First appearance on Fox: An independent group of law enforcement officials and analysts contends that the violent crime rate is much higher than what the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported in its 2023 violent crime statistics.
The Coalition for Law, Order and Safety released an April 2024 report titled “Assessing America’s Crime Crisis: Trends, Causes, and Consequences,” highlighting the potential for increased crime in most major cities across the United States. They identified four possible causes. – Imprisonment, deindictment, and politicization of the criminal justice system.
The report’s lead authors are Mark Morgan, a former FBI assistant director and acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner during the Trump administration, and Sean Kennedy, an attorney with the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund.
The new report reveals three key findings. One is that the United States is facing a security crisis, plagued by high crime and a dysfunctional justice system. Crime has increased dramatically over the past few years and may be more vicious than some official statistics claim. He also said that while many crimes are down in preliminary FBI data for 2023, violent and serious crimes are still increasing compared to 2019 data.
The researchers said: “To say that crime is decreasing is like coming down from a high mountain, standing on a high cliff, and saying it is closer to the ground: true but misleading.” “This is an inviting statement,” he wrote.
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The Independent Coalition analyzed FBI data. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
The report is consistent with a March 2024 Gallup poll, which found that nearly 80% of Americans personally worry “a lot or a fair amount” about crime and violence. It has been found that the answer is that it takes precedence over other issues and is equivalent to inflation.
“Americans support stronger law enforcement and tougher criminal penalties, as polls show they believe crime is increasing and safety is decreasing,” the report said. It’s increasing,” he said.
Through data sets and victim surveys collected directly from more than 70 of the nation’s largest police departments, researchers found that violent crime has increased “significantly in major cities” compared to pre-2020 levels. claims. The group’s research also found that the FBI’s official data does not fully capture the overall picture of crime in the United States because certain crimes are significantly underreported.
“The FBI data comes with a series of warnings that the FBI hasn’t fully disclosed,” Sean Kennedy, one of the lead researchers, said in an interview on Fox News Digital.
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About 80% of Americans say they personally worry about crime and violence. (St. Petersburg)
Kennedy said that, especially in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd riots, some police departments have redefined the classification of certain violent crimes and moved away from decades-old recording systems.
“If you classify something as an aggravated assault, it’s a violent crime or a felony, but if you classify it as a simple assault, it’s a misdemeanor, a nonviolent crime,” Kennedy said. “It’s a world of difference when it comes to how the media portrays whether your department is fighting violent crime or not.”
But police are not the only ones who appear to be underreporting. Businesses and individuals who have been victims of violent crime are also showing a reluctance to report their crimes to the police. A survey of retailers by the Loss Prevention Research Council reveals the reasons behind reporting failures. The survey found that business owners generally tend to believe that police do not respond quickly, do not investigate crimes, and that prosecutors do not prosecute perpetrators.
“It is difficult to measure how many crimes are underreported and often ‘downplayed’ by law enforcement agencies because the number of reported crimes reflects the classification of the police agency itself. ,” the researchers wrote.
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The FBI said it does not comment on outside reports. It noted that participation in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program is voluntary. (Ocala Police Department)
“FBI data is assumed to be gospel truth when the FBI itself has a series of footnotes all over its own data,” Kennedy said.
In 2019, 89% of city police departments representing approximately 97% of the population submitted crime data to the FBI. To compensate for incomplete data, the FBI will use “estimated” statistics to fill in the gaps, the report notes.
However, by 2021, fewer than 63% of departments across 65% of the population submitted crime data. Several large cities, including Los Angeles, New York City and Chicago, did not submit any crime data to the FBI last year.
When contacted Monday, the FBI said it does not comment on outside reports. Participation in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program is voluntary, he noted, and the UCR program is a way for the FBI to collect crime data from local law enforcement agencies.
But this month, New Orleans police officials announced they had underreported sex crime data submitted to the FBI in 2021 and 2022. Los Angeles Times investigation It has been revealed that the Los Angeles Police Department “systematically downgraded” serious violent crimes to misdemeanors from 2005 to 2014.
The researchers added: “While there is no evidence that police agencies or reporting authorities consistently or persistently engage in such misinformation or manipulation, this suggests that there is a significant gap between actual crime levels and official statistics. “This shows that there are data gaps that we are not aware of,” he added.
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Several large cities, including Los Angeles, did not submit any crime data to the FBI last year. (Manhattan Beach Police Department)
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The report blames high crime rates on anti-crime efforts, which coincides with some states rolling back so-called anti-crime policies. Last year, Democratic lawmakers in California and New York began introducing bills that would restore stiffer penalties for certain violent crimes.
