Eegore wrote on Yesterday at 15:54:47:


What ever you want SPIN it to !!!!!

What ever you want SPIN it to !!!!!

 Nice SPIN.  Looks like you were referring to the same thing I was.

And there’s this. See below. St Louis has done this. They haven’t been reporting crime as regularly as in the past. Plus they made another dramatic change. There was a situation earlier this year where multiple cars were broken into at a Cardinals game. In the past, each vehicle would be reported as a separate event but they posted all of them together. Bingo! Instant drop in crime.


“These and countless other stories all cite the same set of police department statistics showing the rate of violent crime in D.C. on the downtrend.

So, case closed, right?

Not so fast. Just a few weeks ago, the local NBC affiliate reported that:

A D.C. police commander is under investigation for allegedly making changes to crime statistics in his district.

The Metropolitan Police Department confirmed Michael Pulliam was placed on paid administrative leave in mid-May … Pulliam — the former commander of the 3rd District that patrols Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights — was placed on leave with pay and told he was under investigation for questionable changes to crime data, five law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation told News4.

Also in July, The Hill ran an op-ed by Michael Murphy, who is considering a run for city council, pointing out that the city has started reporting some crimes, such as “assault with a dangerous weapon,” as a “felony threat,” which doesn’t get counted as a violent crime. Voila, violent crime rates in the city started falling.

I have learned that systematic undercharging is fueling some portion of these so-called declines in violent crime. In short, a manipulation of the crime statistics is causing them not to align with reality, which helps explain why people in Washington don’t feel safe …

These concerns are not solely my own. On May 22, Greg Pemberton, head of the D.C. Police Union, stated that the department ‘is past its breaking point.’

‘To evade public scrutiny, MPD leadership is deliberately falsifying crime data, creating a false narrative of reduced crime while communities suffer,’ he added.

Then there’s the fact that the head of the D.C. police union praised Trump’s takeover of law enforcement.

“We stand with the president in recognizing that Washington, D.C., cannot continue on this trajectory,” said union chair Gregg Pemberton. “Crime is out of control, and our officers are stretched beyond their limits.”

By ignoring all this, the press is knowingly spreading misinformation about what is happening in the city as part of its own campaign to brand Trump a liar.

This is hardly the first time the media have sheepishly fallen for phony crime statistics when it suited their political agenda.

Last year, we noted in this space how the press was “fact checking” Trump on national crime statistics during the presidential campaign. Then it was FBI crime statistics that, like the D.C. numbers, appeared to show a drop in violent crime.

But, as we said, the claim was “wildly misleading … It’s based on the number of crimes plugged into the FBI’s ‘Uniform Crime Reporting’ database, which not every police department contributes to – a situation made worse after the FBI changed its reporting system in 2021.”  

We informed readers that the separate Bureau of Justice Statistics’ survey of crime victimization showed the opposite – the number of victims of violent crime was 41% higher in 2023 than in 2020. (See: The Media’s Criminal Misreporting on Crime.)

We are beginning to wonder if there is anything the public can trust the media to report accurately when it comes to Trump.”

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

TDS will save our democracy!