The ABC “journalists” moderating the debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris found fault with some of the comments made by Trump. One of his comments had to do with rising crime rates, and David Muir disputed this assertion. However, Trump was correct and Muir was wrong -- very wrong.

The real crime statistics

Between 2020 (Trump’s last year in office) and 2023 (the last year for which there are complete stats) the “violent victimization rate” soared 37 percent, from 16.4 incidents per thousand to 22.5 incidents per thousand. There were also big increases in other categories of crime.

The figures below were reported in Table 1 of the National Crime Victimization Survey, prepared by the U.S. Department of Justice (Bureau of Justice Statistics). The survey results were just released (September 2024).

Here are some of the specific types of violent crime for which there are statistics. Note that there was an increase in every category of violent crime.

Source: Table 1 in Criminal Victimization, 2023

In addition to the increase in violent crime, there was an increase in property crime over the same period of time. Survey responses show that total property crime increased from 94.5 incidents per 1000 to 102.2 incidents per 1000 -- mostly in relation to motor vehicle theft and “other theft,” which would include shoplifting.

The phony crime statistics

As Trump said, crime rates went “through the roof” during the Harris-Biden administration. This is not debatable, so why did David Muir say that crime rates were coming down? Trump offered an answer during the debate: Muir was using incomplete data reported by the FBI.

FBI statistics are scandalously incomplete for two fundamental reasons:

1. As Trump explained, not all police departments report their statistics to the FBI. In the year 2023 (the last year for which there are complete records), these states submitted incomplete crime data:

Source: The Marshall Project

2. A much bigger factor is that not all victims report crime to the police. Only about 44 percent of “total violent crime” was reported to the police in 2023, according to Table 4 in the FBI’s report on “Criminal Victimization, 2023.”

Why don’t people report violent crime to the police? There could be several reasons. In some neighborhoods, victims don’t call the police because they anticipate very slow response times. In other situations, victims believe that justice would take months or years because prosecutors are backlogged. In other cases, a victim may be afraid to antagonize the perpetrator by reporting his crime. Still others don’t want a police investigation because they, themselves, are engaged in crime. This is particularly true for illegal migrants. After breaking the law by crossing the border, many of them break it again by getting phony Social Security cards so they can become employed or get a driver’s license.

The bottom line is that many victims don’t call the police, and many police departments do not report their activities to the FBI.

Most people who are politically informed know that the ABC moderators were wrong about crime and several other debate issues, including a long list of misstatements made by Kamala Harris.

This brings us to the age-old question that conservatives must constantly consider: Are mainstream media reporters ignorant, are they politically biased, or is it some combination of both?

Joe Fried is an Ohio-based CPA who has performed and reviewed hundreds of certified financial audits. He is the author of the book, Debunked? An auditor reviews the 2020 election, and How Elections Are Stolen, which outlines 23 problems that must be fixed before the 2024 election. More information can be found at https://joefriedcpa.substack.com/, Joe’s permanently free substack account.

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