92% of Republicans, 78% of independents and 58% of Democrats believe crime is rising, as crime rates plummet
If people aren't panicked, they wouldn't elect panic-pandering politicians, so there must always be a panic — crime, drugs, commies, libruls, etc.
https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/people-think-crime-rate-up-actually-down-rcna129585Open linkView original on lemmy.world568
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Even after the drastic collapse in violent crime after the mid 90s people still swore that crime was worse than ever. So this isn't something created by social media. Normal media figured out that outrage holds veiwership, and thus ratings, long before social media got into the mix.
That's true. The media has always sensationalized things for ratings.
Personally I don't watch news shows, so for me, social media was the first thing that came to mind when considering this trend. Even though 90% of my algorithm is parrot and cat videos, that other 10% is angry Karens.
Yeah, most of my suggested feed is horror, history, and music related stuff. However, even though I actively make sure I tell youtube not to suggest them, and make sure they are not in my history, I still get a regular flow of, mostly right wing, moral, and crime, panic stuff. Even though I have had told YT not to suggest Prager U shit, I have been getting war on christmas BS from them for a month now.
My neighbors swear they hear gunshots in our neighborhood every night. I grew up around guns in WV and I’ve shot plenty of guns. I don’t know what they’re actually hearing but it’s not gunshots and I can’t convince them any different. People believe what they want to believe and if the news they watch is all crime news then crime must be up.
Probably just fireworks, my neighbors constantly shoot them off for any reason on any day that ends with "y", people who don't know what gunshots sound like often confuse the two.
Fireworks, cars backfiring, and construction noises. I lived in a nice part of Oakland for years and Nextdoor was full of people terrified of these spectres
My Nextdoor is filled with people fearfully asking why there are helicopters overhead ... when we live near numerous hospitals with helipads.
There's a lot of roofing going on where I live, and some of my neighbors think the nail guns they use are gun guns.
the 24 hour news cycle plays a huge part in this, especially with local news.
They've expanded news from 30 minutes of national, and 30 minutes of local news a day, to 24 hour national coverage, and like 6+ hours of local coverage a day.
and theres just not that much shit going on to warrant that much coverage, especially in the local. So they start reporting stories from other places, so they always have some bullshit fear provoking shit to repeat ad nasuem for hours on end just to have something to fill the airwaves with.
So people are utterly convinced that crime is skyrocketing, despite all proof to the contrary.
This is a phenomena I've seen in my own family. THe more they watch the news, the worse they think crime is getting, and they just refuse any evidence to the contrary because "why would the news lie?!".
And they can't stand it when I say "For Ratings, obviously"
Really interesting how networks will never mention how wage theft is greater than all retail theft combined
or give a critical eye to stock buybacks or other financial malfeasance that exists only to enrich the ruling class at the expense of the peasantry.
You know there has never been a point in my life where we didn't have 24 hours news. CNN started 43 years ago. By now people should have adapted
I have to also wonder if it is due to people not understanding how things work.
When I moved from my rural area to a large local city, my small town father was quite concerned everything he saw on the evening news was happening in my neighborhood nightly too.
Every fire, gang shooting, stabbing, car theft, etc on the news that night was next door to me. He was pretty concerned in the beginning. He grew up in a pretty remote place which was small.
He passed over 10 years ago now and this was before social media really started to become our main sources of our curated news, not that he had a cellphone or a computer so I think for people like him social media would be even more effective at ramping up that fear of everything beyond the nonsense of the supermarket tabloids that had general threats and BS.
Now today's social media and news entertainment can really zoom in on creating specific fears for each person or highlight BS that isn't even a part of their normal lives to worry about.
My father had fairly outdated ideas like everything he saw in the press must be true because they wouldn't be allowed to print it otherwise. That included the tabloids. I can only imagine those that digest social media click bait fall into this trap pretty far...
Part of it could just be parenting instincts. My wife is from a country where you can get heat stroke all year long. The first year, after our first child's was born, my mother-in-law would call after every snow fall.
Are you alright? Is the baby alright? How do you keep your house warm? Oh God what if you have to go into the car, there is no heat, and the baby dies!?
