Minnesota’s murder rate has risen under the leadership of Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, and his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, has sought to link worsening crime trends in the 2020s to the Trump administration.
“Facts matter, there’s no substitute for facts, so I just want to set the record straight: violent crime has increased during President Trump’s term, and that doesn’t even take into account the crimes committed by Trump,” Walz said at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday.
Walz was named Harris’ running mate last week and has begun campaigning to rally support for the new administration with less than 100 days until Election Day.
His comments on crime have spurred critics to condemn Minnesota’s violent crime rates under Governor Walz’s leadership, with Fox News contributor Byron York outlining how murders have increased in Minnesota since Walz took office.
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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz speaks at a campaign event in Detroit on August 7, 2024. (Andrew Harnick/Getty Images)
“It turns out the increase includes an increase in Minnesota. Here are the murder numbers in Minnesota since 2018, the last year before Walz took office as governor,” York posted on X.
Walz took office as governor in 2019. According to Minnesota Department of Public Safety data reviewed by Fox News Digital, there were 104 homicides in the state in 2018, the year before Walz took office, and then increased by more than 12% to 117 in 2019. In 2020, amid a surge in violent crime nationwide, homicides in the state jumped to 185. In 2021, the state recorded 201 homicides, in 2022 there were 182, and last year there were 172.
The Minnesota riots continued even after Walz took “responsibility” to stop chaos from happening.
According to state data, the state averaged about 113 homicides per year in the four-year period between 2015 and 2018, before Governor Walz took office, but that number has risen to an annual average of 171 homicides during his five-year term as governor.
Protesters throw objects into a fire outside a Target store near Precinct 3 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 28, 2020. The police station was set ablaze late on May 28, the third day of demonstrations over the death of George Floyd. (Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images)
In 2020, during President Trump’s final year in the White House, violent crime rates soared to an all-time high, blamed on the widespread riots and protests that spread across the country following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020.
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According to FBI crime data reviewed by Fox News Digital, homicides in 2017, President Trump’s first year in office, fell slightly nationwide, from 15,320 in 2016 to 15,312 in 2017. Violent crime fell again in 2018 to 14,604 and again in 2019 to 14,678, before spiking to 18,965 in 2020 amid the violence, according to the data.
A large fire broke out on East Lake Street in Minneapolis on the third night of unrest following the death of George Floyd. (David Joles/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
In all respects, A surge in violent crime According to FBI data, murders in 2020 increased by about 30% from the previous year, the largest single-year increase in murders since the FBI began tracking crime.
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Experts who previously spoke to Fox News Digital pointed to a variety of factors that contributed to the increase in 2020 and beyond, including Black Lives Matter and Cut the police budget Advocacy, the pandemic, a culture of lawlessness fostered by liberal district attorneys, and the “Ferguson effect” (the phenomenon of police retreating during an epidemic of high-profile violent crime).
Demonstrators protest the death of a black man in police custody on September 6, 2020, in Rochester, New York. (Reuters/Brendan McDiarmid)
Minneapolis was the epicenter of the 2020 unrest when Floyd, a black man, died at the hands of a white officer during a police encounter in the city. Floyd’s death was followed by protests and riots across the country calling for social justice. COVID-19 cases Government-mandated lockdown measures to contain the pandemic have disrupted society in an unprecedented way ahead of the 2020 elections.
The riots damaged or destroyed more than 1,500 buildings in Minneapolis alone, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
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Former President Trump held his first public campaign rally on July 20, 2024, at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with his vice presidential candidate, Senator J.D. Vance. (Bill Priano/Getty Images)
The newly formed Harris-Waltz coalition, which secured the Democratic nomination after President Biden dropped out of the race amid growing concerns about his mental competency, has focused on Harris’ record as a California prosecutor as it crafts crime-fighting policy and has specifically attacked Trump and his legal battles.
“As a tough prosecutor, Kamala Harris has always taken on men like Trump – rapists, con artists, fraudsters and criminals. She’s used to men like Trump and she’s used to putting them where they belong,” says a narrator in a recent ad supporting Harris.
Meanwhile, President Trump has slammed left-led cities across the country for not doing enough to end the 2020 violence and vowed to restore law and order and reduce crime rates across the country, including by closing the border to illegal immigrants.
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“Drug cartels will be destroyed, crime will plummet, incomes will soar, wars will end and the American Dream will return bigger, better and stronger than ever before,” Trump said at a rally last week.
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