On Tuesday, Feb. 7, during a round
table with county sheriffs from across the U.S., President Trump made
the following comment:
“I’d say that in a speech and
everybody was surprised because the press doesn’t like to tell it
like it is,” Trump claimed. “It wasn’t to their advantage to
say that. The murder rate is the highest it’s been in I guess 45-47
years.”
Sounds like the streets are no longer
safe and we’d better stay out of the cities.
But, the thing is, it’s not true.
And as a journalist, facts are
important to me.
We actually have one of the lowest
murder rates in the last half century.
In 2015, the murder rate was 4.9 per
100,000 people.
At this point 50 years ago, in 1957,
the murder rate was 4 murders per 100,000 residents. Over the next
decade and a half, that rate rose steadily to a high of 10.2 in 1980,
when the U.S. was much whiter and had 100 million less people.
Then it began to drop, hitting 7.4 in
1996, 6.1 in 2006 and 4.4 in 2014. It 2015 it went up to 4.9. A
significant increase, but not even half of what the rate was in 1980
and still well below 1996.
But that is less than half the murder
rate of 1980. The raw number of homicides in America has actually
declined from 19,645 in 1996 to 15,696 in 2015, even while the
population has risen from 265 million in 1996 to 321 million in 2015.
Murder is just one of the crimes
categorized as “violent” by the FBI when it takes crime data.
Violent crime includes murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
The peak for violent crimes was 1991, where it was at 758 per
100,000. Now it has declined to 372.6 in 2015, less than half the
peak.
Being close to 40, I am old enough to
remember the “good old days” of the mid-’80s to mid-’90s when
people were actually terrified of going into larger cities because of
the potential to get lost in the wrong neighborhood. There was
hysteria about wearing certain colors, with people being suspicious
of “gangsters.” Our state capital, Little Rock, became
particularly infamous at this time, largely due to an HBO documentary
called “Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock.”
But it wasn’t just the cities that
experienced elevated violence during that time. There were also
several high profile events involving white nationalists too, one of
which happened in Arkansas in 1985 when a member of Covenant, the
Sword and the Arm of the Lord, a white supremacist, killed an
Arkansas police officer, resulting in a standoff in Mountain Home.
Another police killer, Gordon Kahl, was killed in neighboring
Lawrence County during a shootout in Smithville in 1983. Harrison
still has a reputation for this kind of activity, being dubbed “the
most racist town in America” in November 2016 by the U.K.
newspaper The Daily Mirror.
Even before the 1980s, the U.S. could
be a nasty place. Large cities were dominated by crime syndicates
operated by mobsters. Blacks in the countryside lived in fear of
being lynched. Women everywhere were ignored when it came to their
own spouses visiting violence upon them.
Nowadays, people actually walk on the
sidewalks of downtown Little Rock, much like America’s other large
cities. It’s still one of America’s most dangerous cities
statistically speaking, but the perception has changed from one where
people think that random strangers will be targeted for violence into
one that they see the majority of violence there as being between
people who know each other. Blacks can make stops in small rural
towns without having to worry about “being out by sundown” as the
old saying went.
All changes for the better, which leads
us back where we started.
Did Trump make the claim, knowing it
wasn’t true? Did he just believe what he said because he wasn’t
familiar with the facts? Does he just say whatever strikes him at the
moment as true?
Heck, I don’t know, I’m not a mind
reader.
The only thing that really matters is
that what he said is demonstratively false when one looks at
statistics and evidence.
But, why does it matter?
Because facts and evidence is what our
leaders are supposed to make their judgements based upon, not
beliefs. If we believe that people are dying left and right, we’re
going to demand that our leaders act accordingly, which leads to what
is essentially taking a sledgehammer to swat a fly. On the flip-side,
when we believe something is “not a big deal” we act accordingly
to that too, like using spitballs to fight off bombers.
The ripple effects of that means
spending too much on something, or too little. Making too few rules
or too many. Who is friend and who is foe.
Without facts, we can’t find the best
spot to draw the line. If we go by belief, we can essentially draw
the line where ever we want.
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