The latest FBI statistics point to a "historic" drop in crime in the first quarter of this year, Attorney General Merrick Garland says.
And this, after a year in which the murder rate fell at one the fastest rates ever recorded, a top criminologist added.
"This should be good news for everybody," criminologist Jeff Asher, whoanalyzedthe FBI numbers, told NBC News. "But it's also early June and the trend of the nation's crime rate is always uncertain."
The rate of violent and property crimes dropped precipitously in the first three months of 2024 compared to the same period last year, according to quarterly statistics released Monday by the FBI known as the Uniform Crime Report.
The murder rate fell by 26.4%, reported rapes decreased by 25.7%, robberies fell by 17.8%, aggravated assault fell by 12.5%, and the overall violent crime rate went down by 15.2%, the statistics show.
Reported property crimes also decreased by 15.1%, according to the UCR report, which the FBI compiles using crime statistics supplied to the agency by law enforcement agencies across the U.S.
“This data makes clear that last year’s historic decline in violent crime is continuing,” Garland said in a statement. “This continued historic decline in homicides does not represent abstract statistics. It represents people whose lives were saved — people who are still here to see their children grow up, to work toward fulfilling their dreams, and to contribute to their communities.”
In Philadelphia, Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel echoed Garland, telling NBC News, "We’re excited about the trend that we’re seeing."
"Summer is just starting so, you know, we are also very cautious that we don't overstate and overestimate the direction we're going," Bethel added.
But during the pandemic "we had the highest number of homicides and shootings ever in the history of the city of Philadelphia," Bethel said. "We’re not going in that direction."
Brian Higgins, an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said there could be a correlation between the crime decline and the efforts in recent years to beef up police forces that lost officers in the aftermath of the George Floyd murder and amid calls to “Defund the Police.”
"It wasn't just the pandemic that was causing crime to rise," said Higgins, who previously was chief of police in Bergen County, New Jersey. "We need to make more investments in police training and that wasn't happening."
Asher, however, said "defund the police" was more of a talking point. "We didn't see a lot of defunding actually happen," he said.
But so many societal factors affect crime rates, making it difficult to pinpoint the exact reason why crime goes up and down, he said.
"We still don't really know why crime went down in the 1990s," Asher said.
What's clear, however, is that the public continues to believe that crime is worse than it is, according to a recent Pew Research Center report. And Republicans, more than Democrats, believe tackling crime should be a presidential priority.
So the new UCR report could potentially undermine what has been a regular campaign talking point for Donald Trump — that on President Joe Biden’s watch “violent crime has skyrocketed in virtually every American city," the experts said.
“This progress we’re seeing is no accident,” Biden said in a statement released Monday after the UCR report came out. “My administration is putting more cops on the beat, holding violent criminals accountable, and getting illegal guns off the street — and we’re doing it in partnership with communities. As a result, Americans are safer today than when I took office.”
The Biden campaign used blunter language and noted that crime soared on Trump’s presidential watch during the pandemic.
"Donald Trump is a convicted criminal who enabled the largest spike in violent crime in more than a century," Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “President Biden has worked hard to clean up his mess, and it’s working."
The Trump campaign did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the latest crime stats.
But when NBC News reported in March that violent and other crime rates were down, citing available FBI and law enforcement statistics, campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the findings.
“Joe Biden is trying to convince Americans not to believe their own eyes,” Leavitt said in a statement, adding that “Democrats have turned great American cities into cesspools of bloodshed and crime.”