Took reassurance and time. She really is a sweet woman.
I think people forget that the phrase "If it bleeds it leads." for local news.
The news' job is to tell us about the weird not so likely thing. But if that is all you ever see and hear then it must be happening more often.
Is wage theft rising? People might know they are being wronged, but attribute it to the wrong group.
Yes
For republicans, ‘fear’ is their identity, and republicans love playing identity politics with it. They make up threats where there is none. My father for example doesn’t want lax immigration in case “someone comes over here with a bomb”. oh ok pops.
I have a co-worker who doesn't want immigrants because she thinks they're all unvaccinated and thus spreaders of disease. She is also anti-vax.
Ask him about Oklahoma City.
Right? It’s been a slow process but he’s a smart guy and he’s starting to show signs of critical thought. He just seemed to lean in real hard on “well, these GOP folks do sound reasonable.” And he’s right, if you don’t really pay attention to the word and content (or just accept it, uncritically) but listen to the cadence and indignation, they do sound reasonable. By comparison, leftists sound angry and a smart-sounding republican talking down to an angry leftist sounds reasonable. And, after all, most of the news sounds like the republican.
It would be easier to just buy a gun also legal
The number may be lower for Democrats, but it's still a majority.
Fucking tiktok...
TikTok certainly didn't help, but those cars were basically designed to be stolen. No immobilizer, poorly designed key cylinder that pops out easily, and the tab in the ignition cylinder is perfectly shaped for a USB cable to slide over and turn it.
Context?
We got enough for a search, "tiktok car usb" will pull relevant news articles.
Have you considered that I have seen a video of some people doing a crime.
Well, there ya go. Case closed.
Democrats are seen as ineffective on crime while republicans are seen as more effective on crime. Regardless of the truth.
Curious: are they not correlated?
With?
I mean does it matter? D or R does it have an impact on crime?
Hahaha, 9/10 of the top 10 places with the highest murder rates are red. Try again though (and I don't even like defending dems, I'm a leftist...)
Edit: goes to show that police are innefective and more spending =/= less crime, moreover, a more policed state is a more paranoid, divided, and racialized state.
I asked a question
The party of "facts don't care about your feelings", right?
Where i am at people have lost all hope or any kind of belief in the police force
People aren't reporting everything as they have collectively decided our police force is useless past a police report for insurance
And they more or less are
acab.
That's been the truth of things for generations.
I don't think they are counting political and corporate grift
They said crime is plummeting, that stuff's just business.
58% is still higher than it should be, but once again the "facts over feelings" crowd proves that reality has a left bias.
I've been saying this for years and nobody on any side cares, they just want to be angry about something. Crime fell steadily from '93-'16 (except MA, crime started falling a little later than '93 there), and only had a slight uptick from 2016-now, still not at pre-'93 levels though. Looks like as per the article that pop is ending. I think the biggest problem there is the 24hr news cycle even existing, and the fact that they try to keep you enraged and watching by pushing only shit that'll make you angry enough to come back and watch more.
Well I for one am fucking done with it, give me a 24hr happy/uplifting news channel and I'll consider watching.
Beliefs are, essentially, opinions that people hold to very tightly without any evidence to support them.
Folks believe in gods, aliens, ghosts, trickle-down economics, eugenics, and all sorts of interesting things. They believe that crime rates are rising in exactly the same way.
While it is possible for someone to have a change in their beliefs, that change does not come easy. Certainly it does not come by presenting them with data that contradicts. Our best chance to change mistaken beliefs is in a dramatic and shocking event. The nature of a suitably dramatic and shocking event to shift a belief in the rise of crime eludes me completely.
Which gives us only plan B in two parts:
It occurs to me that we could speed this up by killing all the older folks, but that would obviously have an impact on crime statistics.
There is an old German (?) quote:
"Progress one funeral at a time." that fits with what you are saying.
And how do you go about deciding which information is true and which is to keep you in line?
