Thursday, May 16, 2024
Should You Believe Faulty U.S. Crime Stats or Your Own Lying Eyes? It's a Tough Call
Americans can be forgiven for suffering from whiplash regarding law and order.
In recent weeks the Biden administration and many news outlets, including USA Today and The Hill, have touted declines in violent crime statistics to argue that America is becoming a safer place.
“Right now, with 2023 figures and early 2024, the trends are all pointing down, in a positive direction,” Jeff Asher, whose New Orleans-based AH Datalytics is developing his own “Real-Time Crime Index,” told RealClearInvestigations.
Conservative outlets, including City Journal and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, assert that minor declines in headline grabbers like homicides fail to capture what is really happening in the U.S.
From 2017 to 2019, the U.S. had an average of 16,641 homicides a year. In 2021 and 2022, however, the country saw considerably more bloodshed, with an average of more than 22,000 annual homicides. Even if the 2023 number drops slightly, it will still represent a large increase over the recent past, before the pandemic and racial upheaval set in motion in 2020.
Many criminologists say this illlustrates one of the problems with the official numbers that are at the center of public debate: They give a distorted impression of true levels of crime. They note that crime stats have become notoriously incomplete in recent years. In some years many big cities did not report their numbers to the FBI, and there are such wide discrepancies in these tallies that the picture they provide has more blur than clarity.
Declining arrest rates and slowing police response times to 911 calls also help explain why polls show Americans believe crime is rising. The experts say the numbers only give some sense of lawbreaking, while most Americans – the vast majority of whom are not crime victims in a given year – are influenced by their largely media-driven perception of whether society feels orderly.
“There are social media videos of people walking into a CVS and walking out with a shopping cart full and there seems to be no consequences – that’s part of the problem,” said Jay Town, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. “And then you have people arrested a dozen times and they’re out with no bail. There are no consequences, and thus there are more criminals in the street.”
Americans may fall back on such perceptions in part because the official reports are incomplete and rife with error. “I don’t think with any crime statistics we can ever be precise,” said Asher.
For decades, the traditional gold standard for criminologists was the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, annual compilations by the Bureau of stats provided to it by state and local law enforcement agencies. The FBI’s data, which currently show declines in several criminal categories, especially homicide, provide the basis for many of the stories arguing that, in terms of crime, the U.S. situation is improving.
But the FBI statistics aren't what they used to be, according to several criminologists who pointed to gaps in coverage and apparent errors. The problem began in 1988 when the bureau began to move toward a complex new system of reporting – the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). It promised to provide more comprehensive detail and enable authorities to pinpoint high-crime areas, criminals, and victims more accurately.
But the transition proved to be a herculean task, so much so that the FBI allowed departments to delay their full adherence to the program even after the feds doled out $120 million to agencies to assist with compliance. Still, in 2020, 2021 and 2022, either all or some of the biggest police forces in the U.S. -- New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles -- did not provide data.
There have also been problems with the data that was submitted, including the news in 2022 of major problems with the St. Louis Police Department data, and more recent revelations that figures for sexual crimes provided by the New Orleans Police Department were wrong.
In Baltimore, the Police Department and various news reports put the total for 2022 homicides between 332 and 336, but the FBI’s dataset puts the number at 272. Baltimore police officials did not reply to RCI’s inquiries about the wide spread in the reported numbers, and if anyone in the city’s police department had brought the matter to the FBI’s attention.
The Baltimore department acknowledges its numbers may not be the same as those it submits to the FBI, but states on its website that “any comparisons are strictly prohibited.”
Similarly, the police departments in Milwaukee and Nashville did not respond to questions about divergences between their stats on robberies and those from the federal bureau. Milwaukee police reported a 7 percent increase in robberies in 2023, but the FBI recorded a 13 percent decline.
An FBI spokesperson told RCI, “It is the responsibility of each state UCR [Uniform Crime Reports] program or contributing law enforcement agency to submit accurate statistics and correct existing data that are in error.”
Criminologists cite other discrepancies in the official measurements they use to assess the situation. While FBI stats show declines in violent categories, the Department of Justice’s survey reports more people saying they have been victims of such crimes. The Centers for Disease Control figures for homicides, which have long moved in the same direction as the FBI’s, started exceeding the FBI’s in 2020 and the gap has widened since then.
“I wouldn’t say the FBI is cooking the books, but that the data they are putting out is half-baked,” said Sean Kennedy, the executive director of the Coalition for Law, Order and Security, which has pushed back against recent media reports that crime is falling noticeably in the U.S.
