Violent crime rose sharply in America’s cities during the Biden years, despite repeated claims of historic reductions. National Crime Victimization Survey data shows that while suburban and rural crime remained nearly unchanged, violent crime in urban areas surged by 61 percent between 2019 and 2024.
The rate is now 46 percent higher than the national average and more than double the rural rate, with property crime showing similar gaps. Because most violent crimes go unreported, these increases never appeared in FBI figures, allowing the Biden administration to push a misleading narrative. In many Democrat-run cities, persistently high crime has become normalized as enforcement remains weak.
Most Americans view crime as a major issue, and a majority approve of President Trump’s response, which includes deploying federal troops and strengthening local policing. Democrats are now shifting their messaging by acknowledging rising crime and promoting gun control as their solution ahead of the 2026 midterms. A private poll commissioned by Giffords and an allied Democratic nonprofit found that voters overwhelmingly prioritize safety but trust Republicans far more on crime and violent crime control.
The discrepancy between Biden administration claims and Americans’ lived experiences stems from a massive reporting gap that began in 2021. When the FBI mandated a transition to the National Incident-Based Reporting System, participation collapsed. Major cities including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago failed to report complete data for 2021, and nearly 40 percent of all police agencies, covering 35 percent of the U.S. population, were missing from that year’s statistics. Even in 2022, only 8 percent of Florida agencies and 9 percent of Pennsylvania agencies submitted crime data, leaving critical information absent from federal reporting.
The National Crime Victimization Survey shows that less than half of all violent crimes, roughly 41 to 48 percent, are reported to police, meaning the FBI’s numbers miss most criminal activity. The 2024 survey found that violent crime in urban areas reached 40.5 victimizations per 1,000 residents, compared to 19.0 in suburban areas and 15.0 in rural areas, demonstrating the 61 percent surge since 2019.
In September 2024, the FBI quietly revised its 2022 crime data: an initially reported 2.1 percent decrease became a 4.5 percent increase, adding thousands of uncounted murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults. The agency did not acknowledge these revisions in any press release. Milwaukee police reported a 7 percent rise in robberies while the FBI claimed a 13 percent drop, and in Nashville, local data recorded 6,900 aggravated assaults in 2023, but the FBI counted only 5,941, leaving nearly 1,000 violent crimes missing from federal statistics.
In 2022, only 21.4 percent of rape and sexual assault cases and 36.8 percent of simple assaults were reported to law enforcement. This underreporting helps explain why NCVS data shows far higher crime rates than the FBI, especially in urban areas where distrust of law enforcement has grown under liberal prosecutors and defund-the-police policies.
Chicago illustrates how manipulated data, low reporting rates, and plea bargaining mask the true scale of violence in heavily minority neighborhoods. FBI data still excludes 23 percent of the population, leaving tens of millions uncounted, including several million residents of major urban areas. This gap may conceal more than 50,000 violent crimes in communities similar to Chicago’s South and West Sides.
Plea bargaining hides even more crime. Up to 40 percent of felonies are pleaded down nationwide, meaning thousands of Chicago’s violent felonies never appear as such in federal statistics. Because 97 percent of Chicago’s murder victims are Black or Hispanic, the undercount falls hardest on minority residents.
When combined with plea deals and non-prosecution policies, Chicago’s actual violent crime rate in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods may be 30 to 45 percent higher than official numbers. National data shows a nominal decline in violent crime, but Chicago’s high homicide levels and low clearance rates show that minority communities face far greater danger than national averages imply.
Chicago’s experience reflects a broader national pattern in which underreporting, overwhelmed courts, and progressive policies produce misleadingly optimistic crime statistics. Without transparency and solutions aimed at poverty, distrust, and lack of opportunity, the cycle of violence documented in the city’s 2025 data will continue.
Liberal prosecutors in major cities have further weakened accountability. In Chicago, police recovered about 12,000 illegal guns in 2023, yet only 40 percent of felony gun possession arrests resulted in convictions, and plea bargaining reduced 25 to 40 percent of felonies to misdemeanors, meaning only 19 to 24 percent of gun recoveries led to felony convictions. The city’s homicide clearance rate is just 45 percent, and in predominantly Black neighborhoods the 2021 clearance rate by prosecution was only 21.7 percent.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg increased declined prosecutions by 35 percent in 2022 compared to 2019, while misdemeanor prosecutions resulting in jail time fell 78 percent. Chicago’s Kim Foxx dropped 25,000 cases, including felony murder and rape, and Los Angeles under George Gascon saw only 1.4 percent of violent sex crimes end in conviction from 2018 to 2024.
In Chicago, arrests were made in only about one in seven violent crimes in 2024, continuing a twenty-year decline. These liberal prosecutors, eliminated cash bail, refused to prosecute misdemeanors, and routinely downgraded felonies, creating conditions under which violent crime flourishes unchecked.
As always, the cities with the strictest gun laws had the most crime, even according to revised-down statistics. The cities experiencing the sharpest crime surges share a common trait: some of the nation’s strictest gun control regimes. Illinois, which includes Chicago, received an A-minus grade from the Giffords Law Center in 2021 and ranked eighth nationally for gun law strength.
New York City enforces the most restrictive gun laws in the country, with licensing rules and firearm limits stricter than those in Los Angeles, Chicago, or Philadelphia. California, home to Los Angeles, consistently ranks among the top states for gun control strictness. Cook County maintains bans on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, and Chicago has kept strict regulations even after the Supreme Court struck down its handgun ban in 2010.
The post New Report Exposes Biden-Era Lies About Crime Statistics: Crime Was Up in Major Cities appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.