Donald Trump is apparently planning to deliver a hair-raising speech tonight focused on the “crime and violence that today afflicts our nation.” According to Trump, homicides are up, Washington DC is a killing zone, police shootings have skyrocketed, and illegal immigrants are “roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens.”
Whew. Just to prepare you for all this, here’s a chart you’ve seen many times before showing the rate of violent crime since its peak in 1993:
We don’t have official numbers for 2015 yet, and they might show a small uptick. That’s the nature of these things. But it’s pretty obvious that America is a considerably safer place than it’s been in decades.
But as the redoubtable Paul Manafort says, what about how people feel? Do they feel safe? That’s a hard question to answer, but Gallup asks it every year. Here’s the latest. I’ve included Excel’s trendline just to make it clear which direction this is going:
Bottom line: crime is way down and people feel safer than ever. Try not let Donald scare you too much tonight.
