Crime Data: Misleading Statistics

Questions are swirling around crime data in the wake of the deployment of National Guard members to the nation's capital. City officials claim murders have declined.  National data suggests all crime has shrunk. But how reliable are the numbers?  There is evidence the data is problematic. 

Pew Research Center analyzed data in an effort to answer the question: "How much crime is there in the U.S." Their answer: "It's difficult to say for certain." The two primary sources of government crime statistics--the FBI and The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS)--paint an incomplete picture.

FBI reports, once the gold standard, is pocked with Swiss cheese holes. In 2019, 89% of municipal police departments submitted crime data to the agency.  To compensate for the incomplete data, the FBI estimated the missing municipalities crime numbers.  

In 2020, the FBI recorded a historic single-year increase in homicides of 30% in the aftermath of the George Floyd nationwide riots. There are some experts who believe the violent crime data that year was actually worse because big city police were swamped and reporting may have suffered as a result. 

The 2021 FBI data failed to improve. The bureau modernized its data collection system. Thousands of police agencies fell through the cracks. Only 63% of police departments submitted crime data, meaning 6,000 municipalities failed to report numbers. The FBI reported crime fell.   

Then in 2022, the FBI under Christopher Wray regrouped to right the data ship.  Pew reports 83% of police agencies participated. Two of the largest police departments in the country--New York and Los Angeles--were missing from the final FBI crime report. Unsurprisingly, crime declined.   

The FBI initially reported an estimated 1.7% decrease in violent crime. Later in 2023, the agency quietly revised the data, reporting a 4.5% increase in crime for 2022.  The FBI failed to include 1,699 murder, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies and 37,091 aggravated assaults--a staggering oversight.

The bureau reported 19,800 homicide victims in 2023.  The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its cause of death data for the same year, counting 22,830 homicide deaths.  Its records are compiled from the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program provided by 57 jurisdictions. 

Last month the FBI issued its 2024 report from 16,419 police departments, still short of the 18,000 previously reporting crime data. Violent crime decreased 4.5%.  Leaving aside the issue of the veracity of the data, a violent crime occurred on average every 25.9 seconds somewhere in America.  

The Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is second only to the FBI in perceived importance. It is a national survey of about 240,000 people 12 and older.  Participants are asked if they have been a victim of a crime in the past six months.  The methodology obviously eliminates murder victims, an obvious flaw.

However, the NCVS is recognized as more accurate in capturing the overall picture of violent crime, which includes rape, robbery aggravated assault, robbery and manslaughter.   While the FBI reported decreases in 2021 and 2022, the NCVS data for the same period shows violent victimization rose 75%.    

Data from most sources depends on local police records. And that's another problem.  In Washington, D.C., the flashpoint for crime, the head of the Metropolitan Police Department's top union official claims higher ups are fudging the crime data by directing cops to downgrade felonies to a lesser offense,

The union boss Gregg Pemberton shared his accusations with NBC Washington.  The contention followed the police department's suspension of a commander in mid-May for allegedly changing crime statistics in his local district. No word on how widespread the practice is.  

Even though the nation's capital has recorded a 27% drop in violent crime this year, it still has the fourth highest homicide rate in the country, nearly six times higher than New York City.  The city has recorded 103 fatal shootings this year.  For comparison, there were 105 murders in 2014.

Chicago has been in the spotlight after President Trump threatened to send the National Guard to the Windy City.  Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has stiff armed any suggestion of federal assistance, pointing out homicides decreased by 7.3% last year, but still higher than pre-pandemic figures.

A University of Chicago Crime Lab report underscores the "persistent challenging patterns" of violence in the city.  Black residents are 22 more times likely to be killed compared to white residents. In some Chicago neighborhoods, a black person is 68 times more likely to be a victim of a fatal shooting.

And, while violent crime is down, the Crime Lab notes it is still higher than the five year average.  The primary contributors are soaring aggravated assaults, aggravated batteries and robberies, according to the Crime Lab. Since 2010, the rate at which shooting victims die from a gunshot has soared 44.9%.

You won't hear those numbers from the mayor, who has overseen the shrinking of the Chicago police force.  There are now fewer officers than the city had in 2018, a decline of nearly 13%.  In addition, Johnson has failed to deliver on a campaign pledge to add 200 more detectives, WGN reported.

The mayor's credibility took another hit Labor Day weekend when 58 Chicagoans were shot, eight fatally.  This underscores the issue in many large cities.  Crime may be down, if you believe the statistics, but it begs the question: How much crime is too much?

