By Yaël Ossowski | Wisconsin Reporter

MILWAUKEE — At the zenith of the hotly contested and increasingly partisan campaign to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who knew the divisive political discourse would center on what constitutes a “violent” crime?

This follows an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which determined that more than 500 cases of aggravated assault were downgraded to simple assault by the Milwaukee Police Department since 2009, suggesting that violent crimes have risen by 1.1 percent since 2010, instead of the 2.3 percent reported previously.

The discrepancies arose when the newspaper determined that cases that should have been categorized as “aggravated” assaults instead were labeled as “simple” assaults, allowing the police department to remove those cases from the log of, statistically speaking, “violent” crime.

Read more: Wisconsin Reporter