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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Crime & justice fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about crime & justice. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

6,849 published reviews in this topic

dpaCrime & justice

Een peruaanse rechtbaank klaagt Bill Gates, Soros, Rockefeller en anderen aan in verband met de COVID-19-pandemie.

Publisher’s rating: De bewering is onjuist. Een Peruaans gerechtshof beschreef Bill Gates, Soros en Rockefeller wel degelijk als een groep mensen, die de Covid-19-pandemie ‘gecreëerd’ zou hebben. Het betreft echter geen procedure tegen deze vermeende "criminele elite," maar een ongerelateerde zaak, die niets te maken heeft met Gates, Soros, Rockefeller of de coronapandemie. Het lijkt erop dat de dienstdoende rechters hun persoonlijke opvatting over de pandemie in het vonnis hebben opgetekend. Er is een onderzoek ingesteld naar deze rechters.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Visuals of recent police lathi charge in Kanpur

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerns a video of police beating people that was circulated as footage of the recent lathi charge in Kanpur. The review distinguishes the real Kanpur incident from the video: it says police did use a lathi charge to control protesters after protests over Nupur Sharma’s remarks, but concludes that the viral visuals do not show that event. Instead, it identifies them as footage of anti-CAA protests in Gorakhpur in December 2019. To investigate the video’s provenance, the review reports conducting a reverse image search. That search led to a 2019 Facebook post sharing the same visuals and identifying them as being from Gorakhpur. Following that lead, the reviewers found a December 2019 news video with similar visuals, which attributed them to police using a lathi charge against CAA protesters in Gorakhpur. The review also notes that another news report carried similar visuals in coverage of anti-CAA protests in Uttar Pradesh. The review therefore does not dispute that a lathi charge happened in Kanpur; it rejects the attribution of this particular video to that incident. The older Gorakhpur provenance and the contemporary Kanpur event are distinct, so the video’s circulation as recent Kanpur footage misrepresents when and where the recorded events occurred.

Vishvas NewsCrime & justice

उत्तर प्रदेशातील कानपूरमध्ये गेल्या काही दिवसांपासून सोशल मीडियावर वेगवेगळे व्हिडिओ व्हायरल होत आहेत. आता एक व्हिडिओ कानपूरचा असल्याचा दावा करत व्हायरल होत आहे. या व्हिडिओमध्ये पोलीस एका तरुणाला लाठीने मारहाण करताना दिसत आहेत.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLYCrime & justice

Video showing UP Police beating people in Kanpur during midnight hours

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY examined a social-media video being shared as showing police beating people in Kanpur during midnight hours. Its review identifies the footage instead as an incident in Mumbra, Maharashtra, in 2020. The location and circumstances described in the review do not match the post’s attribution to Kanpur or its implication that the video shows a recent incident there. The review says it used reverse image searches on screenshots from the circulating video and found an older video with similar visuals on YouTube. It reports that the YouTube upload was dated 29 March 2020 and that a video report by Hindustani Reporter located the footage in Kausa, Sree Lanka, in Mumbra, Maharashtra. FACTLY further describes the event as a police lathi-charge in the Shree Lanka area of Mumbra after supporters of two local politicians clashed. Thus, the review’s account gives both a different place and an earlier provenance for the footage than the claim supplies; it does not identify the video as showing UP Police beating people in Kanpur.

El Detector / Univision NoticiasCrime & justice

Supuesto reo informa que habrá una ola de secuestros de niños por una “orden” dada por “los clanes mayores” de una prisión

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerns a widely forwarded warning, attributed to an unnamed prisoner, that children would be abducted under an order from prison “senior clans.” The investigation examined the chain received through elDetector’s WhatsApp chatbot, which warned parents to keep children close and said kidnappers would target children because people no longer paid ransoms for cars, motorcycles, or phone extortion. The article reports that the message circulated in at least 13 Latin American countries, with variations in the prison named in some versions. To trace the chain, the investigators searched Google using terms from the message and searched Facebook; they found evidence of circulation going back to 2015. They compared versions and checked the status of official responses across countries. The article says the same message had been debunked by authorities in eight countries between 2015 and 2022. For the Paraguayan version that prompted the inquiry, Paraguay’s Ministry of Justice press office told elDetector that the information did not circulate among its security agencies. The account also distinguishes countries where authorities had addressed the message from five others—Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala, Colombia, and Chile—where the investigators found no official debunking or reference to it and had asked relevant agencies for information. That qualification matters: the article does not report official confirmation from those five countries. Its conclusion rests on the chain’s recurrence across countries, prior debunkings of the same text, and the Paraguayan ministry’s response, rather than on evidence of a specific planned abduction.

Fact Crescendo - Sri LankaCrime & justice

A group of robbers, looting houses pretending to be government officers from the Home Affairs Ministry.

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim repeats a viral warning that a group was visiting homes while pretending to be from the Ministry of Home Affairs, using an identity-card or census-related pretext to rob residents. The review says the message circulated on WhatsApp and Facebook, including a version describing people with documents, a laptop and biometric equipment. It also notes that the warning itself said no such government program existed. The review investigated whether the alleged home visits and robberies were real, rather than reporting a confirmed robbery incident. [S1]