By Steve Pomper
There’s a particular faction of anti-law-and-order (from here on out, let’s just call them what they are: anti-cop) “leaders” who can’t seem to stop gaslighting the American public. For those who keep hearing the term but are still not sure what it is, it refers to the 1944 movie, set in the late 1800s, called, Gaslight. In a nutshell, the movie tells the story of a husband who tries to make his wife believe she is going insane.
He tells other people, “she’s not well” and tries to convince her that her behavior is not normal, that she’s paranoid, that she’s not hearing the knocks in the night that she is indeed hearing, and that she is imagining it when the gas lighting in their house is dimming.
Let’s update the allegory and apply it to the nation as a whole (you know, hypothetically, of course). It would be like Americans going shopping downtown and seeing mobs of people ransacking a drugstore or riding public transit with folks openly smoking meth or shooting heroin or going to a gas station where someone sticks a gun in your face and takes your car.
Yet, even though Americans see all this crime—or are victims of it, when they get home, they click on the news, and leaders of the anti-cop faction and the media barely report these crimes. Insidiously, the anti-coppers and media go further and falsely report that crime rates are not rising but are actually falling. Yeah. That’s gaslighting.
Just look at this quick online search engine check of the topic: “crime dropping hoax.”
Yes, I put “hoax,” yet the left-leaning search engine’s (in this case, Duck-Duck-Go) top returns show the engine is participating in the hoax by returning serious stories about this fake drop in crime and not about the hoax. What follows is just a few results and a statement.
CBS FBI quarterly report shows 15% drop in violent crime compared to last …
CNN Violent crime is down and the US murder rate is plunging, FBI … – CNN
NBC New FBI stats show ‘historic’ declines in violent crime rate, with …
White House Statement from President Biden on Record Decrease in Crime in First …
While this anti-cop faction quickly takes credit for this supposed drop in crime, officers and shrewd civilians say, “Not so fast.” There are many reasons for the statistical drop in crime, but an actual drop in crime is not one of those reasons.
Dr. John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), published an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Media Say Crime Is Going Down. Don’t Believe It: The decline in reported crimes is a function of less reporting, not less crime.”
Not only are news outlets reporting on the fake drop in crime, but they compound the hoax by proactively reporting that “Americans mistakenly believe violent crime is rising” (don’t believe your lying eyes). Talk about gaslighting.
The FBI statistics are flawed, and media is reporting on them as if they’re accurate, and they are the stats the anti-cop faction is relying on. Former NYPD Inspector Paul Mauro said on FOX News a few nights ago, 40 percent of police departments in the U.S. don’t report their crime statistics to the FBI. There are also reports that the FBI’s homicide numbers for NYC are far lower than NYPD’s numbers.
No wonder the crime stats seem to show a fall in crime with so many jurisdictions not reporting their crime stats to the FBI. The Marshall Project reported, “The gap includes the nation’s two largest cities by population, New York City and Los Angeles, as well as most agencies in five of the six most populous states: California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida.”
As Dr. Lott explained, it’s not about crime decreasing; it’s about reporting crime decreasing. And whether it’s cities not reporting statistics or victims not reporting crimes the results will obviously skew. NYPD
And there is a “perfect storm,” coalescing several reasons for this fake statistical crime decline. Some of these reasons are uncomfortable to address, but communities (and the anti-coppers) must face them.
Aside from statistical flaws, consider these realities that cops and the crime victims they try to serve know only too well.
- When officials don’t allow police to respond to or enforce certain crimes or crimes committed by certain people, victims will stop reporting crimes.
- When prosecutors stop charging and prosecuting criminals, cops may hesitate to enforce laws, and victims will stop reporting crimes.
- When judges routinely dismiss certain cases, reduce or eliminate bail for serious crimes, or hand out lax sentences, cops may hesitate to enforce certain laws, and victims will stop reporting crimes.
- When states and cities pass cop-hating laws that let criminals get away with crimes, cops can’t enforce what should be laws, and people will stop reporting crimes.
So, when you hear stories about a supposed drop in crime in America, think twice, or maybe more.