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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.

6,854 published reviews in this topic

Deutsche Presse-AgenturCrime & justice

Op Facebook circuleren tientallen video’s over de betogingen tegen de coronamaatregelen in Den Haag op zondag 21 juni. In de video’s wordt meermaals beweerd dat agenten in burger (of 'Aanhoudingseenheid') zich onder de menigte mengden en opzettelijk de rellen deden losbarsten. Op sociale media werden de agenten meermaals gekenmerkt met een luidsprekertje in het oor.

Publisher’s rating: Het klopt dat er onder de betogers ook AE-agenten aanwezig waren, vermomd als hooligans. Er is echter geen bewijs dat de agenten ruzie hebben uitgelokt om de rellen te doen losbarsten.

The review concerns videos of the 21 June 2020 demonstrations against coronavirus measures in The Hague. It examines two related allegations: that plainclothes arrest-unit officers joined the crowd and deliberately triggered the riots, and that disguised officers threw objects at police. The review says the footage showed a demonstrator being taken toward a police vehicle by officers dressed as hooligans; The Hague police confirmed that officers had disguised themselves to mingle with the crowd and try to arrest a person they described as a troublemaker. According to the police account quoted in the review, that attempt failed and the officers regrouped behind the riot-police line.

APA - Austria Presse AgenturCrime & justice

George Floyd hat eine kriminelle Vergangenheit und wurde zu mehreren Haftstrafen verurteilt. Bei seinem Tod war er „high” und wollte mit dem Auto losfahren.

Publisher’s rating: Floyd wurde tatsächlich aufgrund mehrerer Delikte zu diversen Haftstrafen verurteilt. Für sein schwerstes Vergehen – bewaffneter Raub – erhielt Floyd eine fünfjährige Haftstrafe. Ein Autopsie-Bericht wies eine geringe Menge Metamphetamine in seinem Körper nach. Ob er mit dem Auto losfahren wollte, kann nicht gesagt werden, er saß aber auf dem Fahrersitz seines stehenden Autos.

USA TodayCrime & justice

A British 7-year-old was not decapitated, and media didn't cover up incident

Publisher’s rating: Partly false

The claim concerned Emily Jones, who was seven when she was fatally stabbed in Queen’s Park in Bolton on March 22, 2020. It alleged that she had been decapitated, that her attacker was a Somali migrant, and that the media covered up those facts. The review distinguishes among these allegations: it found no evidence of decapitation or a media cover-up, but said the attacker’s background was unproven. For the nature of Jones’s injuries, the review cites police accounts describing a stabbing and reports of wounds to her neck. It also reports that a postmortem found she died from an “incised wound” of the neck, and that responders tried to treat her before she died. The review quotes an emergency-medicine source explaining that an incised wound is produced by a sharp edge and is usually longer than it is deep; it says this evidence does not fit the decapitation allegation. The review also tests the cover-up allegation against the reporting record: it lists coverage by national and local outlets and says reports referred to neck wounds, not decapitation. On the attacker’s identity, it says the suspect was described as a 30-year-old woman, but her nationality and background had not been released while she had only been arrested. The review therefore treats the Somali-migrant allegation as unsupported—not as established fact—and finds no evidence that media outlets concealed the alleged decapitation or the suspect’s identity.

Deutsche Presse-AgenturCrime & justice

Die Tötung des Afroamerikaners George Floyd bei einem Polizeieinsatz in den USA wird in mehreren Facebook-Postings als Fälschung und Inszenierung dargestellt. Als vermeintlicher Beweis werden Screenshots aus Überwachungsvideos herangezogen, auf denen Floyds Brusttattoo nicht zu erkennen ist. Im einem Posting ist gar davon die Rede, dass ein «Fake-Floyd» von einem «Fake-Polizisten fake-getötet» worden sei.

Publisher’s rating: Bei dem Mann auf dem Screenshot handelt es sich um George Floyd. Das Brusttattoo ist an anderen Stellen des Überwachungsvideos klar erkennbar.

