In a discreet move, the FBI updated its earlier report showing a decrease in crime for the year 2022 — during President Biden and Vice President Harris’s second year in office — to indicate instead that violent crime had actually increased by 4.5 percent.
On June 11, 2024, President Joe Biden, in a statement, inaccurately credited his and Harris’s administration for a reduction in crime rates:
“You know, the year before I came to the presidency, the murder rate was the highest increase on record. Last year, we saw the largest decrease of murder in the history of (inaudible). (Applause.) And those rates are continuing to fall faster than ever. Last year, we also saw one of the lowest rates of all violent crime in nearly 50 years. Murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery all dropped sharply, along with burglary and property crime.”
Breitbart News, on June 24, 2024, conducted a “FACT CHECK” on the FBI’s findings for 2022’s lower crime rates, pointing out that the report lacked data from numerous police precincts that failed to submit their crime data.
Multiple media outlets have also raised concerns about the initial FBI report, which has now been amended by the agency after several months.
On October 16, 2024, Real Clear Investigations highlighted:
“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%. This quickly became, and remains, 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%. The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.
The updated FBI data for 2022 shows there were 1,699 more murders than originally reported, 7,780 more rapes, over 33,000 more robberies, and over 37,000 more aggravated assaults.”
Professor Carl Moody, a prominent crime researcher at the College of William & Mary, commented on the rarity of such significant revisions to the FBI’s crime reports in the current century.
Moody remarked, “I have checked the data on total violent crime from 2004 to 2022, there were no revisions from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020, there were small changes of less than one percentage point. The huge changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without an explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI data.”
