Law enforcement expert pokes holes in repeated claims by the now former Biden administration’s Justice Department that violent crime has fallen to a 50-year record, saying the agency “manipulated the data” to reach its conclusion.
In 2024, the Biden administration repeatedly claimed that violent crime was at a 50-year low, based on FBI statistics. The FBI defines the following as “violent crime”: murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
But Ken Alexandrow, a security expert who served 26 years as a police officer in Nashville, Tennessee, said the former administration “manipulated data” to achieve a certain outcome.
“The way crime statistics are developed is that police departments across the country send all their Category 1 crimes, which are violent crimes, to the FBI. And then the FBI develops statistics for the entire country,” Alexandrow said. “But changes happen when a new administration comes in and changes the application requirements.”
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Then-President Joe Biden listens to his introduction before addressing police chiefs from across the country and members of his administration at the White House on February 28, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Change of reporting program
Biden administration did just that, claims Alexandrow. He said the administration has switched reporting from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
“If you ask anyone on the street, no one will tell you that they feel safer or that crime is going down. However, it’s the job of every leader, whether local, state or federal, to make your constituency feel safe. So how can we do that? do? Well, several police chiefs and city managers have had problems with manipulating statistics,” he said.
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Alexandrow, who founded Agape Tactical LLC, said police departments will remove “pieces of the pie” to show citizens that crime is going down.
“A city can eliminate domestic homicides one year and then eliminate drug-related homicides the next, so they’re getting two pieces of the pie,” he said. “In order to manipulate their statistics, they draw parts of the population to prove that they are doing their job.”
“The government has done the same thing by changing the way that crime is reported,” he said.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik/File)
Percentage of police departments that do not report
He said that in 2023, 70% of police departments that reported under the UCR program stopped reporting under the NIBRS program.
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“And keep in mind that these are cities, including LA, Chicago and New York Cityalong with 45% of Florida’s departments, which don’t report,” he said. “When you have these big cities that don’t report, you’re going to have a huge drop in crime and, therefore, your statistics and your percentages are going to drop.”
“When those big cities don’t report, you’re going to have a huge drop in crime…”
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during his farewell ceremony at the Department of Justice in Washington on January 16, 2025. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
In 2024, the Biden-Harris DOJ reported a 17.5% decrease in homicide rates. There was also a 7.1% decrease in the number of rapes, a 3.6% decrease in the number of aggravated assaults and a 7.8% decrease in the number of robberies in the first three quarters of this year.
Between 2021 and 2022, violent crime decreased by 1.7%, which became a 3% decrease between 2022 and 2023; and through the second quarter of 2023 to 2024, it decreased by 10.3%. In the same time period, the homicide rate decreased by 6.1%, starting from 2021 to 2022, by 11.6% in 2023, and finally by 22.7% in 2024.
The DOJ noted that the data is from 85 cities. They did not specify which cities reported.
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Then-President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris are pictured at the White House on April 11, 2022. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Biden administration has previously altered crime statistics
In 2022, the Biden administration’s FBI quietly updated its crime data to show an increase in violent crime despite previous data showing a drop in violent crime that year, touted as a victory for the administration.
The data was praised by the Democrats and media as part of a turning point for the US’s crime woes after the 2020 crime wave, when anti-police protests and riots swept the nation and pandemic stay-at-home orders changed everyday life.
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Fox News Digital has reached out to the DOJ, the New York City Police Department, the Los Angeles Police Department and the Chicago Police Department for comment.
Fox News’ David Spunt and Emma Colton contributed to this report.
