The Left is pushing a narrative that violent crime is not increasing. Of course, this contradicts what we see happening on the nightly news with our own eyes. So, who are we to believe? In the words of Chico Marx, “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”
Even the FBI has joined in gaslighting us about who is committing crime.
This is what our “lying eyes” are seeing: gangs of looters surging into stores, smashing display cases, grabbing expensive items, and then racing off in waiting cars; immigrants beating and kicking police officers on the street; violent criminals set free with no bail who then go on to commit heinous crimes; the National Guard being deployed to protect passengers on New York subways. (READ MORE from Pat Nolan: Will Democrats Finally Address the Mental Health Crisis?)
Yet, despite what we see with our own eyes, the liberal establishment wants us to believe that violent crimes are not increasing. These “experts” are “gaslighting” us — psychologically manipulating us by trying to cast doubt on what we see. Don’t buy their propaganda. They cherry pick statistics to buttress their false narrative. Mark Twain put it well, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Liberals “cook the books” on crime by carefully selecting which data will lead to their preordained conclusion. For instance, The Third Way, a Democrat group, deliberately chose to analyze murder rates at the state level to reach the counterintuitive conclusion that, “The murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Donald Trump has exceeded the murder rate in the 25 states that voted for Joe Biden in every year from 2000 to 2020.”
The problem with this analysis is that crime is inherently local. A high crime city can be in the same state as other much safer areas. Hence, Sayville, New York on Long Island is much safer than the Bronx, New York. So, a fair analysis would assess the number of murders committed in each community, not statewide. However, that would not produce the numbers the Third Way wanted. So, they analyzed them by state, to arrive at a starkly different conclusion than if they had looked at murders by county.
When analyzed by counties, the murder rate in Biden counties is much higher than in the Trump counties (5.97 vs 2.58 per 100,000). In fact, the Biden counties have murder rates that are 131 percent higher. Digging deeper into the statistics, even in Trump states. the county breakdown shows clearly that higher murder rates are driven by the murder rates in Biden counties.
For example, Missouri, which Trump carried, has both urban areas as well as rural counties. A CBS News investigation found that Missouri contains two of the “deadliest U.S. cities.” St. Louis had the highest murder rate in the nation, with 64.54 murders per 100,000 residents. Kansas City was close behind with the eighth-highest murder rate at 29.88 murders per 100,000. The FBI reports that Missouri had about 520 murders in major metropolitan areas that year. On the other hand, 20 were committed in cities outside metropolitan areas, and 28 were in nonmetropolitan counties. So, the large (deep blue) cities accounted for 91 percent of the murders in Missouri.
Lest you think I am cherry picking stats, the same holds true for other red states: Tennessee (Memphis, Chattanooga, Nashville), Alabama, (Birmingham and Tuscaloosa), Kentucky (Louisville), Arkansas (Little Rock), and Mississippi (Jackson). All those cities had high murder rates, ranging from 11.66 to 50.62 per 100,000 people, and had Democratic Mayors. Without those cities, the states’ murder rates would drop significantly. Do you notice a pattern emerging here? (READ MORE: Prisoner Rape Is No Joke)
There is another serious problem with the crime statistics — they probably undercount the number of violent crimes because many large cities didn’t provide their crime statistics to the FBI. In fact, over 7,000 cities (representing about 35 percent of the population of the U.S.), did not submit their crime figures to the FBI. Among those that didn’t report were violent crime hotspots like New York and Los Angeles. According to crimereport.com, “Most of the missing jurisdictions appear to be Democrat-run areas with some of the largest increases and thus the increase in murders in Democrat jurisdictions might be underestimated.” Ya think?
Even the FBI has joined in gaslighting us about who is committing crime. In a recent post warning about the problems caused by organized retail theft, the FBI chose a picture of two middle-class women in designer clothes to portray retail thieves. What a joke! Once again, our “lying eyes” tell us that those aren’t the people looting stores. A hint to the FBI: to regain credibility, stop pretending that women such as the ones pictured are the reason the laundry detergent is locked up at Walmart. In short, we trust our “lying eyes,” not your propaganda.
Pat Nolan is Director Emeritus at the Nolan Center for Justice at the American Conservative Union Foundation and has been a leader on criminal justice issues for over forty years.