CNN's Anderson Cooper 360
March 19, 2024
8:26 p.m. Eastern
ANDERSON COOPER: Now, with significant progress in a problem that voters are hearing plenty about from candidates this year, especially the former President, crime. New FBI data showing it fell significantly last year, almost across the board. Property crime mostly down -- violent crime also down -- murder down sharply. Today President Biden touted the new numbers, took a jab at the former President over his record in office, and promised to keep fighting for police funding and a ban on assault weapons. Here now to talk more about this is CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller. So, John, I mean, the Biden administration is celebrating these numbers. How substantial of a drop in crime is this?
JOHN MILLER, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, it's pretty substantial. I mean, you've got like a 13 percent decrease in murder, shootings going down. We are not yet back to pre-pandemic numbers, but we're on the way. And that's important because pre-pandemic numbers -- particularly in violent crime -- were some of the lowest ever. That doesn't mean -- and we checked the FBI stats against the major city chiefs that there aren't certain cities that are still having big challenges, particularly with shootings.
COOPER: But why -- I mean, is there a sense of why violent crime is down?
MILLER: Yeah, so, I mean, if you look at kind of the graphics of the whole thing, you have 2018, 2019, crime is very low in the United States -- low as it's been in, you know, many, many years. But, then in 2020, you've got the pandemic -- you've got courts being shut down -- you've got Brianna Taylor and George Floyd -- you've got demonstrations and disorder -- you have police stopping making arrests in certain cases -- you've got "defund the police" -- you have a lot of things coming together and almost a perfect storm that we saw a surge in crime in those two years. Then, when you look at 2022, 2023, you see some of those cities have refunded police, rehired officers, the court backlogs are now kind of back to normal. You see some of the laws that were sweeping have been adjusted and fixed so that the criminal justice system works smoother. And you see that crime goes flat, and now we're starting to see it go down again.
COOPER: Why do you think there is such a discrepancy between the way people feel -- or the way it's being portrayed -- and, I mean, these numbers? Because there's plenty of people, I mean, I look around New York and think, "Wow ... (inaudible)"
MILLER: It's a real discrepancy. If you look at the surveys that are done either by Pew Research and the Gallup polls, you know, they'll tell you consistently that if you ask people, "Is gun crime, gun violence, violent crime better now or worse than it was 20 years ago?" they'll say, "No, it's gotten much worse" -- 30 years ago. You know, we know 30 years ago there were 24,000 murders across the United States. You know, that's down between 15 and 18 depending on what year you're looking at. But the perception is, "It's worse," partly because of us. Now, we have almost instantaneous access to very dramatic video from people's cell phones.
COOPER: You see it more even though it may not be as --
MILLER: We talk about the active shooters and, of course, the politics of it as, you know, some politicians -- and we were just talking about that reinforced the idea as ever rising crime when, in fact, it's way down from where it used to be, and it's starting to get back to where it was at its lowest.
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MSNBC's Alex Wagner Tonight
March 20, 2024
9:33 a.m. Eastern
ALI VELSHI: If you were to randomly flip on Fox News, there are pretty decent odds you will find yourself watching a segment about how Biden's America is rampant with crime. "America is in a crime crisis." And it's not just Fox -- Trump is also obsessed with crime, but a very specific kind of crime.
DONALD TRUMP CLIP #1: It's a new kind of crime -- I don't know if you've heard this -- but I came up with this one -- "migrant crime." There's crime, there's violent crime, there's migrant crime. We have a new category of crime -- it's called "migrant crime."
TRUMP CLIP #2: The United States is being overrun by the Biden migrant crime. It's the new form of vicious violation to our country. It's migrant crime. We call it "Biden migrant crime."
VELSHI: There's a problem with that because what Trump and Fox are pushing lack facts. Fox and Trump are pushing lack facts. Across the country, the crime rate is down, and it's continuing to drop. We got new FBI crime data yesterday that shows that, no matter how you slice it, America is getting safer. Property crime is down, violent crime is down, the murder rate saw the sharpest annual decline every recorded. And that supposed wave of migrant crime that Trump is obsessed with, Fox News ran 400 segments on it in the first 10 weeks of this year. But the facts are not on Trump or Fox's side on that either. Statistically speaking, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens are, but you don't hear that on Fox News.
Now, none of this is to say that many communities across the country aren't still grappling with very real incidents of crime or that we should turn away from efforts to reduce crime. But the narrative being pushed here that crime is on a precipitous rise under Biden's Democratic administration is simply false. What facts -- Fox News lacks in facts, it makes up, though, in vibes.
DANA PERINO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Democrats will say, "Well, but crime is down. It's not how people feel."
LAURA INGRAHAM, FOX NEWS HOST: We all know communities don't feel safer.
MICHELE TAFOYA, FORMER NFL SIDELINE REPORTER (on Fox News Channel): You do see crime on the rise, and I, you know, President Biden held that whole presser about how crime is down in America. I don't know. Again, it's -- do you believe your lying eyes? Or do you believe the President of the United States?
He just at the White House a few moments ago was just touting a drop in crime statistics. That is not what we're all feeling and seeing.