“So it’s not a conspiracy but a rush job, and it’s giving people a false picture,” he told RCI. “They infer something is true, and then because it’s politically expedient they don’t bother correcting it.”
A Sharp Decline in Arrests
Some criminologists say there is another, hidden dynamic within the crime statistics that helps explain why most Americans think crime is on the rise – the dramatic decline in arrests. Scouring FBI data, John Lott, the founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, found that arrests for reported violent crimes in major cities fell 20 percent in 2022, from 42.5 percent in 2019 – the year before the COVID pandemic and BLM protests in response to George Floyd’s death while in police custody.
The percentage of murder and rapes cleared by arrests fell to 40.6 percent from 67.3 percent in those years; for rapes from 33.8 percent to 17.4 percent, and arrests for reported property crimes in major cities dropped to 4.5 percent in 2022 from 11.6 percent in 2019.
It is not clear how much of this decline is due to reductions in the size of many departments – New Orleans, for example, reportedly lost 20% of its force between 2020 and 2022.
“There are lots of issues here, and I’m in disbelief about some of them,” said Lott. “It’s mind-boggling to me – we already know many crimes have always been underreported and now it seems to be, ‘Why bother reporting a property crime’ to the police? The bottom line is our law enforcement system seems in some ways to be falling apart, especially in the big cities.”
The plummeting arrest rates contribute to the general sense of lawlessness, a feeling compounded by surging increases in response times to calls. Comparing data for 15 law enforcement agencies from 2019-2022, Asher found only one city – Cincinnati – that reduced its response time, and that by 0.7 minutes. In New Orleans, the average response time nearly doubled, from 50.8 to 145.8 minutes, while Nashville saw a rise from 44.2 minutes to 73.8 minutes and New York City a 33-minute increase.
Some cities are even worse.
“If it’s not a shooting or a stabbing we’re up to about two hours for responding to property calls,” Jared Wilson, president of the San Diego Police Officers Association, told RCI. “As a result, we’ve seen a significant problem with reporting of crime right now.”
Wilson said auto thefts better capture the state of crime and perceptions of it: As thefts of essential registered property, they tend to be reported. In San Diego, Wilson said, those have risen year-to-year, with a whopping 27% jump in 2021, all of which contribute to people’s perception of increased criminal activity.
Betsy Branter Smith, a retired cop and spokeswoman for the National Police Association, said such issues contribute to a deteriorating relationship between citizens and the police. That unraveling, along with increasing hostility between police departments and district attorneys in some big cities like Philadelphia and Los Angeles, has made some cops less pro-active on the job.
“It’s not so much hostility’’ toward cops, but frustration and resignation,” she said. “It’s time-consuming to be a crime victim, and if prosecutors aren’t going to do anything, why report it?”
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Behind-Scenes Recordings Reveal What Top Gender Doctors Really Think About Sex-Change Procedures
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, is the leading authority in the field of gender medicine. Its guidance is routinely used by top medical associations in the U.S. and abroad, while its standards of care inform insurance companies’ approach to coverage policies.
But behind closed doors, top WPATH doctors discussed, and at times seemed to challenge, the organization’s own published guidelines for sex-change procedures and acknowledged pushing experimental medical interventions that can have devastating and irreversible complications, according to exclusive footage obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
WPATH published highly influential clinical guidance called “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8,” or SOC 8, which recommends the use of invasive medical interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sex change surgeries, calling them “safe and effective.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation filed a series of public records requests to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s SOC 8 co-authors who are employed at taxpayer-funded institutions, making their emails subject to open records laws.
Buried in more than 100 pages of responsive records from the University of Nevada was a series of emails sent in 2022 among prominent WPATH members and leaders, including WPATH Global Education Institute Co-Chair Gail Knudson.
In one email, Knudson sent a colleague the link to a folder containing nearly 30 hours of recordings from WPATH’s Global Education Institute summit in September 2022 in Montreal, Canada, which included sessions on mental health, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgery.
These sessions provided WPATH members with in-depth education on the clinical application of topics addressed in the SOC 8 treatment guidelines. However, the footage reveals WPATH-affiliated doctors advocating that children undergo risky sex-change procedures and even pushing for these treatments for patients struggling with severe mental health issues.
Several sessions were dedicated exclusively to treating children and included recommendations for minors to receive puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.
