SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — With election day around the corner, the rhetoric is heated. Former President Donald Trump is employing fear as a major tactic in his bid for the White House, describing major cities as crime-infested and overrun with what he calls "criminal migrants."
"You can't walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot, you get mugged, you get raped," former President Donald Trump said on the campaign trail.
The former president claimed that since he left office, there has been a wave of "bloodshed, chaos, and violent crime."
Here are the facts.
FBI data shows that violent crime fell nationally in 2023 for the second year in a row, and a Justice Department study of 88 cities showed a 17% decline in murder in the first half of this year, on pace for another record drop.
Locally, San Diego is ranked as one of the safest big cities in America, according to U.S. News and World Report. Murder is down by 13%, sexual assault is down by 17%, gang crime is down by 12%, and even overall property crime rates are down by 3%.
Team 10 spoke at length about crime in the county with Escondido Police Chief Ed Varso.
"The most recent data that we have that's collected countywide shows that overall crime in Escondido is down 14%. Each one of our categories of crime, when it comes to property crime or violent crime, is currently down," says Varso.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, crime rates did rise slightly.
"So crime today is lower than it has been in the past 30 years," Varso says.
Chief Varso does worry that property crimes may be underreported, especially shoplifting and other retail crimes, because business owners are exasperated by California laws that don't allow police to arrest people for minor thefts.
But violent crimes are a different story.
"Violent crime is really at historic lows for Escondido," says Varso.
The former president also rants against something he calls "migrant crime", claiming the United States has become a "garbage can for the world."
There is no separate category for immigrant crime, but here are three data points.
Trump is right that both the number of immigrants entering the country and the number of immigrants stopped at the border with criminal records in their home country have increased dramatically during the Biden-Harris Administration.
However, a 2023 Standford study concludes that immigrants who make it into the U.S. are 60% less likely to commit crimes than people born in the United States. And here in San Diego County, the Escondido police chief says immigrant crime is not a thing.
"Anecdotally, I would tell you I have not had anybody reporting to me the sense that there's an increase when it relates to an immigrant population," Varso says.
