FBI crime report throws cold water on Trump’s claims

Just days after former President Donald Trump proclaimed on Truth Social that women are “less safe on the streets than they were four years ago,” the FBI released a crime report Monday saying violent crimes, including murder and rape, have plummeted in 2023.

The report found that national violent crime fell by about 3% in 2023 compared to 2022, and that murder and non-negligent manslaughter overall fell by 11.6% compared to the previous year. The agency also reported that in 2023 alone, rape crimes fell by 9.4%. The number of serious assaults fell by an estimated 2.8% last year and the number of robberies fell by 0.3% nationally.

The Ministry of Justice said in June that 2024 is on track to see a “historic decline in violent crime” compared to recent years. For example, in the first quarter of 2024, Attorney General Merrick Garland said violent crime in America is down more than 15% compared to the same quarter in 2023. Murder rates are also down more than 26% in 2024 compared to the same period last year . year.

However, Trump has made crime and border security issues a key part of his 2024 presidential bid.

“Crime is down all over the world – all over the world, except here,” he says claimed during the debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, earlier this month. When debate moderator David Muir checked Trump on the issue, Trump called the FBI quarterly crime report from June – which showed that in the first three months of 2024, violent crime was down 15% compared to the same period last year, and murders were down more than 26% – a “fraud.”

Trump, who was found guilty and convicted of 34 crimes in May for falsifying business records to cover up his affair with adult film star Stormy Daniels, has regularly insisted that immigrants and asylum seekers are responsible for the supposed rise in crime and violence.

But since 1960 – according to a report released by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2023 and revised in March 2024 – found that immigrants and asylum seekers are 60% less likely to be incarcerated than all U.S.-born men, and 30% less likely to be incarcerated to go to prison than white men. US-born men.

Ames Grawert, senior adviser for the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told JS on Monday that falsifications of crime statistics are not just bad form for politicians eager to generate buzz.

“Data informs not only how policymakers respond to crime, but also how members of the public perceive their communities and daily lives,” Grawert said. “It becomes much more difficult to understand the challenges our communities actually face, and to create smart, timely solutions to those problems, when our leaders unreasonably question the reliability of government data.”

The new FBI report is based on data from law enforcement agencies across the US, and while not every police force in the country responds to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, some 16,000 entities do. They include various state, county, city, university and college, and tribal agencies. According to the FBI, participating agencies cover 94.3% of all Americans, or approximately 316 million people.

In a statement following Monday’s FBI report, President Joe Biden took some credit for the decline in violent crime.

“When Vice President Harris and I took office, our country had just seen the highest increase in homicides ever recorded under the previous administration,” the president said. “We immediately got to work – passing the American Rescue Plan, which led to the largest-ever federal investment in public safety. Today, new data submitted to the FBI reaffirms that Americans are safer than when we took office.”

Harris also praised the results of the American Rescue Plan, noting that “every Republican in Congress voted against it [it].”

That accountShe said she has provided more than $15 billion to cities and states to “fund public safety and violence prevention strategies, hire and keep police officers informed, while investing in community violence interventions and other critical take steps to protect our families.”

“Americans are safer now than when we came to power. Last year we saw the largest decline in homicides on record, which is now 16% below 2020 levels,” Harris said in a statement. “Violent crime is at a nearly 50-year low. Our progress continues this year, building on substantial declines during previous years of our administration.”

Biden and Harris both said efforts to reduce crime should continue through 2025 and beyond.

In particular, the president called on Congress to act on his proposed ban on assault weapons. Biden called for the ban to continue after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, last year, and brought it up again after the assassination attempt on Trump in July. But Democrats have been unable to muster the votes needed to pass the measure, as Republicans have argued that the issue is not about guns, but rather about mental health crises or lapses in the security of the Secret Service’s agents. agency tasked with protecting Trump.

Biden also called for a new round of investment in police, which would fund 100,000 additional police officers nationwide and create a “strong” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, he said.

Even as the Biden administration calls for more police funding, it has failed to change policies aimed at protecting Americans of color.

Like JS reported in May, the president urged Congress to take action George Floyd Justice in Policing Acta police reform bill, marking the fourth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. It was first introduced in 2021.

The legislation proposes a narrowing qualified immunity for police officers who commit violence, impose restrictions on chokeholds and subpoenas, and create a database to track police misconduct across the country.