Fact Checking “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”, Chapter Ten

“Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”
Chapter Ten
By: “Dr. Eowyn” (aka Maria Hsia Chang) and James Fetzer

Chapter Ten is an interesting one; not because it finally, miraculously offers up even a sliver of compelling information (it doesn’t), but because its content had already been thoroughly debunked long ago, by Metabunk, by Snopes, by USA Today, etc. And while the same could be said for nearly every other chapter of this completely asinine book, this time the authors openly acknowledge it. And they do so within the very first paragraph! But somehow the chapter doesn’t abruptly end there. Instead, James Fetzer and Maria Chang awkwardly fumble their way through a counterargument that basically boils down to “nuh-uh”.

With the exception of an incredibly bizarre claim regarding Nancy Lanza’s alleged true identity, the authors spend most of this very short chapter (six whole pages… that’s three pages per author!) attempting to once again breathe life into the absurd notion that the FBI, defying all logic, openly and publicly admits, via their own website, that no one died in the Sandy Hook massacre.

This nonsensical theory is based on a total misunderstanding of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (or UCR) program, a summary of which lists zero murders reported by the Newtown Police Department for 2012. But we know that at least twenty-seven people were murdered in Newtown that year, so what gives?

There’s actually a very simple explanation: the FBI’s data (which is provided by the state of Connecticut and can be viewed, in its entirety, here) is organized by reporting agency, which doesn’t always coincide with where the crime actually took place. And since the shooting was ultimately handled by Connecticut state police rather than Newtown PD, it was the former that submitted the information to the FBI. That means that Connecticut state police are the reporting agency and therefore the data appears under their totals – the state totals. This is not a mistake; it is by design. From the FBI’s own Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook:

3. Federal agencies should report offenses within their investigative jurisdictions if they are not
   being reported by a local/state law enforcement agency.
4. When two or more local, state, tribal, or federal agencies are involved in the investigation of
   the same offense and there is a written or oral agreement defining the roles of the investigating agencies, the agreement must designate which agency will report the offense.
5. When two or more federal agencies are involved in the investigation of the same offense and
   there is no written or oral agreement defining their roles, the federal agency having lead or
   primary investigative jurisdiction should report the data. If there is uncertainty as to which is
   the lead or primary agency, the agencies must agree on which agency will report the offense.

This objectively disproves the following ridiculous claim, made without evidence on page 172 of “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”:

“After all, murders are reported in the communities or jurisdictions in which they have occurred, not on the basis of the agency or organization that investigates them.” pg. 172

The FBI has been in charge of the UCR program since 1930, and according to their own documentation, this is simply not true.

While murders and other crimes are usually investigated and therefore reported by local law enforcement agencies, it is not required and not always the case. And it was not the case with Sandy Hook, a fact further confirmed to me personally by both the FBI’s Crime Stats staff as well as Connecticut’s DESPP Crime Analysis Unit. Connecticut’s DESPP Crime Analysis Unit even cited the gruesome Petit murders as another example of a high-profile case that was handled by state police rather than local law enforcement. And sure enough, while three members of the Petit family were killed in the gruesome attack, the FBI’s 2007 UCR data for Connecticut only lists two murders taking place in the Petit’s hometown of Cheshire that year:

Those two murders were the victims of a February murder-suicide, completely unrelated to the Petit tragedy. Since the investigation was handled by Cheshire police, they were the agency that reported the murders to the FBI, which is why they are included in their totals and the Petit murders – which took place in Cheshire but were handled by state police – are not.

Still, in a sad attempt to bolster their demonstrably bogus claim, Maria “Dr. Eowyn” Chang and Jim Fetzer ask you to skip directly to page twenty-six of Connecticut’s full UCR report from 2012. But in doing so, you’d skip over the enormous, full page dedication to the victims of Sandy Hook, right there on page four:

You’d also miss two more obvious references to the twenty-seven victims of the attack, which appear on pages twelve:

As well as page twenty-five:

Again, that’s before we even get to page twenty-six. In total, throughout the entire document, the shooting is mentioned fourteen times.

Still, the authors stubbornly insist that it is on page twenty-six (and page twenty-six only) that you will find the truth. They make the claim that:

“At the intersection of ‘Murder’ with ‘<10’ (below 10 years of age) for 2012, you will find the number ‘0’!“

Which is technically true! The problem is that if you actually read the header for that table (which is not cropped out of their screenshot), you’ll notice that it says “Arrest Statistics” for year 2012:

What this actually means is that no one in Connecticut under the age of ten was arrested for murder in 2012; not that no one under the age of ten was murdered. Remember that two (allegedly) highly-educated “researchers” wrote all six pages of this chapter together, so they really have no excuse for bungling this one as badly as they have. Unless, of course, they are intentionally misrepresenting data. Which leads me to my next point…

Over and over again, the authors insist that this data is actually supposed to represent the number of people who have died in a particular area:

“The Connecticut State Police submit information to the FBI that asserts 27 people died in Connecticut, but at the same time denies that they died anywhere in Connecticut.” pg 175

But this is simply not the case. Again, this data, when you actually look in the right location, represents the number of offenses reported by law enforcement agencies. If they represented the number of people who have “died”, then where are the fatal automobile accidents? Where are the drownings? Etc.

It’s not just Sandy Hook. Or the Petit murders. Virginia’s UCR data for 2007, as it is published on the FBI’s website, is similarly missing some very notable information: the thirty-two victims of the Virginia Tech massacre, which took place in the town of Blacksburg, VA:

This is particularly notable because James Fetzer, as revealed in his disastrous Reddit AMA, believes the Virginia Tech shooting to be entirely legitimate. Following his own logic, since this crime actually happened, shouldn’t the murders be listed under Blacksburg’s totals rather than State Police totals?

Finally, Fetzer and Chang make the claim that…

“It is a federal crime to report false statistics to the FBI, so the CTSP tacked on a new category of ‘State Police Misc.’ as though that solved the problem” pg. 173

But there’s absolutely nothing “tacked on” about the State Police Misc. totals: you can find them in every UCR document available on Connecticut’s DPS website, going back to 1992. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before Fetzer sees this and makes the claim that this is proof they’ve been planning Sandy Hook for twenty-four years.

Next: Chapter Eleven