Facing a recall campaign from residents upset about crime, Oakland Mayor Sheng Tao released data this April purporting to show that crime was down in his city by 33%. This number was quickly embraced by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), who claimed his decision to send the California Highway Patrol into the city was paying off, and the story was dutifully reported without examination by local media.

But the numbers are all lies. First noted by a citizen activist and then confirmed by the San Francisco Chronicle, it turns out the Oakland Police Department compared fully counted crime data from 2023 to partially counted data from 2024. The crime drop wasn’t real. It was crass false accounting.