If you like to see them, I'll be happy to show you
Or are you suggesting crimes like murder, robbery, rape etc, are just swept under the rug, go unreported, are ginned up or somehow hidden?
Not hardly.
FBI stats rely on local reporting, correct? Any variation (or skullduggery) in defining crimes could be significant.
One 2005 chart shows Denver with double the forcible rape rate and double the car theft of LA. I have great difficulty believing this. How would you explain the differences? Do the LA suburbs have a higher crime rate than the Denver suburbs? Does LA crime just get more press because it's a more influential city?
Another consideration: if LA has a higher illegal population than Denver, chances are they'll undercount crime because illegals are less willing to go to the police. And if LA criminals are more vengeful and more organized, their victims will fear going to the police.
So it is possible that the Law is more respected in Denver than in LA, which means more crime violations are reported. Your thoughts?
On a tangential note, in the past decades the aggravated assault rate has gone up significantly compared to the homicide rate. This is in part because hospitals have gotten so much better at treating trauma, so fewer victims die.