Law enforcement experts are poking holes in the Biden administration's repeated claims that violent crime has fallen to its lowest level in 50 years, saying the Justice Department “manipulated the data” to reach its conclusion. claims.
The Biden administration has repeatedly asserted that violent crime will be at its lowest level in 50 years in 2024, based on FBI statistics. The FBI defines “violent crimes” as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
But Ken Alexandrou, a security expert who served as a police officer in Nashville, Tennessee, for 26 years, said the previous administration “manipulated the data” to achieve certain results.
“The way the crime statistics are created is that police departments across the country send all of their Category 1 crimes, which are violent crimes, to the FBI, and the FBI creates the national statistics,” Alexandrou said. “But when a new government comes in, changes occur and reporting conditions change.”
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Then-President Joe Biden listens to an introduction before speaking to police chiefs from around the country and members of his administration at the White House on February 28, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
News program changes
The Biden administration has done just that, Alexandrou argued. He said the administration changed reporting from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
“Ask anyone on the street and they won't tell you it's safer or that crime has gone down, but it's the local, state and federal governments that make districts feel safe. It's a leader's job to do that.'' So how do we do that? Well, we have some police chiefs and city managers who have had problems manipulating statistics,'' he said. Ta.
The Biden-Harris administration says crime is down, but independent data shows violent crime is increasing in 66 cities.
Alexandrou, who founded Agape Tactical LLC, said police will take out a “piece of the pie” to show voters that crime is down.
“A city might remove domestic homicides one year and drug-related homicides the next. So you're taking two pies away,” he said. “So in order to manipulate the statistics, they extract a portion of the population to prove that they are doing their job.”
“The government did the same thing by changing the way it reported crime,” he said.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik/File)
Percentage of police stations that do not report
He said that in 2023, 70% of police departments that were reporting under the UCR program stopped reporting under the NIBRS program.
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“And keep in mind that these are cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and 45% of Florida are not reporting,” he said. “When these major cities don’t report, the statistics and crime rates go down because crime goes way down.”
“If these major cities didn't report, crime would drop significantly…”
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a memorial service at the Department of Justice on January 16, 2025 in Washington. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The Biden-Harris Department of Justice reported a 17.5% decrease in the murder rate in 2024. Also, in the first three quarters of this year, rapes were down 7.1%, aggravated assaults were down 3.6% and robberies were down 7.8%.
Violent crime decreased by 1.7% from 2021 to 2022 and by 3% from 2022 to 2023. And it decreased by 10.3% from 2023 to the second quarter of 2024. Over the same period, the homicide rate decreased by 6.1% from 2021 to 2022, by 11.6% in 2023, and finally by 22.7% in 2024.
The Justice Department noted that the data comes from 85 cities. He did not say which city made the report.
Murder numbers plummeted last year under the Biden administration compared to President Trump: Report
On April 11, 2022, then-President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris appeared at the White House. (Ting Sheng/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Biden administration has previously changed crime statistics
In 2022, the Biden administration's FBI quietly updated its crime data in what was touted as a victory for the administration, despite previous data showing a decline in violent crime that year.
The data marks a tipping point in the U.S. crime problem after a 2020 crime wave that saw police defunding, protests and riots sweep across the country, and pandemic stay-at-home orders overturned. Partly praised by Democrats and the media. daily life.
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Fox News Digital has reached out to the Department of Justice, New York City Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department, and Chicago Police Department for comment.
Fox News' David Spunt and Emma Colton contributed to this report.
