VERIFY: Ranking locations by crime rate is inherently misleading

A number of speakers during the Republican National Convention named major American cities as they claimed “Democrat-run cities” had the highest crime rates in the United States.

Those remarks were not too far off from charts and memes posted on social media for several months now. One post from June claims the top 25 “deadliest” cities all had a “Democrat majority” political leaning.

In response, others on social media have pointed out that many of the states with the highest crime rates were led by Republican governors.

Both memes claim to use the same source: the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR). But the FBI itself explains on the UCR why rankings like the examples above are inaccurate and should be avoided.

THE QUESTION
Is it true that the deadliest cities in the United States have Democrat majority political leanings? Is it true that the states with the highest rates of violent crime are led by Republicans?

THE ANSWER
They are misleading.

The chart of deadliest cities doesn’t explain what data is used to rank the cities or determine their political leanings, but most of those cities do generally have a high rate of murders.

The tweet about states does correctly list the 10 states with the highest violent crime rates and does correctly list the party of the states’ current governors.

However, the accuracy of the data doesn’t really matter here. The FBI itself states that these rankings paint an incomplete picture of what actually impacts crime in certain areas.

https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/ver...

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