Governor Walz falsely claims we are at a 50-year low for crime

By David Zimmer, American Experiment – October 14, 2024

Vice Presidential candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was on Shannon Bream’s show on Fox News on Sunday and repeatedly suggested the U.S. and Minnesota were experiencing a 50-year low in crime. Neither is true, and he knows it.

The truth is, according to the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer, “all violent crimes” (VCR) in the U.S. and in Minnesota have increased dramatically in recent years, and though they have dropped slightly from recent highs, they remain far above the rates immediately preceding Biden, Harris, and Walz taking their respective offices.

In October 2018 Minnesota’s VCR sat at 61.24/100,000 people. The U.S. VCR sat at 99.15/100,000.

In October 2024 Minnesota’s VCR sits at 73.14/100,000 and the U.S. VCR sits at 119.26/100,000. That’s a 20% increase in violent crime for both MN and the U.S.

What’s more telling is what has happened in Minneapolis — Minnesota’s most populated city. In October 2018 Minneapolis’s VCR sat at 140.8/100,000. In October 2024 it sits at 225.65/100,000 — a 60% increase. Yet anyone who points this out is quickly called a “fear monger.”

Governor Walz knows the country and the state are not at 50-year lows for crime — in fact, the rates are 20% higher than just 6 years ago. He also knows that it’s unlikely he will be challenged by the mainstream media, so he feels comfortable making the claim.

To be fair, Governor Walz used the unspecific term “crime,” and I’m using the specific term, violent crime rate (VCR). There’s no doubt that Governor Walz and his team could come up with some select group of theft or fraud crimes to try to defend his statement of “historic lows,” but there’s also no doubt that what he was trying to do is create the impression that progressive crime policies have made us safer. That claim is just wrong, and he knows it.

I wrote about the effect that Walz’s progressive policies have had on our violent crime rate in Minnesota.

Here’s an informative chart from that article. (Note: The crimes used in the FBI Crime Data Explorer for “all violent crime” differ from the crimes used in Minnesota’s BCA Crime Data Explorer. This accounts for a variation in the level of violent crime rates between the chart and the FBI rates above).

Sources: MN Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s Crime Data Explorer and UCR reports, MN Department of Corrections Population Reports, and Minnesota’s population as reported by World Population Review.