When he accepted the presidential nomination at the Republican Party national convention in Cleveland, Ohio, last week, Donald Trump declared himself the “law and order candidate,” calling on party members present to support him because “our convention comes at a moment of crisis for our country.”
In his speech, Trump said law enforcement officers are particularly vulnerable in today’s contentious environment, stating that “an attack on law enforcement is an attack on all Americans.”
Rather than making policy based on feelings, it is critical to make policy based on reality. Despite what politicians like Trump may tell voters to stir emotions and secure votes, there is little evidence to suggest that life in America is becoming increasingly brutal for ordinary citizens or law enforcement officers.
In 1995, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR), a statistical initiative first developed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in 1929 to reliably collect and compile national crime statistics, reported Throughout the country, where 262.8 million Americans lived at the time, 1,798,785 violent crimes were committedThis amounts to approximately 685 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
Of the nearly 1.8 million violent crimes committed that year, about 58 percent were theftsand less than 0.2 percent — which is effectively a rounding error — were murders.
Nineteen years later, despite what TV news anchors would have you believe, crime has actually become less common. Using statistics from 2014, the last full UCR report, In a country of 318.8 million people, 1,165,383 violent crimes were committed. That’s about 366 crimes per 100,000 people, down 46.6 percent from just two decades ago.
If there is no war on ordinary Americans, what about the so-called war on police?
In July, criminals in Dallas used a peaceful rally on police-community relations as a pretext to attack law enforcement officers, killing five and wounding seven others. The situation appears to be getting worse—at least according to politicians. But a close look at the numbers shows that the rhetoric doesn’t match up.
In 1995, 94 of the 187 law enforcement officers who died while performing their duties were killed as a result of violent criminal activitiesor about 52 percent of law enforcement deaths, according to data from the Officer Down Memorial Page, a “nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring America’s fallen law enforcement heroes.”
This means that on average four police officers per 10 million people were attacked and killed by criminals.
In 2015 56 of 130 law enforcement fatalities were related to violent crimesaccounting for 43 percent of all law enforcement officer deaths.
In terms of the total population, the widespread attacks on law and order that politicians like Trump warned us about have claimed the lives of just two law enforcement officers for every 10 million people.
Why do politicians say things are getting worse when they are actually getting better? Because reporting the facts is lifeless, and lifeless news doesn’t translate into advertising revenue and ad sales.
Our political leaders also have an incentive to avoid reporting the truth because reporting that Americans are objectively safer today than at any time in history could lead voters to conclude that libraries full of government regulations and armies of government workers were not the cause. Pax Americana so many people seem to reside there unknowingly.
Lawmakers and politicians have an incentive to focus on real-life problems and propose more government action, more regulation, and more politics as solutions.
Instead of believing reports of an impending social apocalypse at first glance, people should examine the facts and decide to enjoy the imperfect but improving world for what it is. Pledged allegiance to messianic politicians who claim to be here to save us from ourselves is not the answer.
