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Associated Press: FBI: Violent Crimes in U.S. Near 5-Year Peak (9/26/07)
AP runs another story written by the Bush administration:A five-year look at crime rates show that the number of murders, robberies, rapes and other violent offenses committed in 2006 is returning to the peak reached in 2002. Crime dropped dramatically after that, the FBI data show.... In 2006, for example, an estimated 1,417,000 violent crimes were committed across the United States. That was a sharp rise from the 1,360,000 crimes reported in 2004 and approaches the estimated 1,425,000-mark reached in 2002.
But 2002 was in no way a "peak" year for violent crime. The number of incidents was down from 2001, and had fallen every year from 1993 through 2000. In fact, the rate of violent crime in the U.S. fell every year from 1992 through 2005. And violent crime didn't drop "dramatically" after 2002; incidents dropped by 63,000 in 2002–04; by comparison, they dropped by 169,000 from 1994–96—and more than 500,000 from 1992-2002. The only reason the article mentions 2002 is because the big graph the FBI handed out started with 2002—and the reporter was too lazy to look at the full chart to see what the real story was.
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