The number of violent crimes committed in the 30 largest U.S. cities is set to fall in 2017, despite claims from the Trump administration that these crimes are on the rise.
According to new analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, the overall crime rate in the 30 largest cities in 2017 will drop by about 2.7 percent from 2016. The violent crime rate will fall by 1.1 percent, putting it at the bottom of the nation’s 30-year downward trend.
Last week, President Trump warned law enforcement officers about rising murder rates in 2015 and 2016, and said more needs to be done to fight violent crime. He was introduced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has also continually warned in numerous speeches about such a rise, and has attributed much of his policy initiatives to that rise.
“Since day one in office, President Trump and his administration have wrongly pushed this idea of ‘American carnage’ and a nationwide crime wave,” Inimai Chettiar, director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, said Wednesday. “They appear to be trying to scare Americans into supporting some of the administration’s most controversial policies, from changes to drug prosecutions to aggressive immigration enforcement. But, numbers clearly undercut their claims. Crime rates this year remain near historic lows.”
The Brennan Center said the 2017 murder rate in the 30 largest cities is estimated to decline by 5.6 percent, which includes significant decreases in Chicago (11.9 percent) and Detroit (9.8 percent), after both cities saw big rises in 2015 and 2016.
New York City’s murder rate will also decline again, this time by 5.2 percent.
However, some cities will see an increase, including Charlotte (54.6 percent) and Baltimore (11.3 percent). Sessions was in Charlotte this week to announce that the Department of Justice’s “Project Safe Neighborhood” would enter into the city to help the rise.
“[T]here are some cities where violence has increased, and those concerning spikes need to be better understood and addressed,” said Ames Grawert, a counsel in the Brennan Center’s Justice Program.
The overall crime rate peaked in 1991. FBI statistics from 2015, the most publicly available set of concrete numbers, show the rate was 2,867 per 100,000 people, which was a 1 percent jump from 2014.
“The official FBI crime statistics from 2015 and 2016, which collected data from over 16,000 agencies, showed two straight years of rising violent crime and murder in America. While we wait for reliable data for the current year in the form of the FBI’s 2017 crime statistics, it is clear that this trend is continuing in 2017 across the country in places like Baltimore, Charlotte, Kansas City, Baton Rouge, Denver, and Portland,” a Justice Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “This is all the more reason why the Department of Justice will keep focusing its efforts on fulfilling President Trump’s promise to reduce violent crime, enhance public safety, and stem the tide of a devastating drug epidemic that is decimating communities across America.”
