New York Times Embarrassed By Reality: Vets 82% Less Likely To Murder Than Average Citizen

The Whistler  •  January 18, 2008

Remember that New York Times story from a few days ago which suggested that soldiers returning from war were more likely to commit acts of violence? Bill O’Reilly covered it on his show tonight, and from an analysis of Department of Justice numbers it turns out the Times was terribly wrong. It turns out that veterans are some 82% less likely to kill than the average citizen.
Here’s the video:


The key graphic:
image

This goes beyond mere bias. This was an out-and-out smear of our troops perpetrated by a group of media professionals who knew full well what they were doing.

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  • http://Array Spartacus

    I question the DOJ numbers because murder is a generally a state crime and I don’t know why the DOJ would be tracking this. I also don’t know if states accurately track which convicts are veterans. Intuitively I would guess that veterans statistics would be pretty close to the statistics of the general population.

    Hawk, you could ask them, seriously, you can.

    AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

  • pparets

    Hawk: The DOJ and the FBI have been collecting and collating state crime statistics for the last 25 years or more.

  • ShoeMart

    Does this surprise anyone?
    Smearing our governmental leaders is more important to the NYT than giving our kick-ass troops (and their leaders) credit.

  • http://www.bikebubba.blogspot.com/ Bike Bubba

    Hawk, the FBI/DOJ collects national statistics on all sorts of crimes, and has for decades. It’s one of the best sources, actually.

    Moreover, your source is entirely compatible with what is noted here; think of where the crime rate for non-veterans would be if you (correctly) assumed that the vast majority of veterans are male. You would roughly double that number for non-veterans, and find that non-veterans are about 3.5x more likely to commit violent crimes than veterans.

    This is what you’d expect if you prevented criminals from entering the military and trained them in basic ethics and morals while in uniform–which is exactly what we do.

  • Pilgrim

    Hawk:

    Every Police Department and Sheriff’s Office in America is REQUIRED to submit arrest statistics to the feds. EVERY type of crime is categorized and tracked.

    Go to the Department of Justice or the FBI websites and do your own math. The numbers are there.

  • http://www.dartemis.net/blog/ sayanything-42

    Pilgrim opines:

    If I had EVER done my job this poorly – presenting one side of an issue without researching or worse, ignoring all aspects of a case – I would have been fired long ago.

    Ah, but you can fire them, sort of… Cancel your subscription (if you have one).

    What they’ve done here in nothing short of journalistic malfeasance.

    And this is surprising to you why?

  • Pilgrim

    By the way, Rodney makes this point:

    Ah, but you can fire them, sort of… Cancel your subscription (if you have one).

    I just cancelled my subscription to Time about a month ago (shortly after they decided that Putin was the man of the year)and my subscription to our local liberal rag, the New Orleans Time-Picayune.

    Take a look at my post about the incident in Tijuana if you want to see another case of what is probably malfeasance by omission on the part of our media.

  • Hawk

    According to this study about 515/100,000 veterans commit violent crime compared to 906/100,000 for non-vetreans. It doesn’t say anything specifically about murder.

    It would be interesting to have a more detailed study since the beginning of the gulf war.

    The video does not work so I was not able to see where Fox got their information.

  • http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/author/Anna/ Anna

    War Torn Part I “Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles.” by Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alvarez.
    Perhaps, in Part II, Deborah Sontag and Lizette Alvarez could utilize the space to apologize for their outlandish propaganda, their atrocious research skills or their inability to perform basic math… or all of the above.

  • pparets

    Does anyone doubt where the MSM’s loyalties lie? They blow off [pun intended] Bill Clinton’s mysogeny in the Oval Office, but smear Guiliani for his Long Island visits. They ignore America’s soldiers on the battlefield, but cry ‘Mass Murderers” over a few vets back home. The list goes on and on and on and on…

  • Hawk

    Moreover, your source is entirely compatible with what is noted here; think of where the crime rate for non-veterans would be if you (correctly) assumed that the vast majority of veterans are male. You would roughly double that number for non-veterans, and find that non-veterans are about 3.5x more likely to commit violent crimes than veterans.

