Fact check: Trump is wrong that Germany’s crime is ‘way up’

BERLIN — U.S. President Donald Trump suggests crime in Germany is surging due to migration, causing a political backlash against the country's leadership. But he's wrong about Germany's crime rate, which is at its lowest in a quarter century.

Trump tweeted Monday: “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition. Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!”

The underlying claim, that crime in Germany is “way up,” is false.

According to official statistics released last month, crime in Germany dropped nearly 10 percent in 2017 compared to the previous year. Police recorded a total of 5.8 million crimes last year, compared to 6.4 million cases in 2016. It was the lowest figure since 1992.

“Germany is more secure,” the country's top security official, Horst Seehofer, said after the figures came out. Yet “there's still a lot to do.”

While violent crime declined, the number of homicides was up 3.2 percent last year. Several high-profile killings in which migrants were suspects made national headlines in recent years, even as others where the suspects were German received less attention.

Trump's assertion that Germans are “turning against their leadership” because of concern about migration is partly true, however — at least, if poll numbers are an indication.

Partially because of the publicity that crimes involving migrants have attracted, the public has grown more concerned about the influx of newcomers. That's provided fuel for the farright Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, and helped it attract new voters at the expense of Germany's two biggest parties: Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Union bloc and the Social Democrats, which together form the country's governing coalition.

AfD surged into third place in last year's national election. A survey by the polling firm Forsa put support for the Union at 30 percent and the Social Democrats at 16 percent — just one point ahead of AfD's 15 percent. The poll of 2,502 respondents conducted June 11-15 had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Merkel, who is now in her fourth term, still has an approval rating of 51 percent, according to the Forsa poll.