VELSHI: Don't believe your lying eyes. The reality is that crime in America started spiking in 2020 during the pandemic when Donald Trump was President. But Fox News is taking advantage of a gap between perception and reality here. Polling shows us that almost every year for the past few decades, Americans have felt like the country was getting more dangerous even when it wasn't. And those feelings now have a partisan split to them. Last year, Gallup found that 92 percent of Republicans believe crime rose from the year before compared to 58 percent of Democrats. I wonder why.
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CNN News Central
8:55 a.m. Eastern
JOHN BERMAN: So, this morning, new FBI data is showing violent crime in the United States down six percent -- down 11 percent in cities with one million people or more. Property crime is down four percent. CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller is here with us now. I just want to put these numbers, in and of themselves, in perspective. Because they've been out there, and I think they pass people by. Historically speaking, how much is crime dropping right now?
JOHN MILLER: So crime is dropping precipitously, but this is also in the context of, in 2020 and 2021, we had a perfect storm in this country. We had "defund the police," we had departments getting smaller, we had district attorneys changing policy, we had pandemic which shut down the courts and stopped trials, so crime went up a lot. So are we down to pre-pandemic numbers in terms of crime? No, we're not. But we are headed back towards normalization, which is a good thing.
BERMAN: Why? Is there a sense of why crime is dropping as much as it is?
MILLER: So some of those things have been reversed. A number of the places that defunded the police found that they had to refund the police because of citizens' concerns about crime. A number of places that changed the laws dramatically have gone to revisit those laws and adjusted them. So you're seeing that. But also there are the very practical things. The courts are back in business, trials are being held, but there are still challenges.
BERMAN: There are still challenges, but what I'm trying to figure out is, crime is moving down, yet Americans' concerns about crime are moving up -- like Gallup has it 63 percent saying it's a big deal which is the highest number ever. So why that disconnect?
MILLER: So that is really interesting, John, because even in the 1990s when crime was at an all-time high -- you had 24,000 murders -- you know, you go up to the mid-2000s when crime is at all-time lows and do surveys -- there was a Pew Research survey, the Allup survey. When crime is up, people say crime is up, and when crime is down, people still say crime is up because what they're seeing is not necessarily the violent crime but take San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, places where you have a severe homeless problem, mental health issues. They see the chaos around them, and it makes them feel unsafe. And then there's us and social media which is now with every cell phone recording everything live. You know, we're showing those crimes from security camera, social media videos, so it creates this aura that it's always getting worse. Right now, it's getting better.
Right now, it is getting better. I mean, there are entire cable networks that are devoted to making it seem like crime is going up. Look, I'm not saying it isn't a concern to people, but the data is showing that it is moving in the right direction.
So we're having the largest decline in homicides -- 13 percent down -- that we've probably seen -- that's what we're on track to have if it continues in this direction that we've seen in -- in probably recorded history. but it still doesn't bring us back to where we were before. So much work left to be done.
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MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes
March 21, 2024
8:44 p.m. Eastern
CHRIS HAYES: If you happen to be a frequent viewer of this program, you might be familiar with this chart. The picture paints about as clear as it gets. There was a record spike in violent crime under Donald Trump in 2020 -- it shoots up to the left there. There's been a consistent decline since President Joe Biden took office. The thing about crime data, it takes a long time to aggregate. It's actually gotten worse over time. The chart is based on preliminary information because it takes a while for the full picture to come into focus. These stats trickle out before the FBI drops its final report for the year before, but there's the thing. The Bureau just released some more data -- new data from 2023 -- indicating that, yes, there was a massive drop in crime last year. According to one crime data analyst who spoke to NBC News, when all is said and done, 2023, quote, "We will have seen likely the largest one-year decline in murder that has ever been recorded." It is indisputable the country is getting both safer and more prosperous in the last four years under President Biden. It doesn't seem like that message is getting through, at least not for now. I think it's true for a lot of reasons -- generally related to media consumption.
Local news has a number of mostly financial incentives to hyperfixate on crime, and they do. It's especially true for violent crime, often in a way that's disproportionate to actual statistics. And, of course, right-wing cable news has an obvious political incentive to portray life in President Biden's America as negatively as possible. (montage of 10 different people on Fox News Channel stating that "crime is out of control") I think the media focus is one reason why this message is not getting through, but some of the responsibility also falls on the Biden administration itself which, until recently, hasn't done a great job of articulating the real tangible successes on this front. Which is why it is very interesting to me when earlier this week, the Biden-Harris White House released this statement touting the new data from the FBI and taking credit for making Americans safer. Quote, "Thanks to the American Rescue Plan, which every Republican in Congress voted against, we made the largest ever federal investment at fighting and preventing crime at any time in our history. This record investment in crime reduction is delivering results."
The Biden White House isn't just touting the decline in crime, but they're actually taking credit. They're pointing to legislation investments as the cause. It's a pretty darn good message in an election year.
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CNN's Anderson Cooper 360
ANDERSON COOPER: Now, with significant progress in a problem that voters are hearing plenty about from candidates this year, especially former President, crime. New FBI data showing it fell significantly last year, almost across the board. Property crime mostly down -- violent crime also down -- murder down sharply. Today President Biden touted the new numbers, took a jab at the former President over his record in office, and promised to keep fighting for police funding and a ban on assault weapons. Here now to talk more about this is CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller. So, John, I mean, the Biden administration