In my city, it can be hours to get police to come take a report if it's a petty crime like theft or vandalism, and that's if they show at all. That could skew things if it's happening elsewhere as well. If you d9nt get to report the crime, it's like it never happened, but your perception of crime will be higher.
If reported theft and vandalism declined, but actual theft and vandalism increased, then that would mean that the reporting of theft and vandalism would have had to have decreased significantly during the past few years. I can think of any reason why that would be the case.
Sorry, to be clear, you are responding to someone positing a reason why that would be the case, so you could at least acknowledge what they said in your reply…
The Council on Criminal Justice wrote a piece recently that mentions that there was a significant decrease in violent crimes reported to police in 2022, which is more or less what they said. As for other possible reasons, The Marshall Project says that the FBI just changed the way they collect their data and “missed nearly 40% of police agencies” in 2021, and then just tried to model what the crime rate would have actually been for the 40% of their respondents that were missing. So there are real and tangible issues with recent data. And all data, but especially recent data
I don't know that this is as monumental as you or the article is making it sound. It's not like they're the first ones to ever use a regression model ffs. Nor is it the first time they've conducted the NCVS, which always records unreported crimes. The long term trends are what's most indicative of, well, long term crime rates, which have continued to decrease. Even the article states that the year over year data is just being used by politicians to push whichever narrative about crime they want. Even if there were some issue with one year of data, their point is that the pandemic created irregular results anyway. Individual agencies have also never been forced to submit their data. Iirc they get some kind of block grant or something in return for giving their crime data to the federal government. Which means that there are likely agencies missing from any given year.
Or you could also just go to the Bureau of Crime Statistics and use the data explorer instead of trusting an article from a nonprofit justice initiative.
The social media algorithms know that images of violence boost engagement
Also me.
My wife's family refuses to visit because my city is a crime infested Mad Max-eaque hellhole. Which isn't true. But I don't correct them because I really don't like spending time with them.
You know if you weren't roving around screaming "I am the knight rider a fuel infected suicide machine" they wouldn't get the Mad Max vibe. Here come in my weird helicopter thing, and I will show you.
Things like having mass shootings every day don't make people feel safer, regardless of the overall trend of crime frequency.
They are morons. They can't control their emotions. They feel like there is more crimes, so they believe there must be more crime.
So called "news", supposed on paper to keep people informed, fall to their laziest resting point equilibrium, mindlessly keep people stupid instead.
I moved because of crime. My quiet little neighborhood was very peaceful for 10 years and then in a 6 month period a little kid got shot in the face at the park, my neighbor got burglarized, my car got stolen (then recovered), and I got carjacked at gunpoint. And that's only the major things within a 2 blocks of me in my social circle.
I am left of center but shit got bad after COVID. Lotta people gave up and I don't totally blame them
You're getting downvoted by a bunch of people that live in small towns in flyover country that have strong opinions about what goes on in major cities. We too moved out of a major East Coast city during COVID because of a huge spike in crime. That surge is still increasing this year. Those pictures of bare shelves in CVS and Target because cops and store employees are powerless to stop petty thieves? Yep, that's my city. I can assure you that Target is not lying, because that was my Target.
I'm not sure why the general consensus on Lemmy and Reddit seems to be that crime is not a problem in major cities. I can only assume it's because they don't experience it in their own rural towns. For those of us who have had to deal with neighborhood carjackings, violent assaults, and open air drug markets, it's an entirely different world out there.
No one says crime is not a problem... just that it was worse overall in the past.
The National Retail Federation admitted they were lying about their losses due to crime, and a bunch of news outlets just reported it
...
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/us-retail-lobbyists-retract-key-claim-organized-retail-crime-2023-12-06/
Thanks, Target
The police aren't reporting the rates of the crime they're committing and apparently wage theft is way up.
The system is working as intended.
Where?
The people who actually believe crime is rising clearly need to take the plastic bag off of their heads and remove themselves from the hole they've been living under for more than a century.
It's unleaded gasoline, I think. They took the lead out of gasoline, and crime rates went way down in subsequent generations.
Also, just FYI cuz it's weird, yours is one of three comments from lemm.ee accounts that didn't reach me until today 1/1/24, six days after they'd been posted.
