A very strange set of data from the FBI was found by John R. Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center.
“We all remember the famous fact-check in the presidential debate when Trump said crime rates were going up, and ABC News said, ‘According to the FBI, crime rates have not been going up.’” Liz Wheeler said to Lott.
“You have found this to be false,” she says.
“Every September, the FBI releases its data from the previous year. And I saw that their data had changed a lot just by looking at the Excel files they sent out for last year and this year, for 2022 and 2023,” he says.
“They have a footnote that says they have changed or revised the data for 2022, but they didn’t say anything else about it,” he says.
David Muir, who moderated the debate between Trump and Vice President Harris on ABC News, used numbers from this data. John said that the FBI “missed around 880,000 violent crimes.”
They didn’t catch 1,699 killings, more than 10,000 rapes, 33,000 thefts, or 37,000 serious assaults. “And they missed around 198,000 property crimes,” he says.
“What do you mean when you say that 1,699 murders were missed?”
“Well, it’s not really clear. They just give you the data and don’t tell you what happened,” he says.
“It is so misleading.” Wheeler adds, “It’s also a good reminder of what the left and mainstream media have told us. In fact, it’s a form of gaslighting when a conservative says, ‘Listen, our cities are facing a surge in violent crime where our neighborhoods are not as safe,’ and the left has said, ‘Oh, violent crime is going down.’”
