At a news conference this week D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier offered an encouraging development regarding violent crime.
"I am happy to report that ... we have reduced robberies almost 20 percent," Lanier said to a smattering of applause, mostly from city employees. "Yes, you can clap, robberies are down almost 20 percent. I know I clap when I hear that."
Two days after Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was killed near his Bloomingdale home in what police have told the family may have been a robbery, the statistic could have provided some measure of comfort.
But there was a problem. The total number of robberies this year are up slightly, not down, compared to the same period last year.
And the most dangerous robberies - those at gun point -- are up dramatically year-to-date, by more than 20 percent.
You had to know that the Chief's claim was false as soon as it was out of her mouth. Murders are up dramatically in Washington (although not as much as in the city's equally liberal neighbor, Baltimore). The chance that other violent crime would be down -- much less down 20% -- is slim to none.
It doesn't get any better:
Further, the baseline of 2015 was already elevated - the District had experienced a spike in robberies involving guns and an historic surge in homicides that made crime a top public concern for the first time in almost a decade.
It is against this setting that the District's most prominent resident, Barack Obama, has been trying to convince us that the real problem is not criminal behavior, but America's enveloping racism. (He puts it more smoothly, but there is no mistaking his meaning, see, e.g., his words in his appalling Dallas speech, quoted here).
In the seven months since the [Police Department's] task force began work, however, robberies are up by more than six percent, compared to the same period a year earlier, the way MPD usually reports such statistics.
But even the 6-percent increase belies the concern that residents in many parts of the city feel about robberies. That's because a larger percentage of violent robberies during that time have occurred at gunpoint.
Robberies that did not involve a gun are down about 4 percent, compared to the same seven months the year before, from 1,107 to 1,064. Meanwhile, robberies with a gun are up 24 percent over the same period, from 650 to 805.
When armed robbery is up 24% in seven months in the nation's capital, you can see why the pro-criminal lobby is desperate to bullrush Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell into giving floor time to the Be-Nice-To-Drug-Traffickers Act (the SRCA) being touted by George Soros and his allies.
Time is not on the side of the SRCA. When violent crime is surging, and an aide to the DNC is murdered outside his home, no less, even the most obtuse in Congress will get the message.
It's not time to go soft. It's time to wise up. It's also time to start telling the truth about the extent of the crime problem we're facing.
Hate crimes stats are routinely doctored--when whites are the victims.
Also, IIRC,the hate crime rate in minority communities is higher than for whites.
I will repeat myself again. Drops in crimes like Robbery are suspicious in and of themselves, especially when the drop occurs in a large metro area of a politically sensitve nature.
The method is quite simple, since crime classification (for the FBI UCR's) is done at the local agency level and audits are practically non-existent.
A mid-level manager willing to do the dirty work will review the reports with the actual officer who generated a crime report, and convince/order the officer to change a report title from "Robbery" to "Theft" as an example, by deciding that fact set fails to establish without doubt that there was fear or force as required to establish a Robbery. Thus, the Part I offense drops to a Part II, and becomes a non-violent crime. Or you might call a Robbery an Assault if nothing was taken. Felony to Misdemeanor with the stroke of a pen.
So, combine an inarticulate victim with a report writer with a GED, and a confusing narrative of uncertain value, and one can now simply manipulate the numbers by margins up perhaps 20% or more. AS we have seen in Chicago, even murders can be hidden and called "accidental" or "overdose" deaths. (But they probably still vote in either cause of death)
And of this is process is discovered, the Chief will of course be shocked at such behavior. Sure.
JCC
Dare I suggest, Bill, that this post reveals that you can now see evidence of what some libertarians and lefties have long been claiming: namely, that some cops seem more than willing to soetimes fudge the truth when doing so serves their needs/interests.
I make this point only to highlight that maybe we'd have less rancor over law and order if we all noticed where we see points of agreement/concern.
While I thought this was self-evident, I suppose I need to add that the UCR falsifications have been done at the specific direction of elected officials (who appoint or directly influence the appointment of agency heads), for obviously political reasons, that is, voter perception of civil administration.
The most glaring example was the Emanuel administration in Chicago which made even murders disappear.
The same was true in my personal experience. The magic of turning Part I crimes to Part II crimes, and felonies to misdemeanors was done at the direction and instigation of elected non-police officials who controlled the employment and careers of police management.
Cops generally want to see honest reporting, because it's the only way to analyze and react to crime trends. Plus, cops are supposed to be about honesty and telling the truth, hard to grasp as that concept seems to be sometimes.
So please stop trying to make this about cops lying. Maybe you could instead make it about honest public management and honest discussion of crime and crime issues.
JCC
"Lefties" and "cops" are not inevitably different things. Just look at the cops Obama put on his Crime Council (I forget its precise name). They tend to be the chiefs (i.e., politically appointed) from very leftist cities, such as, for example, Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle. And they got to the chief's chair by adhering to the leftist line of the surrounding political elite.
Washington's chief, Cathy Lanier, is like that. I happen to think she does quite a good job on the whole, given the crime cesspool this town in quickly reverting to. Still, in a city with a huge murder spike, she's desperate to trot out some good news to show that her and her boss's liberal policies are working.
Where good news is in short supply, it gets made up. This is a telling sign of both the "success" of dumbed-down police work and of the honesty of those who dumbed it down.
As the commenter after you, JCC, wisely notes, the problem here is not with rank and file police -- the kind who get shot while BLM cackles. The problem of cooked figures lies with management -- and management, in one liberal-controlled city after the next, requires toeing the liberal line of your political bosses.