With a Democratic administration in the White House and an election approaching, legacy media have been quick to claim that crime is decreasing. This is not just wrong but a deception. The data tell a much different story across much of the country.
Debate over crime reached its boiling point when former President Donald Trump was “fact-checked” during the only presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris by ABC News’s David Muir. Trump contended, “All over the world, crime is down, all over the world, except here. Crime here is up and through the roof despite their fraudulent statements that they made.” Muir, citing the FBI, said, “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says, overall, violent crime is actually coming down in this country.”
That supposed “fact check” by a plainly biased liberal journalist was brought to you by incomplete and misleading data. In 2021, the FBI changed its method of crime reporting, with several police departments being unable to meet the new requirement. Therefore, when the FBI reported that violent crime had declined 2.1% in 2022, it did so without numbers from big U.S. cities where crime is most prevalent, such as Los Angeles and New York City. But the falsehood of the initial numbers was revealed to anyone who was interested when the agency quietly updated the numbers in September 2024 to reveal that violent crime had actually risen 4.5%.
Sure enough, the rise and deception have continued this year. The FBI’s data for the first quarter of 2024 say violent crime fell 15% from the first quarter of 2023. But that does not include Los Angeles’s 2.9% increase in violent crime in that period, which includes a 28.1% increase in homicides.
The National Crime Victimization Survey from the Department of Justice is a better guide because it has been sturdier than the FBI’s numbers since the bureau changed its methodology. The 2023 iteration of the survey found that violent crime had risen 37% since Trump’s last year in office. Given that the two surveys tracked closely before the FBI’s change in methodology, that the FBI’s data don’t include some of the country’s most violent cities, and that the FBI had to revise its numbers, it is safe to say that crime has risen in the past few years.
You can see this everywhere. At local levels, there are not claims to be experiencing a blessed decrease in crime. Even with the questionable status of Los Angeles’s statistics in crime reports, the FBI still had California at a 3.6% increase in violent crime in 2023, showing that the model Democratic state is failing to keep law and order. Motor theft was up 6.7% in California, with over $2 billion worth of cars being stolen, making Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) celebration of the supposed national drop in crime under President Joe Biden seem in markedly poor taste.
California’s rise was driven by a doubling in violent crime in Alameda County, home to Oakland, where District Attorney Pamela Price is being recalled for her pro-criminal policies. Oakland has seen such a crime surge that In-N-Out closed its only location in the city, even though it has been profitable, and Newsom has sent California Highway Patrol officers to the city to try and maintain order. Rental car companies near the city’s airport warn renters that, for their safety, they should not fill up at nearby gas stations.
Chicago saw homicides decline from 2022 to 2023, though not enough to stop the Windy City from having the most homicides in the country for the 12th year in a row, with more than 200 more murders than second-place Philadelphia. Despite that modest decline, Chicago also saw an 11.5% increase in total violent crime, with thefts and carjackings skyrocketing in the past two years.
In second-place Philadelphia, violent crime declined in 2023, but property crime soared. Philadelphia also saw 114 fewer homicides than the year before, but even that progress is misleading because the city still saw more homicides than it did before the pandemic in 2020. New York City saw homicides and shootings fall in 2023, but the city’s “major crimes” hit a 17-year high. Major crimes in New York City include all big-ticket felonies: assault, burglary, car theft, grand larceny, murder, rape, and robbery.
New York City has been home to another disturbing phenomenon: a surge in youth crime. Last year, there were 4,858 major crimes in which a juvenile was accused or arrested, an average of 13 per day and more than 1,300 higher than the total in 2017. That 2017 year was of particular note because that is when New York Democrats changed state law to push more 16- and 17-year-old defendants into family court rather than adult court. This soft approach to criminal juveniles has unsurprisingly convinced more juveniles that unpleasant consequences are not to be feared.
The same problem has been apparent in Washington, D.C., which has dealt with a surge of juveniles jacking cars for years. From 2022 to 2023, carjackings doubled in Washington, with 66% of arrests involving juvenile offenders. This led to a high-profile incident in which Washington Commanders running back Brian Robinson was shot in the leg during a carjacking by a 15-year-old who had killed another teenager in a separate crime. He was given the maximum sentence under Washington juvenile law of six years.
Bringing it back to California, Robinson is no longer the only NFL player who has been shot in an attempted robbery by a juvenile. San Francisco 49ers rookie Ricky Pearsall was shot by a 17-year-old in broad daylight in San Francisco’s Union Square. The shooter is also being charged as a juvenile, with a maximum sentence of eight years.
If you are wondering why people feel that crime is rising, it is because it is. An NFL player trying to shop in the business district of a major U.S. city being shot by a high schooler in broad daylight probably contributes to that sentiment. If that guy isn’t safe at that time in that place, who is safe, and when and where?
Sentiment that crime is rising is being driven by rising crime. It is up in major cities, where it is a focal point. It is up nationwide, as evidenced by the Justice Department’s survey data. Even the FBI statistic being cited as proof that crime is down was an incomplete measurement that has since been corrected by the agency.
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The measurables have shown that crime has become worse. So have the immeasurables, such as the Pearsall shooting. Even if you are unfamiliar with the crime statistics or the Pearsall story, you can see how people come to the conclusion that crime is surging. When they go to the pharmacy, everything from toothpaste to deodorant is under lock and key. At least that is so if the local pharmacy hasn’t closed down due to shoplifting losses, as has been especially the case in California.
Most importantly, people see all of this while Democratic politicians try to lessen criminal penalties both for adult criminals and juveniles and deny that there is any problem about which to be concerned. Every shuttered business, locked-up toiletry, and missing car is a reminder not just that criminals have become emboldened across the country but that one political party is denying that fact because it reflects poorly on its politicians.
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