JD Vance, the U.S. Senator from Ohio who is Donald Trump’s presidential running mate, wanted the crowd of supporters in Henderson to believe Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats are to blame for rising crime.
One problem: Crime is mostly down.
Vance recited many GOP talking points about law and order during a speech last month at Liberty High School, proclaiming urban cities have become lawless and police forces are at risk.
“We do not need a president who wants to turn our cities into sanctuaries for criminal aliens and then defund the police so there’s no one at home to stop them,” Vance said July 30 when talking about Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.
The numbers Vance conveniently ignores tell another story. Crime is down across the board.
Violent crime—murders, rapes, aggravated assault and robberies—has steadily decreased in Nevada and across the nation. According to Nevada’s crime statistics, there were 15,956 average annual violent crimes here during Trump’s four years in office from 2016-2020; it dropped to 13,940 average annual violent crimes during President Joe Biden’s administration.
The crime index in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s recently released 2023 annual report shows an almost 13% decrease in homicide offenses and 20% in forcible sex offenses in 2022.
The reduction in crime in Las Vegas is not an accident. Sheriff Kevin McMahill made explicit his intent to reduce crime overall by 10% when he took office in 2023.
National statistics show violent crime decreasing by 15% from January to March of 2024 in comparison to the previous year, according to the FBI. The murder rate in Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Seattle dropped by 40%.
“This continued historic decline in homicides does not represent abstract statistics. It represents people whose lives were saved—people who are still here to see their children grow up, to work toward fulfilling their dreams, and to contribute to their communities,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a June statement.
Republicans are also trying to pin crimes on undocumented immigrants, with Trump’s campaign speeches quick to repeat false and misleading claims by singling out horrendous criminal acts committed by immigrants.
And retired Metro Lt. Randy Sutton at the Republican National Convention last month echoed those talking points in saying there’s an “endless tsunami of illegal aliens, no consequences for violent crime.”
“The abuse of our criminal justice system has all made America more dangerous than ever before,” he added.
He’s wrong, studies show.
A 2020 study published by the National Academy of Sciences found “considerably lower felony arrest rates” among people in the United States illegally than legal immigrants or native-born citizens, the Associated Press reported.
There is also no evidence supporting Trump’s long-standing claim that countries send their murderers, drug dealers and other criminals to the United States.
What the stats do show: Trump is a 34-time felon, being convicted in New York court in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor. Harris is a former prosecutor having served as California’s attorney general.
Democrats in Nevada have flexed their support for police even more so than their counterparts in other states. Sen. Jacky Rosen, whose reelection bid against Republican challenger Sam Brown was endorsed in May by two of the largest police unions in the state, has touted her support for law enforcement, even at the expense of butting heads with other Democrats.
“I’ve also broken with my party and the Biden administration when they tried to push policies that would weaken the ability of law enforcement officers to respond to emergencies, which puts my community—our communities—at risk,” Rosen said during a news conference in May.
Rosen co-sponsored the bipartisan Recruit and Retain Act giving law enforcement agencies easier access to grants for recruitment pushes. Police across the country have reported struggling to recruit new officers after the 2020 protests, including Metro, which has added 283 new officers since 2016.
Police funding in Southern Nevada has also thrived under the Biden administration, countering conservative claims the Democratic apparatus would lead to defunding of the police. Metro, Nevada’s largest law enforcement agency, received $19 million in federal contracts and grants during the Trump administration, according to the federal government’s public spending database.
But the Biden Administration has awarded Metro over $24 million so far—including the three largest grants the agency has received since 2016, at over $3.6 million apiece. Metro Police also received $3 million for the Technology and Equipment Program, an invitational-only federal grant program made to bolster technological advancement in police departments. Metro’s advanced use of equipment such as drones has been a point of pride for the department in recent years.
The federal funding projects for advanced policing technology like the one Metro received were part of the Safer America Plan, a three-pronged project designed to bolster local law enforcement and round out crime prevention tactics introduced by Biden in August 2022. The plan included several grant initiatives, including a $10 billion Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Hiring Program.
The Nevada System of Higher Education was the sole recipient in Nevada to receive grant money under that program, gaining $375,000 to hire three additional officers.
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