The claim that crime is down is based entirely on voluntarily statistical reports submitted to the FBI by police departments? Seems kinds of thin.
I'm curious, do you have any ideas about where else we could get crime statistics?
That's not really my point, is it?
Well, what is your point? If we can't trust the statistics we do have "because police are just making them up", then ... we know nothing at all about crime levels? That doesn't seem helpful. You must have some idea of what could be done better.
Exactly what I said. That the data is thin.
If I don't, does that invalidate my point? Does the cited data become more reliable somehow?
Good to know the noticable increase of gunfire in Buckhead Atlanta is just my imagination.
I wasn’t aware bumfuck nowhere buckhead was a reflection of the whole fucking country
lmao, you mean one of the most prominent neighborhoods in Georgia?
And that wasn't my claim at all, only that crime rates are rising in some areas and that a "you're wrong because my averages say you are" argument isn't a compelling against the echo of a 45mm.
Damn 45mm that is an absolutely massive cartridge. Gang bangers in Georgia must be stepping up their game.
Argument dismantled via typo detection. I'll never recover from this.
Well property crimes are up considerably. More poverty is correlated obviously. These are the types of crime most people are exposed to so it is unsurprising that perception of crime frequency is increasing. On a side note perhaps violent crime is decreasing as the population ages. Violent crime is negatively correlated with an aging population.
Property crimes are down, it said.
(Shows data)
Classic.
I doubt the rate at which various crimes are reported is dropping enough to skew the data. How many reports are filed by businesses, for instance? There's little reason to expect businesses would change reporting policies just because individuals are feeling disillusionment.
The state of things is not good; that is no reason to dismiss a rare bit of positive news. At least, that's my take.
I think we can believe the number regarding violent crimes, especially murder, because those definitely get reported. I would think businesses also report larceny/retail theft because they have insurance implications as well. I agree that petty crimes against individuals is probably under reported. However, I would rely on the FBI data more than anything else because of length and trend of the data. Either people have continually decreased in reporting crimes since 1960s or crime has actually decreased since 1960s. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
Well, I read.the article, then asked two relatives who are both cops.
Obviously their experience is localized, but the response I got from them that overall violent crimes are not down, they are in fact up. I won't go into any details but they both indicated things like house break-ins are down most likely due to work from home but murders, which I would consider violent crime are not trending down.
Take that for what it's worth.
Jaded much? I asked for their personal experience, and our conversation was candid, and not politically charged. They had a lot of details about what crime was up, what crimes were lower etc, how many people go on 'gun related' calls now compared to a few years ago etc. Compared how many people had to go out on homicide calls compared to a few years ago.
Their political alignment doesn't change their actual experiences. I know these two quite well and they are not telling me some lies to fit some agenda or counter a news article.
Take it however you want, but I don't line up all my opinions from only "one side" because of a team I'm on. I try to remain a centralized and open minded as I can.
But, you do you.
Cops are pretty racist though. Like systemically the racism is fueled off of fear of crime. If cops can convince people that crime is on the rise, they get money to do more racism. And the entire system is designed that way. So... take what your cop relatives say with a grain of salt.
This isn't to say that your relatives are racist, btw, but instead its to say that the institution is designed to oppress, and thrives off fearmongering about rising crime.
Sorry bud. You're posting on an echo chamber full tribalistic boot lickers. They want a world where they feel protected by others so badly that they convince themselves it's ok to make sure nobody has the means to protect themselves.
What their experience is, is anecdotal, not "localized". It doesn't indicate anything about the actual reality of the statistics. The places they patrol do not represent all of crime everywhere.
I would agree that murder is a violent crime.
Not to be rude but that is worth little to nothing in the frame of this discussion. Crime will go up in some areas and down in others. FBI data compiles all of that data, including the precinct of your relatives. The data shows overall numbers are down.
Now if the discussion was about what areas have seen upticks and why, then you information would be slightly more relevant. Even then, we would still need to clarify whether your relatives gave you their statement based on a report provided by their precinct or based on their personal experience.