Keep crime stats in mind when voting

As we each make our decision on who should be our next president, we may draw upon many emotions. Fear should be the very least of them. And yet, former President Donald Trump continually tries to motivate us to vote based on fear for our personal safety. In the recent debate he repeated the falsehood that “Crime here [in the United States] is up and through the roof.” He hopes that by saying this it actually will be so (or will be so in our minds).

In fact, violent crime did creep up across the country at the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020, while Trump was president, but has since dropped sharply, consistent with a nearly 30-year trend of declining violent crime numbers.

According to FBI and Bureau of Justice statistics, between 1993 and 2022, there’s been a 59% reduction in the property crime rate and a 71% decline in the violent crime rate. An FBI report published in October 2023 shows that from 2020 to 2022, we’ve seen declines in the murder rate (by 6.7%) and violent crime rate (by 4.0%).

Please keep these facts in mind when casting your vote.

David Duer

Iowa City