3

Alex Jones claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax. As evidence, Infowars.com presents the following FBI chart:

enter image description here

The Sandy Hook school shooting occurred at this location at this time. Does this imply no-one died at Sandy Hook?

tim
  • 51,356
  • 19
  • 207
  • 177
  • 4
    If there's someone saying "The FBI's own records say no one died. WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!1!", it may help with notability IMO. – Andrew Grimm Sep 01 '17 at 02:22
  • 2
    I removed a link to a screenshot that had unclear provenance. Could you provide a link to the original, so we can include it back in? – Oddthinking Sep 01 '17 at 03:21
  • @AndrewGrimm I'm a bit surprised about it, but [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting_conspiracy_theories#Alex_Jones_claims) you go. I couldn't find the original Alex Johnes video, but if OP wants to improve their question, it shouldn't be too difficult to find. – tim Sep 01 '17 at 08:05
  • 1
    Ugh, Alex Jones? Enough said. This guy isn't credible for his own existence. –  Sep 05 '17 at 14:36
  • @SiXandSeven8ths he's not reliable, but he is notable. – Andrew Grimm Sep 06 '17 at 08:39

1 Answers1

20

No, Snopes already addressed this rumor:

FALSE

As it turns out, a recordkeeping anomaly of sorts is at the root of the FBI report’s dissonant statistics for the Sandy Hook massacre. If you followed news of the incident at the time, you may recall that Connecticut State Police (not local city or town police) managed the crime scene in the hours, days, and weeks after the event in Newtown. Accordingly, the Sandy Hook Elementary victims were included in Connecticut’s statewide records, but they were not tallied as crimes of any description in Newtown in 2012. Rather, the deaths were classified under “State Police Misc.” in separate records.

Although the state’s murder total was 146 that year, only 110 of those deaths were assigned to specific local jurisdictions in the FBI report. The statewide tally of 146 includes the 27 victims of the Sandy Hook massacre.


And that matches up with the description of the data. If you look at the methodology section on the relevant FBI page, the table only includes data from city and town law enforcement, not state:

The data used in creating this table were from all city and town law enforcement agencies submitting 12 months of complete offense data for 2012.

Laurel
  • 30,040
  • 9
  • 132
  • 118
  • 2
    They didn't forget. It was handled by the state police not the local (i.e. Newtown) police, which is why it is counted under "**State** Police Misc.", not Newtown. – Laurel Sep 01 '17 at 02:30
  • 3
    Indeed, the ["data declaration"](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/8tabledatadecpdf/table-8-state-cuts/table_8_offenses_known_to_law_enforcement_by_connecticut_by_city_2012.xls/@@template-layout-view?override-view=data-declaration) for the table shown in the OP says (emphasis mine): "This table provides the volume of violent crime (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and property crime (burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft) as reported by **city and town law enforcement agencies**..." – ff524 Sep 01 '17 at 02:30