Oakland Mayor Sheng Tao’s claim that crime had decreased by 33% in his city was met with widespread applause from Governor Gavin Newsom and local media. However, a closer examination of the data reveals a shocking truth: the numbers were fabricated. The Oakland Police Department compared partially counted crime data from 2024 to fully counted data from 2023, creating a false narrative of a declining crime rate.
This is just one example of the Democrats’ long history of lying about crime. Following the revelation that President Joe Biden is not fit for office, Truth Voices asked, “What else are the Democrats lying about?” In the coming weeks, we will explore a range of blue party falsehoods in a series of editorials.
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey are the two primary sources of crime data in the United States. For decades, these two datasets largely corroborated each other, providing a reliable picture of crime trends. However, since President Biden took office in 2021, the FBI numbers have reported significantly lower crime rates than the DOJ numbers.
Part of this discrepancy can be attributed to the FBI’s new reporting requirements, which have led to a significant decline in the number of local law enforcement agencies submitting data. In 2019, 89% of local entities covering 97% of the population submitted data, but in 2021, only 63% covering 65% of the population did so. Large cities controlled by Democrats, such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City, have failed to submit any data at all.
The FBI data only captures crime when it is reported to police, which can be a flawed metric. In cities like San Francisco, many retailers have stopped reporting thefts due to the lack of enforcement and the refusal of left-wing prosecutors to prosecute. In some cases, Democrats have even threatened the public to dissuade them from reporting crimes.
According to the latest Gallup poll, 92% of Republicans and 58% of Democrats believe crime is increasing. However, the FBI claims it is falling. The DOJ, on the other hand, reports a 40% increase in the violent victimization rate from 2021 to 2022, with only 42% of violent victimizations reported to police.
For over a decade, the Democratic Party has aligned itself with George Soros and his pro-criminal prosecutors. Biden has also turned the southern border into a porous entry point, releasing millions of violent crime-committing illegal immigrants into the country. The public rightly feels that Biden and the Democrats have not restored order from the lawlessness of the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020. Democrats can manipulate crime statistics to make the case that crime is down, but voters won’t believe them, nor should they.
