You may recall moderator David Muir’s correction of President Trump during the September 10 debate with Kamala Harris (transcript here). Muir purported to fact-check Trump’s assertion that “crime here is up and through the roof.” Muir instructed viewers: “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country…”
Jeff Anderson is president of the American Main Street Initiative and the former Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the Department of Justice (2017-2021). He has fact-checked Muir in the September 22 Wall Street Journal column “Contrary to Media Myth, U.S. Urban Crime Rates Are Up” (behind the Journal’s paywall). This week he also summarized the problem with Muir’s immoderate moderation in the accessible City Journal column “Are FBI crime statistics reliable?”
Long story short: Crime is not down. The National Crime Victimization Survey demonstrates that crime rates didn’t change to a statistically significant degree from 2022 to 2023. It also shows that the violent crime rate in urban areas rose 40 percent from 2019 (pre-defund the police) to 2023. Muir’s intercession on this point should have been a crime. That’s why Anderson was yelling at the TV during the debate.
Fox News took up Anderson’s critique of Muir in “Crime data guru ‘frustrated’ by media insisting crime is down under Biden-Harris: ‘Huge spike in our cities.’” The excellent Fox News story includes an enlightening video of Anderson’s elucidation of his analysis (below).
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/10/crime-spike-or-decline.php
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