Cheaters

From David Hardy in regards to how the FBI, in the Uniform Crime Report instructions, requires the local law enforcement define justified homicide in their own particular manner. Their definition significantly undercounts justified homicide as it is defined by conventional definitions:

The FBI count is artificially defined in a way that far undercounts defensive uses. The usual definition of self-defense with a deadly weapon is use of force immediately necessary in light of a reasonable belief that the perp is likely to inflict death or serious bodily injury.

But the FBI UCR Reporting Handbook at pp. 17-18 uses a completely different definition. Reporting officials are instructed, in the case of use of force by a non-LEO, to include under justifiable homicide only killings “The killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony, by a private citizen.”

The illustration given (do NOT list as justifiable a situation where a citizen shoots a fellow attacking him, in a crime of passion, with a broken bottle — the author must have watched too many 1950s movies about street fights) makes it apparent that the assault itself does not count as “commission of a felony.”

The FBI explicitly states in the UCR Handbook:

Reporting agencies should take care to ensure that they do not classify a killing as justifiable or excusable solely on the claims of self-defense or on the action of a coroner, prosecutor, grand jury, or court.

The coroner, prosecutor, grand jury, and court could unanimously agree it was a justified homicide and the FBI would still insist it not be included in the justified homicide stats.

I call that cheating.

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7 thoughts on “Cheaters

  1. Given what they do with economic numbers, or temperature records, it’s no surprise it’s done with crime statistics. One of the downfalls of the Soviet system (beside the tyranny and murder that is) was the utter BUFARness of their production numbers. The Supreme Soviet demanded certain numbers, and those who didn’t produce, were shot or exiled. Pressure was placed on each succeeding downward level of management (it DOES flow downhill!), so each lower level just gave pulled out of their arse numbers to pacify his boss. Like the telephone game, by the time the numbers made it to the top, they looked nothing like the real situation on the ground. Throw in the workers (whose joke was “we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us” monkeying with things, and who would work diligently, when the guy next to you piddles his pud all day and makes the same. I have such issues in my office, and it’s difficult to do my job in an ethical manner, good for my customers, company, and myself, at times. The better than we like Krugman, Maddow, and the ‘shining lights’ who guide us…seem to know nada about economics or human nature. Total fallacy from every angle that we can have a tiny group of know-nothings predict the tiniest number of variables for a small town in NW Texas, never mind a modern complex national and global system of billions. Buncha feckless crapweasels, they are.

    • An acquaintance with confirmed SF credentials passed this one on a while back.
      Years ago, while uncrating AKs for ‘testing’, it was found that, on average, 5% of the guns were total junk.
      Now, the rest of the guns were just fine and worked perfectly.
      It was just those 1 in 20 clunkers that made him think that “Comrade Supervisor! Our Quota Has Been Fulfilled!” was the order of the day.

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  3. Yet it’s closer than Chicago which tried to separate out ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ homicides in order to artificially decrease the numbers. Now they just declare them lesser crimes.

  4. friends:

    the world is what we define it. as always, the question is who defines what it is.

    as lenin said, politics is a question of who does what to whom.

    john jay

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