The posts treated screenshots from surveillance footage as evidence that the man arrested was not George Floyd: the tattoo on his chest could not be seen in the selected image, while an older photograph showed a prominent chest tattoo. The review says the tattoo was a large, stylized pair of wings and notes that images of Floyd circulating in the media also showed such a tattoo. The screenshots therefore focused on a moment when the identifying feature was not visible, rather than establishing that the person was someone else. The review examined the arrest video across multiple moments. Its analysis found that the tattoo was obscured in some scenes by lighting and camera angle, but visible at 4:52 and 4:56; it was not visible at 4:49. Crucially, the review reports that there was no cut between those sequences. That continuity undermines the suggestion that the people shown were switched between shots, while the varying visibility of the tattoo is consistent with the changing viewing conditions described in the review. The review also points to separate footage of the arrest in which the tattoo is clearly visible, at 1:13. Taken together, the different moments in the surveillance video and the additional arrest footage address both parts of the posts’ argument: the screenshot’s lack of a visible tattoo does not establish a different identity, and the video evidence does not support the claim that the arrest was staged with a substitute. The review identifies the man in the screenshot as Floyd.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Bombay High Court passed a judgement that anyone can call Sonia Gandhi as Antonio Maino

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned a social-media post attributing to the Bombay High Court a statement that anyone could call Sonia Gandhi “Antonio Maino.” The post linked that supposed remark to proceedings on Arnab Goswami’s plea to quash FIRs filed against him. FACTLY checked the court orders and hearing information for those proceedings, rather than treating the circulating attribution as evidence of what the court had said. The review reports that the High Court reserved its decision in Goswami’s plea on 12 June 2020 and directed that its interim order of 9 June remain in force until the final order. It says FACTLY checked the Bombay High Court website for case information and examined the 12 June order and the 9 June interim order. According to the review, neither order contained a statement about Sonia Gandhi. FACTLY also points to reporting in Live Law on arguments heard on 9 and 12 June, but the decisive evidence described in the review is the text of the court orders: they concerned continuation of interim relief while the decision was reserved, not permission to use Sonia Gandhi’s former name. The review therefore concludes that the High Court did not pass the order alleged in the post.

APA - Austria Presse AgenturCrime & justice

In den USA sind zwei Prozent der Schwarzen durch Weiße ums Leben gekommen, ein Prozent der Schwarzen durch die Polizei, drei Prozent der Weißen durch die Polizei, 16 Prozent der Weißen durch Weiße, 81 Prozent der Weißen durch Schwarze und 97 Prozent der Schwarzen sind von Schwarzen ermordet worden.

Publisher’s rating: Fast alle Zahlen sind nachweisbar falsch. Sowohl weiße als auch schwarze Menschen töten meistens Menschen, die die gleiche Hautfarbe wie sie selbst haben. Die genannten 97 Prozent schwarzer Mordopfer durch Schwarze lassen sich jedoch nicht bestätigen. Für Todesopfer durch Polizeigewalt gibt es keine offiziellen Zahlen, Berechnungen sind somit kaum durchführbar.

USa TodayCrime & justice

Ellen, Oprah, Tom Hanks and many other well-known politicians and celebrities are under house arrest for child sex trafficking

Publisher’s rating: False

The claim circulated in social-media posts naming Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks and others, and alleging that they were under house arrest for child sex trafficking. The review describes the allegations as part of QAnon conspiracy theories, including posts asserting that celebrities wore ankle monitors or had been arrested. It reports that the claims were not supported by evidence and traced their framing to those conspiracy theories. The review checked specific allegations rather than relying only on the posts’ assertions. It says searches for DeGeneres and Hanks in California’s sex offender registry and the U.S. Department of Justice’s national registry returned no records. It also investigated the video-based allegation that a man behind DeGeneres was a police officer monitoring her house arrest: the man was her producer, Andy Lassner, and DeGeneres explained that he was outside because of California’s shelter-in-place conditions. For Oprah Winfrey, the review reports that she publicly denied claims that her Florida home had been raided and that she had been arrested for sex trafficking. Her denial does not by itself establish every detail about the other named people; however, the review’s conclusion was that the broader house-arrest accusation was unsupported. Its evidence also identifies a specific misreading of DeGeneres’s videos and checks the cited registries, rather than presenting the posts’ allegations as verified events.

