A law enforcement expert has debunked repeated claims by the now-former Biden administration’s Justice Department that violent crime has dropped to a 50-year low, saying the agency “manipulated the data” to reach its conclusions.
The Biden administration has repeatedly claimed that violent crime is at a 50-year low in 2024, according to FBI statistics. The FBI defines the following as "violent crimes": murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
But Ken Alexandrow, a security expert who spent 26 years as a police officer in Nashville, Tenn., said the previous administration "manipulated data" to achieve a certain outcome.
"The way the crime statistics are developed is that police departments across the country send all Category 1 crimes, which are violent crimes, to the FBI. The FBI then develops the national statistics," Alessandro said. "But when a new administration comes in, things change and they change the reporting conditions."
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On February 28, 2024, then-President Joe Biden listened to his introduction at the White House and then spoke to police chiefs and government members across the country. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Alessandro claims that the Biden administration is doing just that. He said the government was changing reporting from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) scheme to the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
"If you ask anyone on the street, no one will tell you they feel safer or that crime is going down. However, the job of any leader, whether they are local, state or federal, is to make your constituency feel safer then we How to do that? Well, some police chiefs and city managers are in trouble for manipulating statistics," he said.
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Alessandro, founder of Agape Tactical LLC, said the police department will remove "some of the content" to show voters that crime is declining.
"A city might eliminate domestic murders one year, and then the next they'll eliminate drug-related murders, so they get two pieces of the pie," he said. "So, to manipulate their statistics, they take portions of the population to prove that they're doing their job."
"The government has done the same thing by changing the way crime is reported," he said.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnick/File)
He said that by 2023, 70 percent of police departments reporting under the UCR program will stop reporting under the NIBRS program.
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"Keep in mind that these cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City, as well as 45 percent of departments in Florida, are not reporting," he said. "When these major cities don't report, crime rates drop significantly, and therefore, your statistics and percentages go down."
"When these major cities don't report, crime rates will drop dramatically..."
On January 16, 2025, then-Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke at a farewell ceremony at the Department of Justice in Washington. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The Biden-Harris Justice Department reported that the murder rate fell by 17.5% in 2024. In the first three quarters of this year, rape cases fell by 7.1%, aggravated assault cases by 3.6%, and robbery cases by 7.8%.
Violent crime fell by 1.7% between 2021 and 2022, by 3% between 2022 and 2023, and by 10.3% between the second quarter of 2023 and 2024. During the same period, the murder rate fell by 6.1% from 2021 to 2022, by 11.6% in 2023, and finally by 22.7% in 2024.
The U.S. Department of Justice noted that the data came from 85 cities. They did not specify which cities reported.
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On April 11, 2022, then-President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris were at the White House. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In 2022, the Biden administration's FBI quietly updated crime data to show an increase in violent crime, even though previous data showed a decrease in violent crime that year, which was touted as a victory for the administration.
The data were hailed by Democrats and the media as part of a turning point in America's crime woes following the 2020 crime wave, when protests and unrest over police defunding swept the country and pandemic stay-at-home orders upended daily life.
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Fox News Digital has reached out to the Justice Department, New York City Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department and Chicago Police Department for comment.
Fox News' David Spunt and Emma Colton contributed to this report.