Now infamously, ABC’s David Muir, during the Trump/Harris debate, “fact checked” Donald Trump’s assertion that crime rates had increased under the Harris/Biden Administration, arrogantly sniffing they were decreasing. That was only one of several ludicrously false “fact checks” against Trump, as opposed to no fact checks at all against Harris. What a surprise. It was only a few days later that the truth came out, but first, let’s explore some of the reasons why statistics, particularly those of the FBI, are blatantly false.

Graphic: Chris Muir, Day by Day Cartoon, used with permission

At one time, the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report (UCR) was the gold standard of crime statistics, but that hasn’t been true for a very long time, and during the Harris/Biden years, the FBI’s reporting has become purposely inaccurate.

Part of the reason for this is the success of “Defund the Police” lunacy. Particularly in blue cities, cutting police budgets has created a crime doom loop. Wages comprise most of any police budget. Cut the budget, and officers are fired. Firing officers for political reasons makes recruiting qualified candidates virtually impossible. It also causes officers who can retire to pull the pin, and forces others to flee to states where police officers are allowed to do their jobs. Stuck with DEI mandates and few or no qualified candidates, blue city police forces dramatically reduce hiring standards, accepting even people with drug and alcohol abuse histories and criminal records.

The officers that remain are grossly overworked and have high incidences of illness and stress. Overtime goes through the roof, depleting city coffers. Those blue cities also tend to harass and prosecute officers for doing their jobs, while simultaneously denying them necessary and constitutional tools like stop and frisk, so in self-defense remaining officers tend to do as little as possible, and particularly avoid contact with black criminals, who tend to commit the most crimes, largely against honest black people.

Citizens quickly learn the police aren’t going to respond to calls for service, even 911 calls, and even if they do, they’re not going to solve any crimes, so they quit making reports. Criminals, knowing the police are pretty much going to ignore them and people aren’t going to report their crimes are delighted, and do things they wouldn’t think of doing in communities with fully functional criminal justice systems. Ending bail and refusing to prosecute criminals doesn’t help.
Those same blue cities, knowing crime rates are at obscene, politically deadly, levels do all they can to cover up, and have long since stopped reporting to the FBI. The politicians of any city with out-of-control crime rates tend to avoid talking about them, but blue cities, unable to admit their beliefs and policies are insane and encourage crime, are particularly unwilling to admit the truth.

As the FBI’s statistics more and more obfuscate crime rates in America, even red states and cities lose confidence, and many don’t report to the FBI, suspecting they’ll lie about them. That’s where America is today, thanks to George Floyd worship and woke virtual signaling.

Graphic: X Screenshot

Enter the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, which includes “self-reported” crimes not reported to the FBI.

How bad are things?  This bad:

The annual National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) showed total instances of reported violent crime — including rape, robbery and aggravated assault — is up from 5.6 per 1,000 in 2020 to 8.7 per 1,000 in 2023.

The highest recent rate of violent crime was in 2022, when the survey tracked 9.8 instances per 1,000 people over the age of 12.

The rate of rape increased from 1.2 per 1,000 in 2020 to 1.7 in 2023, while robbery went from 1.6 per 1,000 in 2020 to 2.6 per 1,000 in 2023, and aggravated assault rose from 2.9 per 1,000 in 2020 to 4.5 per 1,000 in 2023.

It gets worse:

The NCVS also showed other forms of crime were up from 2019, including stranger violence (8.1 per 1,000 compared to 11.4 per 1,000 in 2023) and violent crime with a weapon (4.0 per 1,000 vs 5.3 per 1,000 in 2023.)

Motor car theft has also increased from 3.9 per 1,000 in 2019 to 6.1 per 1,000 in 2023.

Those are significant, enormous increases in crime. Americans, particularly those living in blue cities, could have told the FBI, who should have appreciated their “lived experience.”

Friday afternoon, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt called on Muir, the anchor of ABC’s “World News Tonight” to “issue an immediate public apology to President Trump for wrongly and rudely fact checking him on the debate stage.”

Crime rates are on the ballot in November. Donald Trump won’t be holding his breath while waiting for Muir’s apology.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.