The claim: During Tuesday's presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump claimed that an FBI report that violent crime is declining is a “fraud.”
Verdict: It's true: The FBI report doesn't include the thousands of police departments that don't report crime data to the federal agency.
On June 24, 2024, Breitbart News quoted President Joe Biden as saying at Everytown for Gun Safety:
You see, the year before I took office, the murder rate saw its highest rate of increase on record. Last year, the murder rate fell to its largest ever drop. (inaudible) (applause) And the murder rate continues to fall faster than it's ever been. Last year, we had one of the lowest violent crime rates in 50 years. Murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, larceny and property crimes were all significantly down.
Breitbart News noted that Biden did not mention the decline in crime reports from police departments across the country in 2021 and 2022.
Marshall Project explanation In 2020, “nearly every law enforcement agency was included in the FBI's database,” the report said. But in 2021, the FBI implemented a new system for data collection, and police department reports will only be accepted through the new system.
The result? “Thousands of police agencies fell through the cracks because they didn't catch on to the changes in time.” As a result, the number of police departments that submitted crime data dropped significantly in 2022. The Marshall Project reported in 2023 that “more than 6,000 law enforcement agencies were missing from the FBI's national crime data last year, nearly one-third of the nation's 18,000 police agencies.”
Trump was right to point out the inaccuracies in the low violent crime numbers: The reports on which they were based were incomplete.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Constitutional Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the author and curator of Breitbart News' weekly Constitutional Amendment newsletter, Down Range with AWR Hawkins, which focuses on all things Constitutional Amendment. He is a political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, a pro staff member for Pulsar Night Vision, and the Global Marketing Director for Lone Star Hunts. He was a visiting scholar at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and earned his PhD in Military History. Follow him on Instagram. FollowIf you'd like to subscribe to Down Range, please sign up at breitbart.com/downrange. To get in touch directly, please email awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
