Earlier this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions spoke in Toledo, Ohio on “eradicating violent crime in America,” addressing a room of law enforcement officials. Sessions acknowledged in his speech that crime has been on a downswing since the 1990s, but he warned that this trend has “reversed” over the past two years. After citing stats from the latest Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) report that showed violent crime and murder rates increased in 2015 and 2016, Sessions turned his attention to rising crime in Toledo.
“In Toledo, rape is up 36 percent in just two years, assault is up 15 percent, and murders are up an astonishing 54 percent,” said Sessions. “We cannot accept these trends.”
This was news to Toledo, where Police Chief George Kral had just given a “state of the department” address two weeks prior to Sessions’ visit, and cited different statistics. Kral’s data showed that violent crime had dropped 11 percent and that homicides dropped from 38 in 2016 to 37 this year. Toledo’s Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson questioned where Sessions got his informationfrom. It’s likely that Sessions was dwelling on crime figures from 2015 and 2016 that have since begun falling.
[For more on this story by BRENTIN MOCK, go to https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/12/telling-the-truth-about-crime-in-americas-cities/548930/]
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