Fact Crescendo Sri LankaCrime & justice

The person inhumanely kicking the old, homeless woman is her son | ඡායාරූපයේ වියපත් මවට පහර දෙන්නේ ඇයගේ පුතාය

Publisher’s rating: Misleading

The post described in the review showed a young man attacking an older woman and said she was his mother. Fact Crescendo investigated the image and concluded that this identification was not supported: the image depicted an attack on an older woman in Indonesia, not a son attacking his mother. The review says it ran a reverse-image search and found Indonesian-language social-media posts and reports using the same photograph. It also refers to a report on the Indonesian website Modifikasi.com, which described the woman as having a mental illness and the attack as taking place in Central Java. The review further connects the image to reports from Serang, Indonesia, in January 2019: a group attacked the homeless woman on suspicion that she had stolen a child. The review says subsequent investigation found she had not stolen a child. The decisive point for the claim is that the reports located by the image search did not identify the attacker as the woman’s son. The review therefore concluded that the image showed an attack on a woman suspected of child theft, rather than a son attacking his mother, and that the post’s description was misleading.

FACTLYCrime & justice

Owners of ‘Masha Allah’ hotel in Coimbatore arrested for selling biryani mixed with anti-sterile tablets to Hindus

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY examined the social-media claim that owners of the ‘Masha Allah’ hotel in Coimbatore were arrested for selling Hindus biryani mixed with tablets. Its review traced the images accompanying the claim to separate events and found they did not document the alleged hotel or arrests. The review also reports that Coimbatore City Police clarified in March 2020 that the post was fake news. The image showing tablets came from Colombo, Sri Lanka, where the Sri Lankan Special Task Force seized them during a raid in May 2019. The review says the tablets included Tramadol and other illegal drugs, and that a father and son were taken into custody in connection with them. Separately, images of men with police showed people arrested in Uttar Pradesh in July 2019 for illegally holding weapons in a Madrasa—not hotel owners arrested over biryani. The remaining image, of a man holding a biryani plate, was found online at least as early as 2016 and had been used as a thumbnail for biryani-making videos. Together, these image histories undermine the post’s visual evidence: the tablets, men with police, and biryani image came from different contexts, not from the claimed Coimbatore incident.

Pagella PoliticaCrime & justice

«A seguito delle rivolte carcerarie (...) il Ministro Bonafede ha ‘duramente reagito’ (...) concedendo lo svuota carceri, come premio a chi ha gravemente danneggiato istituti penitenziari e a chi ha aggredito gli agenti della polizia penitenziaria. Bastava? No! Con Bonafede non c'è mai limite al peggio ed oggi apprendiamo che (...) gli agenti della Polizia penitenziaria che hanno contenuto le rivolte sono stati attinti da avvisi di garanzia»

Publisher’s rating: Panzana pazzesca

The claim by Fratelli d’Italia deputy Andrea Delmastro was that Justice Minister Alfonso Bonafede rewarded prisoners involved in the March 2020 riots with a measure dubbed “Svuota-carceri,” while officers who contained the riots received notices of investigation. The review examines both parts of that allegation and concludes that the measure did not benefit the rioters and that Bonafede had no role in the notices. It identifies the notices as those sent on June 11 to officers at Santa Maria Capua Vetere, in Caserta, who were accused of beating prisoners in early April. The measure at issue was Article 123 of the “Cura Italia” decree, dated March 17 and converted into law on April 24. The review explains that it accelerated procedures for some prisoners to serve up to 18 months of remaining sentence under house arrest with an electronic bracelet; this option had existed since 2010 and was expanded in 2011. Crucially, the article excluded prisoners reported for involvement in disturbances or riots from March 7 onward, as well as prisoners sanctioned in the previous year for specified acts including participation in or promotion of disturbances. The review therefore says the provision excluded the very prisoners described as having taken part in the riots or attacked officers. On the notices, the review explains that prosecutors—not the minister—issue these guarantees to inform suspects of investigative acts they may attend with a lawyer. It reports that the Campania regional prison-rights guarantor, Samuele Ciambriello, referred the matter to prosecutors after families alleged that masked officers beat prisoners in early April as punishment for the March riot. The investigation concerned those alleged beatings, not the suppression of the riot. The review’s conclusion is that the measure did not reward the rioters and that the minister did not appear to have a role in prosecutors’ action.