Controversy over crime data can be found in the heart of the Washington, DC fire. Here’s what you need to know.
National Guard will be deployed to DC under emergency orders
The National Guard is reporting to DC Armory as part of a federal emergency deployment to restore public safety.
President Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime in Washington, DC continues the decades-long American narrative. Data says crime is declining despite the fact that many Americans feel out of control.
FBI data shows that the country’s crime rate has declined over the past 30 years, but more than half of Americans believe there are more crimes than in almost every Gallup survey conducted since 1993.
“People don’t track these things. They don’t look at statistics… They just have the feeling that they’re not safe,” said Howard Labine, a professor of political science and psychology at the University of Minnesota.
Safety is a real concern for many people.
Violent crimes still occur daily, according to Alex Piquero, a professor at the University of Miami and former director of the Bureau of Legal and Statistics.
“Is it safe today? Yeah, we’re even safer,” Piquero said. “But we are not completely safe.”
Why are Americans’ perceptions different to crime data?
There are several reasons for this:
- News and social media can blow away fear: Social media and news reports on relatively rare cases such as Flash Mob robberies could further burn misconceptions about public safety, Piquero said. The Pew Research Center discovered in 2024 that Americans who frequently consume local crime news are more likely to worry about crimes that affect them personally.
- Party: The gap between Americans’ perceptions of crime was widening more than ever in 2024, with 29% of Democrats and 90% of Republicans saying they believe crime had increased that year, Gallup found.
- Data distrust: Crime data is notoriously complex in part due to contradictions in the way local law enforcement tracks crimes. Drawing conclusions from the data has become political feed.
“There’s a cognitive issue, right? And is there a perception that crime is out of control? Yeah…” Piquero said. “But data doesn’t necessarily support that.”
Can you trust your crime data?
Crime data can be found in the heart of Washington, DC Firestorm. Trump calls the city’s crime statistics, which show a significant decline in violent crime, “a complete fraud.”
DC Police Union Chair Greg Pemberton told NBC4 Washington that he suspected the decline in local crime was as great as authorities claimed, and accused his hometown of intentionally forgerying data.
People who track crime data are familiar with issues of accuracy and tend to focus on large painting trends.
Piquero said that individuals who create crime data, especially at the federal level, are extremely committed to providing information that is “accurate, reliable, and timely.”
“I don’t think anyone cooks books about crime data,” he added.
Data analyst Jeff Asher believes that contested DC crime data is likely to exaggerate the decline in violent crime, but that’s not particularly surprising to him.
Asher, co-founder of data analytics firm Ah Datalytics, said it is not entirely clear why there is a discrepancy between the data reported to the FBI and the public, but it is not uncommon for law enforcement data, particularly real-time data, to be inaccurate.
“One of the pitfalls of people who rely on publicly available data is that it can sometimes be wrong,” he said. “And that happens – as someone who sees this data – it happens with a depressing frequency.”
There are gaps in national crime data
National crime data is not complete either. The FBI crime reports rely on information submitted by police, but 18,000 legal agencies do not need to report this data, leading to questions about accuracy, not everything.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Justice Statistics is generating an annual national victimization survey that includes both reported and unreported offences.
These reports generally reflect one another, Piquero said, but BJS investigations often show that certain crimes, such as domestic violence, rape and hate crimes, are consistently underreported to police. He said two pieces of data can be put together and you can feel how crime is changing.
“One is not essentially better than the others. I’ve always advised people to see both,” Piquero said.
Usher said other sources, including gun violence archives, crime data tools, and his company’s real-time crime index, will help Americans understand the broader trends in crime. Despite the crime data issues, the drops reported in DC fit the wider picture, Asher said. “We certainly feel confident in the decline we see nationwide.”
Contributors: Erin Mansfield, Zach Anderson, Kathryn Palmer. USA TODAY; Reuters
