(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Real Clear Investigations has caught the FBI manipulating crime statistics, stealthily changing the final stats for 2022 to show that crime went up that year—and not down, as the bureau originally reported.
“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% … 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,” RCI reported Wednesday.
According to RCI, the updated data show that there were 80,029 more violent crimes in 2022 than in 2021—including 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, and 37,091 aggravated assaults.
The FBI never announced the upward revisions. RCI said it only discovered it because the bureau’s website mentioned that it “updated” the data. When RCI compared the original data with the updated set, it found the massive upward revision.
RCI noted that the false statistic that crime dropped in 2022 has been widely reported by mainstream media, and used as a talking point by Democrats. For example, USA Today reported last month that crime dropped for a “third straight year” in 2023.
“It is up to the FBI to explain what they have done, and they haven’t explained these large changes,” Thomas Marvell, the president of Justec Research, a criminal justice statistical research organization, told RCI.
RCI’s bombshell investigation sparked outrage among conservatives, who noted that Donald Trump was “fact checked” by outlets such as ABC News over his claims that crime has risen under the Biden-Harris administration.
The FBI updated their national crime data — without any announcement — adding 80,000 more violent crimes, including over 1,000 more murders. At the debate when Trump said the FBI crime data was unreliable, ABC News “factchecked” him with this “data.” https://t.co/v1ggzwwnhp
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 16, 2024
“At the debate when Trump said the FBI crime data was unreliable, ABC News ‘factchecked’ him with this ‘data,’” political commentator Clay Travis noted.
RCI also asked whether the FBI’s 2023 statistics can be believed, given the enormity of the 2022 revision.
“While the FBI claims that serious violent crime has fallen by 5.8% since Biden took office, the NCVS numbers show that total violent crime has risen by 55.4%. Rapes are up by 42%, robbery by 63%, and aggravated assault by 55% during Biden’s term,” RCI added.
“Since the NCVS started, the largest previous increase over three years was 27% in 2006, so the increase under Biden was slightly more than twice as large.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
