Vice President Biden is in the headlines again for a gaffe – this time his careless statement that more people will die if the Republicans don’t eventually support the Obama administration’s bill to provide federal assistance to struggling states and cities.
The caustic remark, aimed at building financial support for struggling police and fire departments, drew protests from numerous Republican leaders and didn’t sit too well with the people of Flint either, a city which Biden claimed is the poster child for less cops and rising crime.
But the other interesting aspect of this is that the nationally recognized fact-checkers out there disagreed markedly on whether Biden’s statement, and his of Flint as an example, had some truth to it.
At Politifact.com, the called the statement mostly true. At Factcheck.org, they gave the vice president four “Pinocchios” – the worst lie you can tell on factcheck’s grading system. And at The Washington Post, their fact-checker called Biden’s claims “absurd.”
The post found that Flint Police Chief Alvern Lock has repeatedly asserted that cuts in staffing had little effect on the crime rate.
As the Flint Journal reported in May: “Officials said the fact that 46 police officers were laid off last year had little to do with the escalating crime. Most of the crimes were between people that knew each other. ‘No matter how many officers we have, we can’t stop disputes between two people in their own homes,’ Lock said.”
At issue is a basic set of facts, Flint had to cut 66 officers in 2010; that same year, its murder rate reached a historic high. But the numbers for homicide that Biden gave didn’t match the FBI statistics.
Worse yet, the VP said rapes had jumped significantly since the police layoffs, but the stats show the number of rapes had actually dropped.
And, as is often the case with Biden statements, he eventually made things worse. Credit factcheck.org for following through on this story. After his initial claim, on Tuesday Biden said the number of rapes in Flint had “quadrupled” and the number of murders had “tripled” due to fewer cops on the street.
Here is how Politifact justified it’s conclusions:
“So is there a connection between how many police officers there are in a city and increases in crime? Experts quoted by the (Washington Post) Factchecker and by Politifact said it’s one factor among many.
“The Factchecker counted this as a strike against Biden’s claim, concluding, ‘Even if one believes there is a link between crime and the number of police—which is debatable and subject to many caveats—there is no excuse to make the dramatic claim that more people will die or be raped without additional funds for police.’
“Here at PolitiFact, we counted that as supporting evidence for Biden’s claim that crime was going up in Flint while the police force was being reduced.
“…All the experts said police force size was one factor among many when thinking about increases in violent crime. Should that weigh in favor of a statement like Biden’s or against it? It’s not clear cut.”