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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

Fact CrescendoCrime & justice

Claim: Dog Bites Older Man Penis for his Rape Attempt in USA

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The viral post alleged that Randall James, said to be from Arkansas, tried to rape his neighbor’s three- and six-year-old daughters and that the family dog bit his penis. Fact Crescendo says it checked the claim after seeing it circulate on Facebook; the review identifies a post by Abu Ameen dated April 13, 2019, and describes the alleged incident and location as stated in that post. [S1]

NewtralCrime & justice

En Europa cada 4,8 segundos un musulmán viola a una mujer blanca

Publisher’s rating: Falso

Newtral checked a publication claiming that Muslim men rape white women in Europe at a rate of one every 4.8 seconds. The review says that the 4.8-second figure is not explained in the publication’s text. That text instead asserts a rate of one rape every seven minutes, which Newtral traced to alleged figures for Sweden and an extrapolation from Sweden to the rest of Western Europe. The Swedish figures cited by the publication alleged that 700 women and 300 girls had been raped by Muslims in the first seven months of 2013. Sweden’s Interior Ministry told Newtral that the information was false: Swedish crime statistics do not identify offenders’ religion. The ministry also explained that changes in how sexual offences were recorded affected totals, including recording each incident separately when one victim experienced repeated offences. The review reports that recorded rapes rose from 5,937 in 2009 to 7,958 in 2019, while stressing that those figures do not establish the religious identity of offenders. Newtral also found that the publication’s European estimate relied on extrapolating from the disputed Swedish numbers, a method the review says was not sound across countries with differing legal, social, cultural, and political conditions. Its discussion of Denmark likewise says the country’s statistics do not track religion; for 2017, it reports 34 non-Western-origin immigrants among 86 people convicted of rape, not the majority alleged in the publication. The review therefore gives no evidentiary basis for the specific 4.8-second claim.

FACTLYCrime & justice

A man attacked his neighbours with fireworks via drone for playing loud music.

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

FACTLY investigated a social-media post claiming that a man attacked neighbours with fireworks from a drone because they were playing loud music. Its review says it searched Google for “Fireworks Drone Attack” and found BBC reporting on the video. According to FACTLY’s account of that reporting, the incident was not a genuine attack: Albert, who filmed the video, told the BBC that he and his friends staged it as a stunt. The review also describes evidence about the people in the footage: a behind-the-scenes photo in the BBC article showed Albert with friends, whom FACTLY says were the people running from the fireworks in the video. This supports the review’s explanation that the scene was staged rather than an attack on neighbours. FACTLY further reports that Albert first uploaded the video to Instagram on July 14. The review says his caption described attacking friends for not inviting him to a party, not neighbours for playing loud music. Together, the reported account from the video’s maker, the behind-the-scenes image, and the original caption contradict the post’s description of the footage as a real neighbour dispute.

Fact CrescendoCrime & justice

Claim: Naam Tamilar Katchi members held in rape case

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The review investigated a social-media post that attributed a February 26, 2019 News18 Tamil Nadu news card to a claim that Naam Tamilar Katchi members had threatened a college student in Pollachi, filmed her, and been beaten by members of the public. It says a Facebook post circulated the card and that people were criticizing the party based on it. The review’s reverse-image search instead linked the men pictured to the Pollachi sexual-assault case; that identification did not establish that they belonged to Naam Tamilar Katchi. To check whether the card was genuine, the fact-checker examined News18 Tamil Nadu’s cards from the stated date and the channel’s Crime Time coverage of the Pollachi case. The review reports finding no matching card. It also says the Crime Time report did not identify the people arrested as Naam Tamilar Katchi members; rather, it described accusations against members of another political party. The review then compared the circulating image with genuine News18 cards and reported differences in the font, watermark position, and logo background. The review’s conclusion is that the image used real people associated with the Pollachi case but was presented in a fabricated card that falsely attributed them to Naam Tamilar Katchi. Its account distinguishes the men’s connection to the case from the unsupported party affiliation asserted by the post.