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Trump was right about crime rates
By Mike McDaniel
Oct. 19, 2025
Dr. John R. Lott Jr. is an unusual researcher in these days of fake research. Head of the Crime Prevention Research Center, Lott conducts meticulous research on issues of crime, guns and related topics. What makes Lott unusual is he provides his data sets and methodology on request. He doesn’t make things up. He's actually fully transparent.
He drives Democrats crazy.
The honest among them—there are a few—will say they hate his conclusions but can’t fault his methods. The rest wildly attack his work, but are always long on heated, hyperbolic rhetoric and short on valid argument.
In a recent Real Clear Politics article, Lott addresses the reality of American crime rates. He begins by harkening back to the Trump/Harris debate where Trump correctly asserted crime was increasing:
ABC moderator David Muir immediately fact-checked him, claiming, “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country…”
Lott noted the usual Democrat media suspects backed Muir. The Wall Street Journal, Vox and Axios among them. NPR, who Democrats are holding the government hostage to refund, headlined: “Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don’t believe it.”
Their unbelief was well founded.
However, a new Bureau of Justice Statistics report, which includes data through 2024, shows that Trump was right during the debate when he said, “Crime here is up and through the roof.” The National Crime Victimization Survey shows violent crime surged 59%, with rape and sexual assault up 67%, robbery up 38%, and aggravated assault up 62%. That’s the largest four-year increase in the survey’s 52-year history.
It will come as no surprise to learn during Trump’s first term, crime, particularly violent crime, decreased, but rose substantially under Biden’s Handlers.
But how can anyone, with a straight face, claim crime dramatically decreased under Biden? Lott points out that the government collects two types of statistics: the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report and the National Crime Victimization Survey done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The former is dependent on law enforcement agencies reporting to the FBI. The latter is a survey of about 240,000 Americans. Unsurprisingly, in 2024, the media used FBI statistics.
That’s unsurprising because for longer than the Biden years, police agencies stopped providing stats to the FBI or provided only sanitized stats. This has been particularly true of big city, Democrat ruled police agencies. Police chiefs and other high-ranking cops don’t get those high-paying jobs without pleasing their Democrat masters. That means statistics showing their no bail, no prosecution, no proactive policing, utterly insane policies are eliminating crime. That’s their narrative, and they’re stickin’ to it. Officers are forced to ignore crimes or classify felonies as misdemeanors. Lott notes:
Before 2020, the FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics trends generally moved in tandem. Since then, they’ve diverged sharply: The FBI reports fewer crimes, while more Americans say they’ve been victimized.
Here’s another concerning trend:
Between 2010 and 2019, victims reported 63.3% of violent crimes to police. In the last three years, that number plummeted to 48.8%. Arrests fell as well – from 26.5% before COVID-19 to just 16.6% afterward.
Why would arrests decline? The Ferguson effect has been a powerful inhibitor. Allied with it has been the Defund the Police movement. Both have taught officers that arresting violent criminals, particularly if they’re black, is dangerous to their health and careers. Officers, with good cause, believe they’re more likely to be prosecuted than criminals, and any arrest, no matter how valid, could end their career. Lott notes an additional problem:
Progressive prosecutors in cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles have also made a habit of reducing felony charges. In Manhattan, for example, the district attorney’s office downgraded felonies 60% of the time – with 89% downgraded to misdemeanors and 11% to less serious felonies. Chicago has labeled some murders as “death investigations” rather than homicides.
Even red state police departments haven’t been reporting to the FBI because they’ve come to distrust it. This is significant because the statistics of our blue major cities can badly skew national results even if every red state agency accurately reports. When they don’t, the problem worsens and statistics more closely resemble Democrat narratives rather than objective truth.
So, blue cities lie and resist any effort by President Trump to make them safer, lest Democrat incompetence and malice be exposed in ways that can’t be covered up. They were more than happy to have troops ringing the Capitol after January 6, but not now.
And they’re never happy about Lott telling the truth about crime rates.
Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
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From American Thinker
Link:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...ime_rates.html
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