When Straight Arrow News (SAN) reported last October the FBI quietly revised its 2022 crime data, from initially claiming a 2.1 percent decrease to revealing a 4.5 percent increase, the agency may have set in motion a continuing suspicion about violent crime in the U.S., while unintentionally giving American citizens a reason to keep buying and carrying defensive sidearms.
A 2023 Pew Research poll revealed that American gun owners “cite protection far more than other factors, including hunting and sport shooting, as a major reason they own a gun.” The poll said 72 percent of U.S. gun owners said protection is their prime motivation.
Yet, a Gallup poll from last fall revealed Americans’ perception of rising crime had actually diminished by 13 points to 64 percent.
The October report at SAN noted, “These updates alter previous claims reflected in news headlines, indicating that the trend of consecutive years of crime decreased is no longer accurate due to the rise in crime in 2022. The new figures also adjust the narrative for a reported drop in crime for 2023, now reduced from a previously reported 3.5% decrease to just 1.6%.”
What if that data is not entirely reliable, either?
Axios is reporting that “preliminary data” shows homicides declined in the nation’s largest cities last year by 16 percent from 2023. As the Axios report explained, “Stats compiled by the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) suggest that the COVID-era crime wave all but evaporated during President Biden’s final year in office, even as Donald Trump’s claims that crime was rising became a key part of his winning election strategy.”
According to a January report from the Council on Criminal Justice, “From 2018 to 2019 the average homicide rate increased by 10%, then increased another 26% from 2019 to 2020. The rate continued to increase into 2021 (+7%), dropped in 2022 (-7%), and continued to drop in 2023 (-11%). That downward trend continued in 2024. The average reported homicide rate last year was 16% lower than in 2023—representing 631 fewer homicides in the cities that reported data. Across the sample cities, the 2024 average homicide rate was about 6% lower than in 2019. Comparing the most recent six-month trends, the homicide rate during the first half of 2024 was 15% lower, on average, than during the same period in 2023, and 17% lower during the second half of the year.”
History tells us that Samuel Langhorne Clemens, more popularly known by his pseudonym Mark Twain, often used the phrase “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics.” He attributed the remark to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, but there is reportedly some disagreement about that, and Clemens/Twain is often credited as the actual source.
Regardless the source of this remark, it appears to directly apply to the existing situation, and the original question: Can the press and public believe the data?
A report at Real Clear Investigations in October 2024 brought the controversy into sharper focus. Author-researcher John Lott, founder and head of the Montana-based Crime Prevention Research Center, wrote the RCI report, published while Joe Biden was still president and his administration was touting alleged declines in crime.
“Most crimes go unreported,” the RCI report said, “with only about 45% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes brought to the police’s attention, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Since the FBI only tracks reported incidents and this gap is so large, researchers argue that when the media discusses crime rates based on FBI data, they should clarify that it reflects “reported” crime, not give the impression that total crime is changing.”
Later in his report, Lott noted, “While the FBI claims that serious violent crime has fallen by 5.8% since Biden took office, the NCVS numbers show that total violent crime has risen by 55.4%. Rapes are up by 42%, robbery by 63%, and aggravated assault by 55% during Biden’s term. Since the NCVS started, the largest previous increase over three years was 27% in 2006, so the increase under Biden was slightly more than twice as large.”
Take a brief look at how these data debates are born at the local level by checking homicide figures in one city, Seattle, Wash.
According to Seattle Police Department crime data, there were 54 homicides in the city last year, and in 2023, there were 64 killings.
However, according to the popular “X” site Seattle Homicide (not connected to the Seattle police or any other law enforcement agency), last year produced 61 slayings and in 2023, there were 74 murders.
Meanwhile, the Seattle Times reported in January 2024 that the previous year—2023—produced 69 murders. Veteran Times reporter Sara Jean Green, who keeps tabs on the numbers and is considered very good at it, also wrote at the time, “Seattle police, however, have put 2023’s count at 73, a number that includes the discovery of a human skull in Rainier Beach, the death of an unborn baby who died after a pregnant woman was fatally shot in Belltown and the delayed deaths of two men, one who was shot in 2021 and a second who was stabbed last year.”
Based on that paragraph, SPD appears to have revised its data.
Leap ahead to a mid-January Times report by Green for homicides in 2024, where she says there were 61 murders in the Jet City “with 58 homicides investigated by Seattle police and three others committed within city limits investigated by the Washington State Patrol.”
Seattle Homicide reports the same number of murders in the city last year as Green at the Seattle Times.
Which is the accurate number, SPD’s or the figure reported by the Times and Seattle Homicide?
It’s not just Seattle. In Chicago, the Police Department reported 573 homicides for 2024. The Chicago Tribune, which keeps tabs on Windy City slayings, posted the same number in a Jan. 3, 2025 report.
But the popular website HeyJackass.com, which also closely monitors the homicide data, puts last year’s body count at 610.
When the data disagree, doubt erupts. In his October RCI report, Lott wrote, “Even as polls show that Americans are concerned about crime, the FBI and the media are making it difficult to see how crime rates have changed over the last few years. A Gallup survey late last year found that 92% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats thought crime was increasing. A February Rasmussen Reports survey found that, by a 4.7-to-1 margin, likely voters say violent crime in the U.S. is getting worse (61%), not better (13%). A Gallup poll found in March that “crime and violence” was Americans’ second biggest concern, after inflation. But the media and politicians used the inaccurate FBI data to try to convince people that they were wrong.
So the question arises, “Who was right?”
Leading to the most important question of all: “Who should you trust?”
