Donald Trump cites inflated crime numbers during Michigan campaign stop in Howell

HOWELL — Former President Donald Trump cited inflated crime numbers Tuesday during a visit to a sheriff's department in Howell and deflected criticism over his choice to hold an event about crime and public safety in a city with a Ku Klux Klan history where white supremacists demonstrated as recently as last month.

Trump, speaking to a small crowd of invited guests that included many law enforcement officers, pledged to increase overall police numbers while shifting federal policing resources to border enforcement. He accused Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, of supporting "defund the police" — an accusation the Harris campaign denies — and being generally soft on crime.

"They go after guys like me, but they don't go after people that kill people," said Trump, who is awaiting sentencing in New York State on 34 felony counts related to false bookkeeping that aided the coverup of a sex scandal, and is awaiting trial on many other felony charges, some of them related to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol that was fueled by Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

"Since Kamala Harris took office ... she's presided over a 43% increase in violent crime," said Trump, adding that his numbers were backed by data put out by her own administration.

But in fact, no such increase has taken place.

Violent crime spiked during the pandemic, both in the U.S. and in Michigan, but has been dropping since then, according to data compiled by the FBI.

Nationally, the rate of violent crime fell an estimated 6% in 2023, compared to 2022, according to the FBI. Before that drop, the violent crime rate was identical in 2019, the last pre-pandemic calendar year of the Trump presidency, and in 2022, the most recent year of the Biden presidency for which complete data are available, records show. Both years, there were 381 violent crimes for every 100,000 people in the U.S. But in between, the violent crime rate in the U.S. rose as high as 399 per 100,000 people, in 2020, the last full year Trump was president, records show. According to the Council on Criminal Justice, violent crime continues to decrease in 2024.

In Michigan, the recent peak for violent crime was in 2021, a year later than the recent peak for the U.S. as a whole, according to FBI statistics. In 2019, Michigan had a violent crime rate of 439 incidents per 100,000 people, which was lower than the 2022 rate of 461 per 100,000 people, records show. But 2022 was down from 2021, when the violent crime rate hit 491 per 100,000. State-level data for 2023 is not available, but Detroit, Michigan's largest city, in 2023 recorded the fewest number of homicides since 1966 and a 0.6% decline in violent crime, compared to 2022.

Though data show violent crime has been in decline since the pandemic, Trump said violence is increasing because of open border policies by the Biden-Harris administration.

Before Trump spoke, several Michigan sheriffs at the event went to the microphone to describe recent crimes they are investigating or are being prosecuted in which the suspects are undocumented immigrants.

"Crime is an issue in this election," said former congressman Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat.

Trump said that Harris, "until recently," supported the "defund the police movement."

But an analysis by PolitiFact, an arm of the Poynter Institute, found otherwise. PolitiFact found that Harris called for "reimagining" public safety and investing in other areas, such as education, but said that the country needed law enforcement.

Trump was sharply criticized by the Harris campaign and others for choosing Howell as the site of the event, after a small group of white supremacists held a rally in the city on July 20.

Some of the demonstrators that day chanted, "We love Hitler," and "we love Trump," but there has been no evidence their actions were connected with or endorsed by the Trump campaign, which has denied any such link.

"Trump is choosing to rally in a town that was historically known as 'the KKK capital of Michigan,'" Harris campaign spokeswoman Alyssa Bradley said in an email. "This event on 'crime and safety' isn’t a dog whistle from Trump — it’s a bullhorn."

Trump took one question from reporters after delivering more than 50 minutes of unusually low-key remarks. The reporter was booed and shouted down when she asked about his choice of Howell for the event, given its KKK history.

"Who was here in 2021?" Trump asked the reporter, a reference to a visit to Howell that year by President Joe Biden.

The Harris campaign said its main concern was Trump's failure to condemn the recent white supremacist demonstration.

David Siwik, a history professor at Lansing Community College, said Howell has a more recent history with the Ku Klux Klan than many Michigan cities, in part because of its proximity to the Livingston County home of Robert Miles, a grand dragon of the KKK who was convicted in1971 of planning the bombing of school buses that were to be used for court-ordered desegregation in Pontiac.

But Siwik noted that the KKK was influential in many parts of Michigan, including Detroit, during the 1920s.

"If you held a political rally in any city in Michigan, you could tie it to having had, in the past, Ku Klux Klan activity," Siwik said.

But Siwik said that given Trump's history, which includes telling the far-right Proud Boys group to "stand back and stand by" in 2020, the former president's choice of Howell for a campaign event is likely no coincidence. Trump could be saying, "Yes, we understand the history here and, wink wink, nod nod, that's why we're here," Siwik said.

Kasey Helton, a Howell-area Democrat and community activist who works in health care, said she and others work hard to shed Howell's reputation as a haven for racists and the publicity surrounding Trump's visit is a huge setback.

Groups such as the Livingston Diversity Council and Stand Against Extremism are trying "not to ignore, but to heal those old stains, those old wounds," Helton said. "Now, it's like that Band-Aid has been ripped off all over again."

She blames Trump, regardless of whether he had any knowledge of, or connection to, the recent demonstrations. "If Trump had not made the decision to come here, we would not be talking about the city of Howell like this on the national stage," Helton said. "It's disheartening," but "we can come back and we will come back."

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or [email protected]. Follow him on X, @paulegan4.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump cites inflated crime numbers during Howell visit