In many big cities such as Chicago, too many repeat offenders with long criminal records are arrested and freed without bail.  Failure to address this situation results in career criminals preying on the most vulnerable. Until district attorneys incarcerate thugs, systemic violent crime will continue.  

The credibility of crime data is not some conservative conspiracy as Democrats contend.  The Legal Defense Fund, a liberal group, called crime statistics "unreliable" because many crimes go unreported by victims.  Even reported crimes may not be recorded by police, the group points out.

Another liberal group, the VERA Institute, examined the FBI data and gave this assessment: "The FBI estimates national and state totals, sometimes using a relative small percentage of jurisdictions in a state" to flesh out its data making the numbers "deeply problematic."

VERA performed its own research on the quality of policing data from 94 of the country's largest cities.  Researchers concluded: "The results were, perhaps, predictably underwhelming.  Of the 94 localities included, only 21 scored more than 50 out of 100 on Vera's index, which rates the data's completeness. 

Public safety and crime are key issues with voters.  A recent national poll commissioned by the Associated Press (AP) found that 81% of Americans believe crime is a major problem in big cities.  Those running America's largest cities often seem out of touch with local concerns.    

It's time for Congress to standardize crime reporting methodology for local and state police organizations, while ending voluntary participation, and instead mandating records be furnished to the FBI. The agency also should be required to overhaul its processes in the interest of accuracy.

Crime data is not an academic exercise.  The numbers are essential to understanding the resources--both funding and manpower--needed to make all Americans safer.    

Thin Blue Line: America's Police Under Assualt

A 38-year old police officer was viciously gunned down last year during a bank robbery in Mississippi.  A nine year veteran of the Tupelo Police Department, Kevin Stauffer left behind a young wife and two children. There were no national headlines about his death.

As the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, demonstrates, the news media are more interested in covering racially charged events.  The death of a police officer hardly rates national mention.  In the last ten years, more than 1,500 police and detectives have died in the line of duty, including 568 by gunfire.

Crime fighting has taken its toll on America's police.  Since the first recorded police death in 1791, there have been more than 20,000 officers killed in the line of duty.  Violent crime, although down in recent years, still exceeds 1 million incidents nationwide every year.

Police not only are gunshot victims.  Others die in motor vehicle accidents while chasing suspects, drownings, vehicle assaults, accidental shootings, stabbings and illnesses related to their duties. It is a hazardous profession with very little room for error.  

The deadliest year since the dawn of the new century was 2001, when 71 officers were killed during the September 11 terrorist attacks alone.  For that year, 140 officers were slain, including three who were ambushed by criminals.

Despite those numbers, the 1920's were far worse for law enforcement officers.  That decade ended with with 2,390 police officers losing their lives in deadly shootings. The deadliest year, however, was 1930, when 297 officers were killed.      

Thousands more police officers are assaulted every year in the line of duty.  During the last decade, there were more than 519,000 assaults, resulting in injuries to 154,836 police officers, according to FBI statistics.  The average over that period was 57,892 assaults each year.

Although shooting deaths of police are on the decline, even one fatality is too many for the thin blue line that maintains the peace in communities throughout America.  The most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics estimate there are 780,000 police and detectives keeping the country safe each day.

As a result of police deaths, many departments have purchased body armor to help protect the men and women in blue.  However, body armor is not a panacea.  In 2012, a total of 51 police officers died while wearing body armor.  But the gear has been credited with the reduction in gun deaths.

The number one killer of police officers is not gunfire.  More than twice as many law enforcement officers every year die from suicide than are killed in traffic accidents or assaults, according to a 2012 national study underwritten by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).

Astonishingly, for every one suicide, the study's authors estimate there are 25 attempts.  Those sobering numbers are testimony to a high risk occupation where law enforcement officers are exposed to the worst human atrocities while dealing with often potentially life threatening confrontations.

Unfortunately, the media seldom paint a fair and unbiased picture of police.  Good police work goes unreported, but there is nothing like the scent of scandal or wrongdoing to get the media digging for details to expose the dirty blue laundry.

This does not mean police should not be scrutinized and held to high standards.  Those officers who break the law they are sworn to uphold deserve swift and vigorous justice.  What is lacking is balance in the reporting of incidents involving police.

That equilibrium has been missing in most news media coverage, particularly in reports that involve use of police force.  That fact has not gone unnoticed by the chiefs of police.

"In large part, the public perception of police use of force is framed and influenced by media depictions which present unrealistic and often outlandish representations of law enforcement and the policing profession," the IACP group said in a 2012 report.

What was true then is still true today.  Just look at the one-sided, incendiary media coverage coming out of Ferguson, Missouri.