Crime is down under Biden. Why do Americans not believe it?

One of the bigger successes that has taken place during the Biden administration has been the decline in crime in the United States. Now notice that I’m using very specific language. I’m saying during the Biden administration, there are realities about crime that are much bigger than who is president. So I don’t even bring this up necessarily to say thanks to Joe Biden, crime is way down. But what is important is that for years leading up to the election of Joe Biden, Republicans, first we’re saying generically, Democrats will be a disaster for crime. And specifically, when Biden became the nominee, crimes gonna go crazy under Joe Biden, for the most part, a lot of this doesn’t have to do with who is president. And the reality is that in the United States, if you zoom way out, crime has been declining. The murder rate, violent crime, property crime, it’s been declining for a really long time, we did see a spike during COVID. And there are a number of different reasons why that may be which are beyond the scope of this discussion. But under Joe Biden, overall, we’ve seen crime continue to decline. If you haven’t heard that, a lot of the reason is that the corporate media is not doing a great job of covering it. And right wing media is playing up the dystopian crime riddled country that they say exists under Joe Biden, even absent any evidence that that is actually what is going on. The reality check is that crime is down in most places. Now let’s go through the most common retorts from right wingers about this, because these are the ones that they love to talk about all the time. First, they’ll say, you’re just wrong, crime is up, you’re lying. What I would say those folks is bring me the evidence that crime is up, bring me the data that says that crime is up under Joe Biden. So then often they will retreat to a different argument and they will say, How could crime be down? Didn’t you hear about that murder in San Antonio? Didn’t you hear about the car jackings in Oakland, it’s terrible out there. And of course, our response is empiricists who don’t go by anecdotes is to say, that’s an anecdote. In a country of 340 million people, there will of course, be some crime. That doesn’t tell us whether overall the crime rate is going up or down. So then they will often go Okay, listen, maybe you’re right. Maybe your statistics show that crime is down. But here’s the problem. Democrats have defunded the police and people don’t even call the cops anymore. So the crimes aren’t even being reported. The reality is that funding for public safety is up under Democrats. Democrats have not defunded the police almost no one on the left wants to defund the police. There’s some very loud people online who I questioned whether they’re even Democrats there on the left, I guess, but they’re not even really Democrats say defund, but almost no one is saying the fund and the police have not been defunded. And in fact, in many places, we’ve seen public safety funding overall, go up. So the first part is wrong that police haven’t been defunded. And part two, we have other ways of measuring crime. It is true that part of it depends on police departments, getting reports of crime, and then forwarding them to the FBI to the central database. But there’s also victimization surveys that ask people whether they have witnessed or been victimized by crimes. It doesn’t matter whether you reported it to police. So it is wrong, that we only get data if people report crime to police. And then lastly, they will often say okay, fine, fine, fine. People do report crime to police departments. But the police departments are so disgusted with what Biden has done, that they no longer report their data to the FBI. This is also a lie for a very long time. Some police departments don’t report crime to the FBI. But that was the case under Trump. That was the case under Obama, it’s always been the truth that some police departments don’t report crime to the FBI. But it’s not a new thing. And so it also would not be accurate to say that that’s the proof that the crime numbers aren’t supported. So this is an area that the Biden administration should talk about. I’ve said before running on gun safety regulations, as valuable as I think they are at the federal level for presidents to run on gun safety regulations. It usually doesn’t bring any new voters and it angers these pro gun Republicans into maybe coming out and voting against the Democrat. So I don’t think it’s it would be smart strategy for Biden to run on gun safety regulations. On the other hand, I think it would be very smart for the Biden administration to talk a lot more about these declines in crime. Corporate media is not doing it. Right wing media is just lying and saying crime is up. It is a major area of concern for folks in rural so Urban and urban areas I would like to see the Biden administration talk more about it let me know what do you think is it a good topic for the Biden campaign.