Biden-Harris admin claims crime is down, but independent data analysis shows violent crime on the rise

WASHINGTON, DC: Despite the Biden-Harris administration showcasing recent data from major US cities to demonstrate a reduction in violent crime under their leadership, a crime data specialist told Fox News that their analysis reveals an increase in violent crime compared to pre-COVID-19 levels.

"Americans are safer today than when Vice President Harris and I took office," a statement from President Joe Biden's office claims, "We can’t stop now. That’s why I will continue to urge Congress to fund 100,000 additional police officers and crime prevention and community violence intervention programs and make commonsense gun safety reforms such as a ban on assault weapons."

The Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA), which has been releasing annual crime statistics for 69 major cities across America since 2014, has issued a preliminary data set indicating a decrease in violent crime levels from January to June 2023 compared to 2024 levels, with 3,124 violent crime incidents in 2024, down from 3,783 in 2023.

What did MCAA’s preliminary crime data infer from their analysis of reported crime statistics?

Laura Cooper, executive director of MCCA, told the outlet that they gather violent crime data from their member agencies, which consist of the largest police departments across the United States.

This data is voluntarily shared every quarter by the departments themselves. MCCA does not utilize public or open-source data and only incorporates participating agencies.

However, upon reviewing a longer time frame rather than solely year-to-year comparisons, the data, potentially influenced by underreporting or changes in crime categorization, indicates that crime is indeed on the upswing.

Cooper noted, "If you compare pre-Covid like we're trending in the right direction, but aggravated assault is still up over 16% from 2019.”

“That's sizable. And especially when people are feeling unsettled by crime, aggravated assault is a better barometer of sentiment, when it comes to crime than the homicide numbers. Homicide is still up since 2019," she added.

An Axios analysis of MCCA's data reported a 6% overall reduction in violent crime across 69 cities during the first half of 2024 compared to the same period last year.

The outlet’s analysis revealed that 54 of these cities reported a decline in violent crimes including, homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault during the first six months of 2024.

The cities covered in the survey include Albuquerque, New Mexico; Arlington, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Aurora, Colorado; Austin, Texas; Baltimore; Boston; Buffalo, New York; Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina; Chicago; Cincinnati; Cleveland; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas; DeKalb County, Georgia; Denver; Detroit; El Paso, Texas; Fairfax County, Virginia; Fort Worth, Texas; Fresno, California; Honolulu; Houston; Indianapolis; Jacksonville, Florida; and Kansas City, Missouri, among others.

What do other independent studies claim regarding the trend in violent crimes across the US?

The Coalition for Law, Order, and Safety (CLOS), an independent public policy group, claims that their analysis shows a rise in violent crime across 66 major US cities.

CLOS's data from January to June 2019 compared to the same period in 2024 indicates a 9.6% increase in total violent crime, with aggravated assault up by almost 25% and murder up by 6.4%.

According to Sean Kennedy, the executive director for CLOS, "The problem is in this game of telephone, the agencies don't always submit correct data or possibly the MCCA creates a typo, or gets the data mangled. So, that becomes a problem where you see data not matching what the law enforcement agency publicly reports."

"The most flagrant example is publicly on the Philadelphia website," Kennedy noted. "There are twice as many murders in Philadelphia in the period they're describing than what the MCCA reported."

CLOS's violent crime data, initially disclosed to Fox News, excludes certain areas like Oklahoma City, LA County Sheriff, New Orleans, and St Louis County due to missing data.

Kennedy pointed out that the available data sets are not flawless, and various sources, including FBI data and law enforcement agency data, aim to provide an approximation of crime trends in the United States.

"The data sets are fallible," Kennedy mentioned. "There's no perfect data. The FBI data is not perfect. The MCCA data is not perfect, even the law enforcement agency data isn't perfect. They're all trying to get an approximation of what the trend lines and the volume of crime is in the United States, so you can look at your local area and what the local numbers look like, what the local factors are, and then say, ‘Does this trend hold elsewhere?’"

He further stated that Washington, DC has not become safer compared to the first six months of President Biden’s term, with the number of murders remaining unchanged and an increase in reported sexual assault for the first half of 2024 compared to 2021, based on CLOS data.

CLOS' data indicated that there were 1,025 reported robberies in the first six months of 2024, up from 817 in the same period of 2021, which suggests a rise in robbery rates. Additionally, the decrease in aggravated assaults from 755 to 538 is modest compared to historical levels.

While a slight decrease from the previous year was observed, the overall violent crime in Washington, DC showed a marginal increase, with a total of 1,744 violent crimes reported in the first half of 2024 compared to 1,747 in 2021, indicating that crime is still higher than during Biden’s initial six months in office.

Kennedy clarified that the numbers make sense in the context, saying, “For example, of robbery, when you compare these numbers are actually in some categories will be worse in if you compare 2020 the first half of 2020 to the first half of 2024, and it makes total sense if you know what you're looking at, and that is in the first half of 2020, robberies generally went down in a lot of jurisdictions because of COVID. Basically, you can't mug people if they're not there."

Public reactions to violent crime data dispute across social media

One X user remarked, "Are they Republican led cities? How many cities are there in America?" [sic]

Another user said, "Sure you can cherry pick but there are hundreds of cities and overall, across US, violent crime is way down from Trump era crime wave." [sic]

A user argued, "Obama left Trump Peace & Prosperity. Trump added 8 trillion to the debt and 1 of 2 Presidents to lose jobs. Now he runs on Harris cleaning up his mess?!" [sic]

One X user claimed, "Yet the OVERALL rate is down. Thank you Biden." [sic]

Another user asserted, "FBI data show sharp drop in violent crime."

Finally, this user tweeted, "And I bet they are all in red states."

 

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