In Case Anyone Forgot, Joe Biden is Still Our VP

Well let me tell you, it’s not temporary when that 911 call comes in and a woman’s being raped if a cop shows up in time to prevent the rape.  It’s not temporary to that woman.

It’s not temporary to the guy whose store is being held up and a gun is being pointed to his head.  If a cop shows up and he’s not killed, that’s not temporary to that store owner.

Give me a break, "temporary"!  I wish these guys that thought it’s temporary, I wish they had some notion what it’s like to be on the other side of a gun. Or a 200 pound man standing over you telling you to submit. Folks, it matters. It matters!” - Joe Biden, Philadelphia, October 18, 2011

In Flint, Michigan, they cut their force in half; murder rates have doubled in the last year…Police departments, as I said, in some cases literally cut in half, like Camden, New Jersey, and Flint, Michigan. In many cities, the result has been -- and it's not unique -- murder rates are up, robberies are up, rapes are up…I said rape was up, three times in Flint. There are the numbers. Go look at the numbers.” - Joe Biden, October 19, 2011, on Capitol Hill

The above statements came from our vice president on the opponents of the president's job bill (which the VP must have forgotten includes Democrats as well).  Even Glenn Kessler, the Fact Checker at the Washington Post, called Biden out on his story on Flint, MI and rated his argument four Pinochios.  Here is Kessler:

More important than the raw figures is the rate per 100,000 individuals. Murder did go up—though the rate did not double from 2009 to 2010, as Biden claimed. But rape has gone down. Biden actually asserted it had tripled.

And more:

This brings us to the central point of Biden’s argument--that fewer police officers means more crime. More police officers might certainly mean more arrests and convictions, particularly for less noteworthy crimes, but researchers have strived to make a link between murders and officers on the street.

University of Chicago economist Steven D. Levitt, who examined ten possible factors for why crime fell in the 1990s, made a noteworthy effort in 2004 to assess the importance of additional cops. He included the increase in police as one factor that could explain the decline in crime. But he also said that other key factors included a rising prison population, the receding crack epidemic and even the legalization of abortion (which resulted in fewer unwanted births).

In other words, even if you could make a link, it is likely one of many factors that affects the crime rate, not the single one, as Biden suggests. The FBI itself lists more than a dozen variables in what causes crime to increase in a community.

Also, this is the man who was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during the nomination hearings of both Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.  Scary.