According to the NY Times, crime in your major Dem City (15 of 16 largest US cities are Dem run) has returned to normal. Everything is just fine. Seem that way to you? Everything feel fine? Are the police free to do their job without being thrown under the bus, prosecutors able to do their job? Think Kim Fox and other Soros promoted DAs.
It turns out that the number of police departments that report crime to the FBI has fallen, quickly. In 2019 about 89% of municipal police depts reported. Two years later that figure had fallen to 63%. Ergo, if your a Dem running a City don't help spread the narrative that crime is a problem under your watch.
Just 24% of NYC's police departments now send their crime data to the FBI.
Oh BTW, do you trust the FBI? Just asking.
Understanding crime
By German Lopez, NY Times
1/1/25
The last year was often tumultuous and chaotic, but it ended with good news: Murders and crime in general declined across the country throughout 2024.
I know some of you will be skeptical about the trend. You may have seen reports about the problems with national crime data. The F.B.I. recently had to revise its own numbers, showing that violent crime actually increased in 2022 — not decreased, as it previously reported. Can you really trust national crime statistics?
But here at The Morning, we have never relied on the F.B.I.’s data. We use figures directly from local and state police departments, independently compiled in the Real-Time Crime Index by the crime analyst Jeff Asher’s team.
In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain what the numbers show.
Continued decline
The data contains a lot of good news. First, the drop in murders that began in 2022 has accelerated. Murders fell so quickly that 2024 could have ended with fewer murders than the year before the pandemic. The nationwide murder rate was still on track to be higher than it was during its lowest point ever recorded, in 2014, but not much higher. (The 2024 data is up-to-date through October.)
If the drop in murders continued at the same rate for the rest of the year, 2024 had the largest percent decrease — nearly 16 percent — ever recorded nationwide.
Other violent crimes also declined. Robberies and rapes were lower than they were before the pandemic. Aggravated assaults were still elevated from the pre-Covid days, but they trended down in 2024. Property crimes as a whole also fell, although auto thefts in particular remained higher than they were before the pandemic.
In general, the data suggests the pandemic, and its consequences, contributed to more crime: Disorder rose and fell along with Covid.
The data does not encompass the entire country. It tracks 300 cities with about one quarter of the U.S. population. But national trends are historically similar to those of so many cities put together. This data is also all we have for now, although the F.B.I. told me that, soon, it plans to start releasing national crime data on a monthly basis.
Finding agreement
It is strange that we have to rely on a privately funded crime index instead of the government to get this data. Asher and his team are simply collecting data from as many police departments as possible and posting it in real time. A federal agency should be able to do the same.
The data is a matter of public interest, but also one of public safety. The country’s inability to reliably track national crime statistics makes it harder to respond to problems.
Consider how Congress deals with economic crises. We get economic statistics on a monthly basis, and federal lawmakers can quickly pivot. In 2020 and 2021, Congress passed three major stimulus measures in response to data showing that Covid had damaged the economy.
In that same period, murders and other crimes were on the rise. But the lack of national data made it difficult to know if the rise was truly national or constrained to the few cities releasing real-time data. Congress never passed an anti-crime equivalent of an economic stimulus bill.
Asher hopes that his work will help get people to agree on the crime trends. Then, policymakers can work on solutions. “The conversation we should be having isn’t: What are the trends?” he said. “The conversations we should be having are: What’s causing it? Who’s at fault? Who’s to credit? What programs are working?”
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