Fact check: Contrary to Trump’s claims, Atlanta murder is down sharply this year and nowhere near a record

Former President Donald Trump continues to make false and misleading claims about crime in Atlanta.

Trump has posted the inaccurate statements on his social media platform while attacking Fani Willis, the Fulton County district attorney who is prosecuting him over his efforts to overturn his defeat in Georgia in the 2020 election.

In a social media post Thursday afternoon, hours before he was planning to surrender for processing at a Fulton County jail, Trump claimed that in Atlanta, “Murder and other Violent Crimes have reached levels never seen before.”

In a post on Monday, Trump claimed that Willis “has allowed Murder and other Violent Crime to MASSIVELY ESCALATE.” He said later in the post that “Georgia does not deserve this GIANT MURDER WAVE!” In another Monday post, he claimed that Willis “is overseeing one of the greatest Murder and Violent Crime DISASTERS in American History.”

Facts First: All of these Trump claims are inaccurate. Atlanta is nowhere near record levels of either murder or violent crime. And it’s misleading at best to suggest that Atlanta has a “giant murder wave” or claim that Willis has allowed murder or violent crime to “massively escalate.” Atlanta Police Department statistics through Saturday show that the number of murders in the city is down 25% so far this year compared to last year – and that this year’s number is also down about 12% from roughly the same point in 2020, the year before Willis took office. Violent crime is also down sharply this year.

We’ll leave aside the complicated question of just how responsible any one district attorney is for either declines or improvements in their jurisdiction’s crime situation. In reality, crime trends are affected by a complex web of local and national factors.

Let’s look at the Atlanta numbers that disprove Trump’s claims.

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