For instance, WPATH guidance recommends addressing a patient’s mental health issues before giving him or her sex-change medical interventions. However, in one recorded session, a WPATH faculty member and gender doctor claimed that mental health issues don’t necessarily affect a patient’s ability to receive cross-sex hormones.
In another video, a doctor told attendees that children should be informed that cross-sex hormones will likely make them infertile. but admitted that he would prescribe them anyway if a child says he or she wants the treatment, regardless of future consequences.
A surgeon euphemistically referred to a phalloplasty procedure, a surgical series that includes obliterating the vaginal cavity and creating a fake penis with harvested tissue, as an “adventure” for young people. He did this despite later admitting that those same procedures “definitely” will have “complications,” such as permanent issues with bladder function and tissue death.
One physician called the entire field of cross-sex hormones “off-label,” referring to the concept of drugs being used for alternative purposes than what they were approved for. The doctor went on to say that female patients might actually appreciate drug side effects that cause them to lose hair, because they’d look “more like men.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says that when it approves a drug, health care providers generally may prescribe that drug for an unapproved use, or off-label, when “they judge that it is medically appropriate for their patient.”
In several other videos, doctors argued in favor of transitioning patients who experience psychotic episodes. One admitted that some of his patients with schizophrenia have to be careful how much cross-sex hormones they take or they can’t “keep the voices down.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation consulted medical professionals from respected organizations, such as Do No Harm, who all argued that the comments from WPATH-affiliated doctors show that the transgender medical industry doesn’t have patients’ best interests at heart.
While the average person, nationally and internationally, likely never has heard of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the modern medical industry is deeply tied to the organization and relies on it to dictate the standards of care for transgender medicine.
WPATH’s guidelines are cited as criteria for obtaining insurance coverage by both private insurance companies and tax-funded insurance plans, positioning them as a lynchpin of the sex reassignment industry.
Additionally, WPATH’s guidelines help inform policy statements from major medical and professional organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the Endocrine Society.
The American Academy of Pediatrics is being sued by Isabelle Ayala, a former patient who was medically transitioned as a child and claims she was rushed through sex-change medical procedures.
There’s been an explosion in the number of young people, including children, being put on hormones and puberty blockers and getting sex-change surgeries, according to a study published in August 2023 by the JAMA Network.
This surge has been fueled, in part, by groups such as Planned Parenthood, which distributes cross-sex hormones to patients as young as 16. Planned Parenthood saw a roughly 125% jump in the number of transgender services it provided between 2020 and 2022.
Twenty-three states, however, have enacted legislation preventing doctors from performing sex-change surgeries on minors amid backlash from concerned parents and doctors who don’t subscribe to the WPATH-endorsed “gender-affirming care” model. Gender-affirming care is another euphemism used by medical professionals to describe the idea that doctors should affirm a patient’s wish to live as the opposite biological sex through social transitioning, hormone therapy, and even surgery.
The SOC 8 was released just days ahead of the 2022 symposium and contained several significant changes to how doctors and medical institutions implemented transgender medical treatment. For instance, WPATH removed minimum age requirements that established when a child can or should receive transgender medical services such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-reassignment surgeries.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s previous guidelines recommended that hormone therapy be given once a patient was over the age of 16, but the updated version removed this barrier and suggests hormone therapy begin at the first signs of sexual maturity.
The videos obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation give the first glimpse at how doctors and mental health professionals discussed implementing the new guidelines. To highlight the most significant portions of the content obtained in the records requests, the foundation has decided to publish a series of articles collectively called “The WPATH Tapes.”
Following this release, the Daily Caller News Foundation intends to publish all of the videos in their entirety to provide the public with necessary information about WPATH’s approach to medical care and shine a light on an influential organization that has largely remained anonymous until now.
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Biden DOJ ‘Unjustly’ Persecuting Pro-Lifers, ‘Turning a Blind Eye’ to Leftist Crime
Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee accused President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice on Tuesday of “unjustly” persecuting pro-life activists exposing the “horrors of abortion.”
“The Biden administration is using the FACE Act to give pro-life activists and senior citizens lengthy prison terms for non-violent offenses and protests—all while turning a blind eye to the violence, arson, and riots conducted on behalf of ‘approved’ leftist causes,” Lee told The Daily Signal in a Tuesday statement.
The senator added: “Unequal enforcement of the law is a violation of the law, and men and women who try to expose the horrors of abortion are being unjustly persecuted for their motivations.”
Lee’s comments come after news that pro-life activist Lauren Handy has been sentenced on DOJ charges to almost five years in prison for attempting to stop abortions of unborn babies from taking place at a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic.
