Throughout the presidential race, Democrats pushed the narrative, energized by the FBI’s September 2024 Uniform Crime Report Summary, that violent crime was down.
It didn’t work, as Donald Trump went on to win both the popular vote and a strong Electoral College majority running on a platform promising to crack down on crime.
Now, new reports and legislative efforts at the state and federal levels reveal the true and darker reality about crime in America: Murders and other violent crimes have risen.
According to a report by John R. Lott Jr. of Real Clear Investigations, the FBI did what he referred to as a “stealth revision” of the figures in the Uniform Crime Report Summary of Crime in the Nation released September 2024. Lott says in his report that revised statistics show a sharp rise in the 2022 numbers.
“When the FBI originally released the ‘final’ crime data for 2022 in September 2023, it reported that the nation’s violent crime rate fell by 2.1 percent. This quickly became a Democratic Party talking point to counter Donald Trump’s claims of soaring crime. But the FBI has quietly revised those numbers, releasing new data that shows violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5 percent. The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.”
Only a footnote at the bottom of page three of the FBI summary states: “The 2022 violent crime rate has been updated for inclusion in CIUS, 2023.”
That runs counter to the now questionable narrative pushed by major media outlets, as well as then-presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, in an official September 23 White House press release.
“Today’s new data submitted to the FBI confirms that our dedicated efforts and collaborative partnerships with law enforcement are working; Americans are safer now than when we took office,” she said. “Last year, we saw the largest ever one-year decrease in the homicide rate, which now stands 16 percent below its 2020 level. Violent crime is at a near 50-year low.”
Neither Harris nor President Joe Biden commented on the FBI revisions.
Contacted by DVJournal about the issue, the FBI acknowledged the data it reported for 2021 was not reliable.
“The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program transitioned from the traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS) to the more comprehensive National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for the 2021 data collection year,” the Bureau wrote. “A significant number of agencies were unable to complete the transition to NIBRS in 2021. Due to the lower volume of participation, the FBI was unable to produce the traditional national estimates for 2021.”
Therefore, 2021 counts now showing in the 20-year estimation tables reflect only estimates based on the data directly reported to the FBI. “This explains why the figure appears different than the computed estimation published in the Crime in the Nation, 2022,” the FBI statement added.
The FBI had no further comment and the statement is not on the Bureau’s website.
Former Philadelphia assistant district attorney Carlos Vega said he has a hard time taking the FBI’s response at face value.
“It seems to me that big government wants to lull the public into a false sense of security when violent crime is actually out of control and aren’t telling us what’s really happening,” he said. “My question is, was this done to impact the election? Also, there was no press conference about this revision. It was all done very quietly and the general public isn’t going to go rooting around in the weeds looking for the real information. They’re going to believe what the government says.”
State Rep. Martina White (R-Philadelphia) said the revisions by the Bureau make discerning the truth about important facts problematic.
“We initially saw figures from the FBI that painted one story, only to see those same figures later revised to tell a completely different one,” White said. “When the facts aren’t consistent, it becomes challenging to discern the truth. Regardless of what the statistics show, one thing remains clear: we need to hold criminals accountable for their actions.”
In an effort to counter rising crime, U.S. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), along with cosponsors Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced HR-27, to counter a nationwide trend of George Soros-backed “woke prosecutors” declining to prosecute murder, aggravated assault, robbery, rape, burglary, motor vehicle theft, arson and other serious crimes.
“Criminals are victimizing innocent Americans, and woke prosecutors are letting them do it over and over again. Louisianians and all Americans deserve to know when their district attorneys refuse to stand up for victims. Our bill would require prosecutors to report what crimes they fail to prosecute so that Americans can better hold their public servants accountable,” Kennedy said in a statement.
The bill would apply to state and local prosecutors in the 50 U.S. cities in which crime is most on the rise. Jurisdictions with a formal policy that eliminates cash bail for offenses involving a firearm would lose certain federal grant funding.
“Over the past two years, we’ve seen a disturbing trend in big-city district attorneys working to keep dangerous criminals on our streets rather than behind bars. The same type of woke policies have been enacted by progressive DAs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, and voters have had enough,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) who is leading companion legislation in the House of Representatives.
Perhaps not surprisingly, in Philadelphia at least one hundred accused criminals awaiting trial were released from the city jails. “The Defender Association of Philadelphia, in partnership with the District Attorney’s Office and the First Judicial District, worked to identify a list of people charged with relatively low-level offenses and who remained in jail because they couldn’t afford bail,” the Inquirer reported.
But the report titled “Violence in America: How the Pro-Criminal, Anti-Law Enforcement Policies Embraced by the Biden-Harris Administration Endanger All Americans” details how what it refers to as rogue prosecutors in Democrat-run jurisdictions downgrade serious crimes, refuse to prosecute the laws on the books, and put violent criminals ahead of innocent communities.
Exactly what Kennedy’s proposed bill would address.
Part of the report focuses on Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner. During a committee field hearing held in Philadelphia on May 3, 2024, at the William J. Green Federal Building, Terri O’Connor testified about the 2020 murder of her police officer husband, Cpl. Jim O’Connor, while his SWAT team was serving a warrant.
O’Connor said her husband’s accused killer, Hassan Elliott, should have been in prison but was released.
“The man who fired the shots that killed my husband was charged two years prior for carrying a firearm without a license,” she said. She went on to describe in heartbreaking detail how the accused and co-defendants had been rearrested several times before the murder of her husband but were repeatedly released by the district attorney’s office, often with low bail, no bail, dropped or withdrawn charges, or time served.
“We have a district attorney who says crime is down. Well, obviously if you don’t prosecute criminals, of course, it appears that way,” O’Connor tearfully said.
The defendants have all been federally charged in the case.
“Fully prosecuting violent offenders will lead to safer communities, as those perpetrators are kept behind bars,” said White. “But this requires prosecutors to do their job effectively and not release offenders with inadequate prosecutions or sweetheart deals that put criminals first and victims last.”
The district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comments.
