Great Lakes Wire

With midterms fast approaching, leaders within the GOP are banking that people who are tired of rising violent crime rates will help them take back the House and the Senate.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in an op-ed in the New York Post, “New FBI statistics show that our nation is suffering a historic surge in violent crime — one that was entirely predictable. From 2019 to 2020, the US murder rate rose by an astounding 27 percent, the largest annual increase in at least the past 100 years. This spike is so far off the charts it’s hard to fathom.”

In Michigan, the good news is that the murder rate is down, however overall violent crime is up, according to MLive. In fact, Saginaw, Kalamazoo, Lansing and Detroit are among the top 20 cities in the country with the biggest crime rate. Saginaw and Detroit rank fourth and fifth in the nation. The FBI report shows violent crime in Michigan increased by 4.7% from 2020 to 2021.

Michigan Sheriffs Association Director Matthew M. Saxton said, “Law enforcement during 2021, 2020 has been dealing with some extraordinary times,” he added, “Whether they were defunded or not, the profession has been demonized by federal, state and local politicians and has really hampered law enforcement’s ability to perform their duties of keeping communities safe,” MLive reports.

City Journal published an article on the findings of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which showed a 29% increase in violent crime in urban regions from 2020-2021.

The survey results show the number of violent crime victims increased from 19.0 to 24.5 persons per 1,000 people. The violent crime rate in urban areas from 2018-2020 was anywhere from 29-42% higher than rural areas, according to the NCVS. In 2021, that number rose to 121%. Additionally, the City Journal says, “the property-crime rate in urban areas was nearly twice as high in 2021 as in suburban areas (157.5 to 86.8 victimizations per 1,000 households) and nearly three times as high as in rural areas (157.5 to 57.7 victimizations per 1,000 households).”

City Journal cites the FBI’s statistic that the murder rate rose 27% in 2020, the highest increase in over a century.  

Sessions added, “tragically, they (Democrats) ignored the warnings of law-enforcement officials and abandoned policies shown to work, replacing them with naïveté and wishful thinking. The results are now clear for all to see.” Sessions argues the big cities, with the largest increase in crime, abandoned their police and cites an FBI statistic that arrests dropped 25% in 2020, coinciding with the 27% increase in murders. Portland homicides tripled from 2016 to 2020 and are on the rise. Sessions says Portland sees a homicide every 4 days on average. In Minneapolis and New York, homicides have almost doubled since 2019. Sessions blames “the Left” and says, “woke policies make America more dangerous.”

According to Reuters, a poll shows that Republicans have an upper hand in the upcoming midterm election due to high crime rates in Democrat-controlled cities. A Reuters poll found that 39% of registered voters would choose a Republican to “solve crime” while 30% would choose a Democrat. The top issues on the ballot, according to the Reuters poll, are inflation and the economy, immigration and crime.

Alex Conant told Reuters, "A lot of voters care about crime and a lot of voters care about immigration…Right now, those are winning issues for Republicans." Reuters notes some cities have seen murder rates fall slightly in the first half of 2022, but robberies and assaults are both up. An important demographic, women who live in suburban areas, said they favor Republicans on crime by 8 points, according to the poll.