Handy will spend 57 months in prison and is the first person sentenced for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 law that supposedly protects both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers, but has been heavily enforced by Biden’s DOJ against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Those efforts are led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, who recently admitted following a report from The Daily Signal that she hid an arrest and its subsequent expungement from investigators when she was confirmed to her Justice Department post.
The president’s critics have accused Biden and the DOJ of weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-lifers while failing to charge pro-abortion criminals for the hundreds of attacks on pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating Roe would soon be overturned.
Some, among them Lee and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, have called for the repeal of the FACE Act.
“Today’s outrageous 57-month sentence for a progressive pro-life activist is a stark reminder: Biden’s DOJ is fully weaponized against pro-life American citizens, and they are using the FACE Act to do it,” said Roy in a statement following Handy’s sentence. “House Republicans should defund the DOJ weaponization, repeal the FACE Act, and stand up for the freedoms that we campaign on.”
Handy is being represented by lawyers with the Thomas More Society, which said Tuesday that it is preparing to proceed with an appeal seeking to overturn her conviction and challenge the constitutionality of the FACE Act.
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Australian Leftist PM says Leftist senator Fatima Payman’s use of Israel ‘genocide’, ‘river to the sea’ was inappropriate
Another Muslim bigot
Anthony Albanese says it’s “not appropriate” a WA Labor senator used a controversial chant when she broke ranks with the government’s position on Palestine, as the Coalition heaps on pressure on him to “take action” against her.
Fatima Payman on Wednesday accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and questioned how many more deaths would be needed before the Prime Minister declared “enough”.
In a significant split from the Labor Party’s position, the Muslim senator called for sanctions and divestment from Israel, and declared “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – a phrase Mr Albanese has previously condemned as a violent opposition to a two-state solution.
She said the phrase was a call for “freedom from the occupation, freedom from the violence, and freedom from the inequality”.
Senator Payman criticised Mr Albanese and her Labor colleagues for failing to condemn Israel and “stand up for what is right”, accusing her government’s leaders of making “performative gestures” while defending the “oppressor’s right to oppress”.
Mr Albanese on Thursday morning was asked if he had spoken to Senator Payman since she made the comments, to which he gave an emphatic “no”.
He said he did speak to her regularly, as he does all his Labor Party colleagues, and their last conversation was “very pleasant”.
But he said her use of the politically charged phrase was “not appropriate” and did not reflect the Labor Party’s position.
“What is appropriate is a two-state solution, where both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to live in security and peace and prosperity,” he told ABC Radio.
“It is not in the interests of either Israelis or Palestinians to advocate there just be one state. That is a forerunner of enormous conflict and grief.”
Coalition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said the Prime Minister “has to take action”, noting Senator Payman had “laid down the gauntlet” to Mr Albanese.
“She’s used a phrase the Prime Minister himself has agreed is a violent statement. She’d endorsed the phrase, and in the Prime Minister’s own analysis, people who make this statement are in opposition to a two-state solution,” Senator Paterson told Sky.
“She’s not just undermined decades of bipartisan foreign policy, she’s undermined decades of Labor Party policy.
“The Prime Minister has said this phrase has no place in Australia. Surely he cannot (have) a member of his caucus saying this.”
Senator Payman gave a statement to a small selection of media on Wednesday on Nakba day – the anniversary of Israel’s 1948 establishment – where she acknowledged there was “disillusionment” in the community with the political parties.
“Today, more than ever, is the time to speak the truth – the whole truth – with courage and clarity,” she told SBS News and Capital Brief.
“My conscience has been uneasy for far too long. And I must call this out for what it is. This is a genocide and we need to stop pretending otherwise.”
Mr Albanese said the scenes coming out of Gaza were “very traumatic”, but said Jewish Australians were also experiencing “a lot of trauma” due to rising anti-Semitism.
“People who happen to be Jewish are being held responsible here for the actions of the Netanyahu government. I don’t believe that is appropriate,” he said.
Senator Paterson said Senator Payman’s call for Australia to end trade with Israel especially at a time of rising anti-Semitism would “further undermine and test social cohesion”.
Former Labor minister and ALP Friends of Israel co-convener Mike Kelly labelled Senator Payman’s comments “disappointing” and “completely wrong”, while opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham said the slogan had “no place” being uttered by members of the government.
Jewish leaders have repeatedly sounded the alarm about the “river to the sea” chant, which they argue calls for the destruction of Israel.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
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