Drop Dead Fred
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Recently, a lot of media outlets have been claiming that crime has gone down.
But that's only because a lot of crime has not been reported.
Here's what NPR has to say about it:
October 5, 2022
Crime is a huge topic in elections this November, and the FBI has now entered the chat. It has just released the Crime in the Nation report for 2021. But the bureau switched the way it collects crime data this year, and many police departments did not get on board. Los Angeles and New York City did not report to the FBI. In fact, only 63% of the country's police departments submitted anything, and some of the data that was submitted was incomplete.
So we have some states like California and Florida, where almost no agency in that state submitted any data to the FBI. And there are also a lot of larger cities. You know, the largest police department, New York Police Department, didn't submit anything to the FBI.
A lot of blind spots. I mean, I'm wondering how accurate the numbers can possibly be if - just to take the two biggest cities in the country, New York and LA, they didn't report at all.
So the FBI is used to receiving data from more than 90% of police departments across the country. But like you said earlier, in 2021, because they changed their data collection method, the number have dropped to roughly 60%. So instead of saying a finite number, you know, X number of crimes took place, they're saying we think the range of crime that took place in 2021 is somewhere between Y and Z. So for violent crime, property crime and homicides, the number of crimes could have gone up, gone down or stayed the same. We really don't know.
But that's only because a lot of crime has not been reported.
Here's what NPR has to say about it:
The FBI's new crime report is in, but it's incomplete
October 5, 2022
Crime is a huge topic in elections this November, and the FBI has now entered the chat. It has just released the Crime in the Nation report for 2021. But the bureau switched the way it collects crime data this year, and many police departments did not get on board. Los Angeles and New York City did not report to the FBI. In fact, only 63% of the country's police departments submitted anything, and some of the data that was submitted was incomplete.
So we have some states like California and Florida, where almost no agency in that state submitted any data to the FBI. And there are also a lot of larger cities. You know, the largest police department, New York Police Department, didn't submit anything to the FBI.
A lot of blind spots. I mean, I'm wondering how accurate the numbers can possibly be if - just to take the two biggest cities in the country, New York and LA, they didn't report at all.
So the FBI is used to receiving data from more than 90% of police departments across the country. But like you said earlier, in 2021, because they changed their data collection method, the number have dropped to roughly 60%. So instead of saying a finite number, you know, X number of crimes took place, they're saying we think the range of crime that took place in 2021 is somewhere between Y and Z. So for violent crime, property crime and homicides, the number of crimes could have gone up, gone down or stayed the same. We really don't know.