John Lott - President, Crime Prevention Research Center Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Seven fifty two, our time here in Houston's warning to
news right, no victim, no crime. Well, at the FBI,
no statistic, no crime. I guess is there data distortion
going on? And if so, why is it going on?
And how do we fix it? John lott Is with US,
president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. What kind of
distortion are we talking about, John.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, it's all through the different data that they put out,
and you have different types of problems that are there.
You know, So like last year, the FBI quietly revised
its data for twenty twenty two. You know, everybody kind
of remembers David Muir correcting President Trump during the debate there.

(00:45):
At the time, they only had the data for twenty
twenty two, which the FBI had indicated had shown violent
crime had fallen by two point one percent. But in
September last year, when they put out the data for
twenty twenty three, they updated the data for twenty twenty two,
and it showed a four point five percent increase in

(01:09):
violent crime in twenty twenty two. Now, they didn't mention
that in their press release. If you actually read the report,
all they did was have a footnote that said we've
updated the data for twenty twenty two, But for a
whole year you had headlines across the country where they
were saying crime is down, but people mistakenly think that

(01:30):
it was increasing using the twenty twenty two data. And
yet even when the media would try to reach out
to the FBI to say, look, it looks like your
number is showing an increase here, the FBI wouldn't directly
come out and admit that they had revised it upward.

(01:51):
They would only say things vaguely that, well, we stand
by our data. Who are many other.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Who do you think they were trying to Who do
you think they were trying to protect by doing that themselves?
The Biden deministration, Why do it like that? Or are
they consistent from administration to administration As far as these figures, I.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Think the bias has been in one direction consistently, at
least across the last few administrations. Look, I mean, I've
worked in the federal government a couple times in the
nineteen eighties. If you found an error in the data,
people would fix it. And you know, during recent times,

(02:33):
you point out errors in the data and if it
goes against a particular narrative, they refuse to fix it.
I'll give you another example. Every year, the FBI puts
out data on active shooting reports. These are cases where
guns fired in public to try to harm somebody, not
involving some other type of crime like a robbery or

(02:55):
a gang fight over drug turf, anything from one person
being shot at and missed to a mass public shooting.
They claim that in the last ten years, only four
percent of those active shooting cases were stopped by civilians
who were legally carrying concealed handguns. The problem is, as

(03:16):
I point out when I was working there in the
Department of Justice, they're literally, you know, like one hundred
and eighty cases over that period of time, and nobody
needs to take my word for it. We put it
up on our website at crimeresearch dot org, as well
as underlying links to so people can check to see
that they meet the definition.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Well, they got.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
The problem is even when you get the FBI to
admit that they've missed it years later, they still haven't
fixed it.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
You know, one thing to.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Miss all those cases, but then not to fix it.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah, and nobody's holding them accountable. I'm glad that you are, John,
Thank you for your time today, we appreciated John Locke,
president of the Crime Prevention Research Center,