    I understand your point, but I think you will find women do not commit violent crime at nearly the rate men do, so I don’t think you can double that.

  • 2Hotel9

    The actual numbers are being emailed to NYT in such a mass that they have apparently shut it down for the moment. I received 3 error messages from their email this morning, usually they are quite prompt in replies.

  • Tom

    I don’t see anything in the NY Times article that says veterans are more likely to commit homicide than civilians. What the article compares are the amount of homicides committed during the past six years of engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan as compared to the six years prior to those engagements.

  • 2Hotel9

    Again, the numbers you throw clearly show veterans to be SUBSTANTIALLY less likely to commit violent crimes than civs. Good job, buddy.

  • 2Hotel9

    So the Dept of Justice has no interest in tracking crime statistics? Is that really your point?

    Veterans, on the whole, are far more likely to be law abiding and to exercise greater control over their actions. The fact that a tiny minority of veterans commit violent crimes is an indication that a tiny minority of veterans commit violent crimes. And nothing more.

  • Lestat

    Has anybody been able to verify the Fox numbers? The most exhaustive study of veterans in federal and state prison I was able to find showed that the murder rate for veterans was approximately 94/100k while for nonveterans was 168/100k. This certainly is not a ratio of 40:7.

    http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/vsfp04.pdf

  • http://www.valleydeals.com/cgi-bin/board2/YaBB.pl Kevin

    When did facts ever get in the way of the guilty elite, pushing the collectivist agenda?

  • http://proof-proofpositive.blogspot.com/ proof_positive

    Good on Fox News for setting the record straight!
    I guess the dweebs that say Fox isn’t fair and balanced haven’t the faintest idea what they’re talking about!

  • Lestat

    So, you are telling us, lestupid, that civilians are far more likely to commit murder than veterans? Thanks for playing”How Stupid Can Lestupid Be!” From the numbers you dropped 74 of 168 murderers are veterans. Substantially less than half. Good job, buddy.

    The ratio of 94/168 is not substantially less than half. But the report also pointed out that part of the disparity is because young people are the most likely to commit crimes and there are substantially less young veterams than older veterans. If you sign a 4 year contract at 18 you cannot be a veteran until 22. Probably why Fox only chose the demographic of 18-34, they wanted to skew the numbers.

  • http://www.dartemis.net/blog/ sayanything-42

    Why is it again that anyone relies on the MSM for accurate information? Oh, wait, they don’t anymore.

    If you own stocks in the MSM, sell now.

  • Pilgrim

    Rodney,

    Not surprising at all. Outrageous, yes. Surprising – no. Their track record relative to objectivity in the past several years is dismal – and growing even more so by the day.

  • Hawk

    I question the DOJ numbers because murder is a generally a state crime and I don’t know why the DOJ would be tracking this. I also don’t know if states accurately track which convicts are veterans. Intuitively I would guess that veterans statistics would be pretty close to the statistics of the general population.

  • 2Hotel9

    So, you are telling us, lestupid, that civilians are far more likely to commit murder than veterans? Thanks for playing”How Stupid Can Lestupid Be!” From the numbers you dropped 74 of 168 murderers are veterans. Substantially less than half. Good job, buddy.

  • Pilgrim

    If I had EVER done my job this poorly – presenting one side of an issue without researching or worse, ignoring all aspects of a case – I would have been fired long ago.

    What they’ve done here in nothing short of journalistic malfeasance.

  • http://sayanythingblog.com robport

    The video does not work so I was not able to see where Fox got their information.

    The video may not be working for you (it works fine for me) but the graphic I posted is clear: The data came from the DoJ.

  • http://sayanythingblog.com robport

    I question the DOJ numbers because murder is a generally a state crime and I don’t know why the DOJ would be tracking this. I also don’t know if states accurately track which convicts are veterans. Intuitively I would guess that veterans statistics would be pretty close to the statistics of the general population.

    Hawk, the DoJ has been collecting local crime data for decades. Where have you been?

    And as both your comparison above and Fox’s comparison shows, Vets (despite being comprised of the gender demographic most likely to commit violence crime) are less likely as a group to murder/commit an act of violence than the general population.

    Why are you arguing at this point? The New York Times is just plain wrong.

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