The Community Word in September covered early indications of a drop in violent crime, especially homicides, and that was confirmed by the FBI’s annual findings in its Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program released in late October.

Violent crime in the United States declined last year — dropping to about the same level as before the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite such statistics, politicians are reacting to the public perception that crime is widespread and growing. Some officials campaign on that misleading characterization; others boost funding to law enforcement to counter “soft-on-crime” attacks.

The FBI shows violent crime dropping 1.7% last year, and that included a 6.1% decrease in murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Rape decreased 5.4% and aggravated assault dropped 1.1%. During the social disruption during the 2020 pandemic, the U.S. murder rate alone jumped 29%.

Overall, violent crime in 2022 was far lower than the historic highs of the 1990s, but during last year’s congressional elections, 61% of registered voters said violent crime would be very important when making their decision about whom to vote for, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

Despite fewer violent crimes, property crimes went up last year, the FBI said. Property crimes jumped 7.1%, with motor-vehicle thefts showing the biggest increase: 10.9%. Much of that may be linked to social media with how-to posts on stealing certain models such as Hyundais and Kias.

According to Jeff Asher’s Substack newsletter “Jeff-alytics,” even with the increase in property crimes in 2022, the property crime rate is still much lower than it has been in recent history.

“The property crime rate in the U.S. has fallen an astounding 61% since 1991, even accounting for the somewhat sizable increase in 2022,” Asher wrote.

The FBI’s new data covers more than 11 million criminal offenses reported in the UCR program through the Summary Reporting System and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).

The FBI said the new numbers represent 83.3% of all agencies covering 93.5% of the population. That compares to last year’s numbers coming from just 62.7% of agencies, representing 64.8% of Americans.

Some data analysts attributed that to agencies not adapting to the then-new NIBRS in time to submit 2021 crime data.

Some states, including Illinois, technically require local law enforcement to report crime data to state agencies which can forward data to the FBI.

“Some states lag,” reported Amanda Hernandez from Stateline news. “Florida, Illinois, Louisiana and West Virginia, for example, all remain below the 50% reporting mark, which means less than half of the police departments in their states submitted 2022 crime data to the FBI. Despite these reporting rates, the data shows that greater shares of these state’s populations were represented in last year’s data than in 2021.”

Meanwhile — arguably pandering to misleading political attacks about a “crime wave” — the White House last month announced $334 million in new funding for state and local governments to hire more police officers, plus bolster crisis-intervention and school-safety programs.