JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — From West Palm, to Staten Island, to Chicago - Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has made sure to keep one claim in several different speeches over the past few weeks.
He claims that Florida's crime rate is at a 50-year low.
THE QUESTION
Is Florida's crime rate at a 50-year low?
SOURCE
Florida Department of Law Enforcement's Uniform Crime Report
THE ANSWER
Yes, Florida's crime rate is at a 50-year low.
WHAT WE FOUND
FDLE posted in 2021 that Florida had hit a 50-year low, noting a 14% drop in crime from 2019 to 2020.
That trend continued in the latest report for 2021, dropping another 8%.
Taking a deeper dive into the numbers, not all crimes are down.
Murders dropped 14% from 2020 to 2021, but there were more than 1,000 more rapes - a 14% increase.
More than half of the crimes reported were larcenies.
If you take those out, there was still about 13,000 less reported crimes in the other six major categories in 2021 than 2020.
Thanks to the uniform crime report released last year and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's news release, we can verify DeSantis' claim is true.
The 2022 stats haven't been released yet, but the way the state collects this data is changing.
The new stats will have more than 50 reportable categories, rather than just seven broad categories.
FDLE says the new stats won't be comparable to the old ones because agencies will be able to input more than one offense for each incident.