Claims wall made El Paso safe; data shows otherwise. [View all]
Feb. 11, 2019, 4:29 AM EST
By Jane C. Timm
... "The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country, and considered one of our nation's most dangerous cities," Trump said in his State of the Union address Tuesday. “Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities" ...
... According to law enforcement data, the city had low crime rates well before a border barrier was constructed between 2008 and mid-2009.
Violent crime has been dropping in El Paso since its modern-day peak in 1993 and was at historic lows before a fence was authorized by Congress in 2006. Violent crime actually ticked up during the border fence's construction and after its completion, according to police data collected by the FBI ...
"The facts are clear. While it is true that El Paso is one of the safest cities in the nation, it has never been '...considered one of our Nation’s most dangerous cities,'" the city's sheriff, Richard Wiles, a Democrat, said in a statement after Trump concluded his address. "And, El Paso was a safe city long before any wall was built” ...
... There were 19 murders and 1,819 aggravated assaults in the city in 2017, according to FBI crime data. The city’s murder rate is about half that of the national average, and a fraction of more dangerous cities. In the similarly sized city of Detroit, there were 267 murders and 10,193 aggravated assaults, for instance ...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-check-trump-claims-wall-made-el-paso-safe-data-n969506
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