Phone scams are at an all time high. The same for identity theft and other forms of fraud. That article avoids it but I'm sure it's on people's minds. The FT

Phone scams are at an all time high. The same for identity theft and other forms of fraud. That article avoids it but I'm sure it's on people's minds. The FTC reported Friday that more than $10 Billion was stolen via fraud in 2023 (+14% from 22).[1] Talking about crime writ large and only selecting homelessness and murder is such a narrow view of crime that it seems almost meaningless. So I did some digging. I found crime trends in US Cities as put together by the Council on Criminal Justice[2] in mid 2023. Motor Vehicle Theft is up over 30% and homicide is down 9%. Even that doesn't even attempt to touch fraud (ctrl+f for fraud and scam both came up empty). The initial article says only "some nonviolent crimes like car theft are up in certain cities". This seems clearly contradicted by the other article I found. The only thing clear to me having done this particular exercise is that probably both the reporting and the polling here are inadequate and incomplete, and that the people who are most being hurt aren't going to get one lick of help. [1]https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/02/nationwide-fraud-losses-top-10-billion-2023-ftc-steps-efforts-protect-public https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/02/... [2]https://counciloncj.org/mid-year-2023-crime-trends/ https://counciloncj.org/mid-year-2023-crime-trends/