"Murders down 20%" versus "The Collapse in Law Enforcement". Who's right?

 

I (and many other independent observers) have been complaining that crime's getting worse - much worse.  Liberal and progressive commenters, on the other hand, are insisting that it's getting better.  Their view may be typified by this article, which I'm posting just as an example.

Homicides Are Plummeting in American Cities

Nationwide, homicides dropped around 20% in 133 cities from the beginning of the year through the end of March compared with the same period in 2023, according to crime-data analyst Jeff Asher, who tabulated statistics from police departments across the country.

. . .

The declines so far in 2024, on top of last year’s drop, mirror the steep declines in homicides of the late 1990s.

“There’s just a ton of places that you can point to that are showing widespread, very positive trends,” said Asher, co-founder of criminal justice consulting firm AH Datalytics. “Nationally, you’re seeing a very similar situation to what you saw in the mid-to-late ’90s. But it’s potentially even larger in terms of the percentages and numbers of the drops.” 

There's more at the link.

Sounds great, doesn't it?  Well . . . until one looks at the reality behind the numbers, that is.

The Collapse in Law Enforcement: As Arrest Rates Plummet, People Have Been Less Willing to Report Crime

The American news media has been working overtime to convince people that violent crime is dramatically falling.

. . .

But, there is a big problem with using the FBI Uniform Crime Report data on crimes reported to police because victims don’t report most crimes ... More importantly, the number of crimes reported to police falls as the arrest rate declines. If people don’t think the police will solve their cases, they are less likely to report them to the police ... This divergence arises for several reasons. In 2021, 37% of police departments stopped reporting crime data to the FBI (including large departments for Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York), and others are underreporting crimes. But also because of the dramatic decline in arrest rates.

Figure 1, presented at the top of this post, illustrates the dramatic drop in arrest rates for violent crimes reported to the police. If you compare the last five years before COVID-19 to 2022, the arrest rate for violent crime across all cities fell by 20%. But for cities with over one million people, it fell by 54%. The drops in arrest rates by type of violent crime ranged from 15% to 27% for all cities and from 38% to 58% for cities with more than one million people ... Comparing the five years from 2015-2019 to the arrest rate in 2022 shows a drop of 33% for all cities and a 63% decline for cities with more than a million people ... only 14.6% of violent crimes result in an arrest ... only 8.4% of all violent crimes resulted in an arrest. For property crimes, the numbers are even worse. With 31.8% of property crimes reported to police and only 11.9% of those reported crimes resulting in an arrest, that means that only 3.8% of all property crimes result in an arrest. For large cities with over a million people, only 1.4% of all property crimes result in an arrest.

Again, more at the link.  Plenty of statistics are provided in graphic form to illustrate the problem.

As to why people are reluctant to report crimes, the answer's obvious.  Left-wing District Attorneys and public prosecutors are minimizing prosecutions, reducing charges, eliminating cash bail, and generally making life as easy as possible for the criminals, rather than the cops.  It's not unusual in a big city to see criminals commit multiple crimes a day, because every time they're arrested, they're out on the street again within a couple of hours.  Here's one example.

Given that reality, store security often doesn't report shoplifting, because the penalties have been reduced to no more than a slap on the wrist.  Police don't bother arresting offenders that they know will be out on the street within hours, or at most a day or two, after being charged.  Citizens don't bother reporting crimes that they know won't be dealt with by police.  All that makes criminals bolder, and boosts the chances that they'll graduate from low-level, non-violent crime to more aggressive offenses.  They develop an attitude of invincibility ("The cops can't touch me!"), and proceed to test it on more and more serious crimes.  I've heard them boast about it in jail (that used to be my job, remember?).  

The same applies even to homicides.  There are plenty of them that are never reported as such.  I know cops who are quite blatant about it.  To paraphrase one of them:  "Look, I find a body on a street in the hood. Nobody saw anything, nobody heard anything, and if I try to pin anything down, everyone who lives there will get aggressive.  That leads to the precinct boss coming down on me for causing a fuss, and him having to send cops he can't spare to sort it out, and do all that extra report writing and explaining to his bosses.  I just can't win.  So, I call it in as a body I found, without mentioning anything suspicious.  The coroner comes and collects it, and I go on my way.  The coroner won't make a fuss, even if he finds a gun or knife wound.  He's got too much work as it is, and he knows most of those cases are never solved.  Result is, it'll just be filed as another random fatality - anything simple and believable to enter into the books.  I recall one case where a cop and the coroner agreed that a gunshot killing would be entered as an overdose.  Nothing criminal was reported, they both had minimal paperwork, and the precinct was happy because our statistics still looked good.  What, you think someone might dig up the body five years later to check?  Doesn't happen."

Murders involving someone with a family who cares, or someone of influence, will be investigated.  The rest?  There'll be a token effort, but it won't get very far, because detectives can't get very far with such investigations in big cities.  They each have too many cases to start with, and that means their attention is spread so thin that it won't be enough to resolve many of them.  What's more, many poorer families (and those who may not speak English very well, if at all) regard the police as their enemy.  Why would they report a murder of one of their family members when it means they have to deal with the enemy?  Even worse, if a gang is involved, it'll deal harshly with any family that implicates it or its members.  Simpler to just bury their dead, mourn as a family, then move on.  Again, I speak from experience, having dealt with rather a lot of such people.

If anyone tells you crime rates are down and big cities are safer, you know at once that they're either misinformed or lying.  Don't believe them.

Peter