Murder-rate claim misleading Crime

The attorney general of the United States came to Milwaukee and said murder in the city “is up an astonishing 57%.”

His number wasn’t entirely wrong. It reflects a spike in murders that occurred after 2014.

But after the spike, the murders leveled off and have begun to drop.

The claim

Jeff Sessions, President Donald Trump’s attorney general, came to Milwaukee on Dec. 18, to announce he was adding two more federal prosecutors to fight violent crime in the city.

The former GOP U.S. senator from Alabama used statistics to underscore the need, saying:

And sadly, in this beautiful city, it has not been immune to these problems. Milwaukee, rape is up 21% in two years. Assault is up. Murder is up an astonishing 57%. So, these trends cannot continue.

Sessions’ statistic

We asked the White House to provide information to back Sessions’ statement.

A spokesman noted that Sessions had made a two-year reference when he cited an increase U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions

Republican

The statement

In Milwaukee, “murder is up an astonishing 57%.”

The verdict

Coming down from a peak.

in rape in Milwaukee and told us Sessions was also making a two-year comparison for Milwaukee’s murder rate.

We were directed to City-Data.com figures showing Milwaukee had 90 murders in 2014 and 141 in 2016.

That’s an increase of 57%. The City-Data.com figures do correspond with official FBI figures:

❚ 2014: 90

❚ 2015: 145

❚ 2016: 141

But the FBI figures show the big spike in Milwaukee murders occurred between 2014 and 2015 (perhaps because of opioids, according to a new federal study) — and then dropped in 2016.

More importantly, figures for an up-to-date two-year comparison — including 2017, which had nearly ended when Sessions made his statement — were available.

Newer numbers

These numbers were available on the day Sessions made his statement from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s continuously updated homicide database (listed first) and from the Milwaukee Police Department (listed second):

❚ 2015: 153; 147

❚ 2016: 154; 142

❚ 2017 (as of Dec. 18): 121; 118 Both sets of figures show that from 2015 through Dec. 18, 2017, the number of murders was down — by 21%, according to the Journal Sentinel figures, and down by 20%, according to the Milwaukee Police Department figures.

Note: The Journal Sentinel counts are higher because they include killings, such as those deemed self-defense, that are not included in the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting counts. The figures given to us by the Police Department follow the UCR system.

Our rating

Sessions said that in Milwaukee, “murder is up an astonishing

57%.”

Sessions wasn’t entirely clear on his time frame, although in citing Milwaukee crime figures, he had just made reference in his remarks to a two-year increase in rape. The FBI’s count of homicides in Milwaukee in 2016 — the latest year for which FBI figures are available — was 57% higher than it was two years earlier, in 2014. Clearly, murders are higher since 2014.

But that paints a misleading picture of the current situation. Using an up-to-date two-year comparison, homicides in 2017, while still higher than in 2014, were about 20% lower than they were in 2015.

For a statement that has an element of truth, but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, our rating is Mostly False.