Biden:"..rape was up three times in Flint...Go look at the numbers.”

FactCheck.org - A day later, Biden was asked by a reporter for Human Events, a conservative website, if he regretted “using a rape reference to describe Senate opposition” to the bill. Conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh, have criticized the vice president for suggesting that rape and murder will rise if the Republicans don’t pass the jobs bill. Biden replied: “I said rape was up three times in Flint. Those are the numbers. Go look at the numbers.”

We have looked at the numbers. We started with the number of reported rapes, because Biden makes three claims that don’t add up: that rapes have gone up from 91 to 229 (a 152 percent increase), that rapes have “quadrupled,” and that rapes have tripled. He’s badly wrong on all counts. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for those years show that the number of reported rapes declined from 103 in 2008 to 92 in 2010, or a nearly 11 percent drop.

We also calculated the rate of reported rapes per 1,000 residents to account for the city’s declining population. Even then, the rate has declined from .91 rapes per 1,000 residents in 2008 to .84 rapes per 1,000, a decline of 8 percent..............Read more