violent crime in nearly 50 years. Murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery all dropped sharply, along with burglary and property crime.”
He failed to acknowledge that there was a decrease in crime reports from police precincts across the country in both 2021 and 2022.
BIDEN: "Crime rates are down nationally!"
(Unmentioned: The fact that a third of police departments, including in the biggest U.S. cities, stopped reporting crime data to the FBI in 2022) pic.twitter.com/xzz3VCtPH6
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 2, 2024
The Marshall Project detailed that in 2020, “nearly all law enforcement agencies were part of the FBI’s database.” Nevertheless, by 2021, the FBI transitioned to a fresh data compilation system and would solely receive police precinct reports via the new platform.
The result? “Thousands of police agencies fell through the cracks because they didn’t catch up with the changes on time.” Thus, in 2022 there were far fewer police precincts turning in crime data; the Marshall Project reported in 2023 that “more than 6,000 law enforcement agencies were missing from the FBI’s national crime data last year, representing nearly one-third of the nation’s 18,000 police agencies.”
In 2023, the FBI made a shift by declaring its decision to resume accepting crime data through the previous reporting system. However, the Marshall Project highlights the uncertainty surrounding the number of more than 6,000 police precincts that will resume reporting or have already done so. One definite observation made by the Marshall Project is that the NYPD and LAPD are among those that have yet to report crime data to the FBI.
