from the so-sorry-the-news-isn't-worse dept

The banal will never capture as much attention as the lurid.

I’m sure that this opening sentence will be seized upon by the many critics of my posts criticizing cops. So be it. Just be aware that we expect our public servants to be banal at almost any cost. That’s a sign of competence and restraint. Anything lurid suggests a critical failure.

But back to the point at hand: politicians, the media, and a variety of “think about the children” groups are always insistent the current year is the worst year, in terms of criminal activity. This persistent narrative not only enriches already affluent cop shops, but it allows citizens to see the worst in people at all times, especially if those people are of a different race, religion, socioeconomic status, or don’t appear to be beholden to outdated ideas about the two sexes.

Cops are always eager to portray the current criminal climate to be the worst ever. And that’s really fucking weird. You’d think cops would want to celebrate crime decreases because it might indicate they’re actually doing their jobs. Instead, they act like “tough on crime” politicians, amplifying any blip in crime stats to insist this this why they need more funding/armored vehicles/forfeiture money/surveillance tech.

But the facts speak for themselves. And they speak clearly and coherently because they’re based on facts handed over to the DOJ and compiled/collated by the FBI. There’s no plausible deniability here. The only hitch is that there’s not more participation in the FBI’s crime data program.

So, despite what you may have heard from TikTok and/or your local newscasters, this is not the most dangerous time to be alive. To capitalize on your death wish, you’d need to go back at least 40 years. In some cases, you’d have to hit the “four score and seven years ago” mark. The latest stats show we’re still enjoying historic lows in violent crime rates and it would likely take another pandemic to change that.

Here’s the good news so many self-interested parties don’t want to hear, brought to us by Tim Arango and Campbell Robertson of the New York Times:

Detroit is on track to record the fewest murders since the 1960s. In Philadelphia, where there were more murders in 2021 than in any year on record, the number of homicides this year has fallen more than 20 percent from last year. And in Los Angeles, the number of shooting victims this year is down more than 200 from two years ago.

These major cities aren’t outliers. The NYT points out that, in some cases, rates remain higher than they were pre-pandemic. But in several cities, homicide rates have dipped back down to historic lows, indicating several cities are safer than they’ve been in several decades.

The city of Detroit is on track to record the lowest number of homicides since 1966, a remarkable milestone even given its substantially smaller population today.

Even cities commonly depicted as criminal playgrounds — like New York City and Chicago — are seeing double-digit drops in homicide rates. There are, of course, outliers where crime rates remain unchanged. But overall, the FBI’s latest crime data report says something positive about the state of nation — a message you won’t likely be hearing from police officials and legislators who leverage fear to sell fascism.

[A]s 2023 comes to a close, the country is likely to see one of the largest — if not the largest — yearly declines in homicides, according to recent F.B.I. data and statistics collected by independent criminologists and researchers.

But here’s one thing that hasn’t changed. Crime rates may be dropping but police officers are more violent than ever, according to data collected by Mapping Police Violence:

Those are the facts — facts even some cops are willing to impart to other cops.

The problem with these facts is that they’re always undersold by the people who have the most power or the most market share. As our own Karl Bode pointed out on Bluesky, the problem with truth isn’t that it’s the uncomfortable or not easily understood. It’s that truth can’t compete with well-funded misinformation.

As long as someone can capitalize on the mere fact that violent crime exists, this will always be a problem. But when they come at you, at least you can arm yourselves with facts like these — facts that can’t easily be dismissed because they’re not coming from some activist group, but rather directly from the Justice Department. We are, by no means, almost freed from the scourge of violent crime. But we’re in much better shape than people are being led to believe.

Filed Under: crime, crime rates, homicide, law enforcement, politicians, reporting