Good news about the Crime rate!
This new recurring column, "Correcting the Record: Lies Republicans Tell to Win,” was inspired by the steady flow of misleading (at best) information from Republican campaigns. The Newsletter Team hopes that a brief discussion of THE FACTS will save you time to do the real work of campaigning — voter contact!
If you listen to Fox News or Donald Trump, you might not know it, but the US crime rate declined in 2022, followed by what may be a precipitous drop in 2023 as we move away from the pandemic and social protests after George Floyd’s murder.
We won’t have final 2023 data until the FBI annual report is available next year; However, their 2023 3rd Quarter report indicates the murder rate dropped an historic 12.7% nationwide, with property crimes down over 6.3%. This would be the largest property crime decline since 1961. A spike in auto thefts caused primarily by a viral video challenge on TikTok appears to have kept the property crime projection from falling even further.
Moreover, violent crime, which appears to be down 8.2%, continues a decline that is decades long. This number could exceed 15% for cities with populations over 1,000,000. And, while all projected declines vary by community population, this very good news is being seen across the board - from large cites to non-metropolitan counties in every region in the country.
This is not to say that we don’t still have a crime problem that deserves the full attention of the police and policy makers, particularly when it comes to gun violence. For instance, crime also declined slightly in 2022 in North Carolina but still remains above the national average (2023 numbers are not yet available). Tragically, our more rural counties suffer the most, due primarily to lack of resources. Our Republican-controlled state legislature continues to lower taxes on out-of-state corporations and high-wealth residents and also squirrel away money in the NC Rainy Day Fund instead of addressing persistent gun violence.
The American public, however, doesn’t seem to have gotten the message, with an approximate two-thirds telling Gallup pollsters that serious crime continues to rise, a disconnect that is not unusual. Local crime and other environmental conditions, poll respondents who aren’t paying attention, false statements by public officials and candidates, the media focus on bad news, etc. are culprits. Also, other factors may not show up in crime reports, including: threats of political violence, misleading viral videos of rampant gang-led shoplifting sprees and the efforts of political candidates and their allies working to end democracy in the US ignite voters’ fears.
By electing Democrats up and down the ballot this fall we can do more to reduce crime in North Carolina and across the US and to rebuild trust in each other and all levels of governments. As David Brooks notes in a recent Atlantic article : “Yes America is a wounded giant — but it always has been and the case for optimism is surprisingly strong.”