Trump says crime is out of control. The numbers tell a different story.

Donald Trump has made the issue of crime a cornerstone of his campaign. He says violence in America is out of control and rising.

“You can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread. You get shot, you get mugged, you get raped,” the former president said recently at a campaign event north of Detroit.

But several years of national data tell the opposite story: Crime is falling in cities and towns across the United States. NBC News recently spent a day with Detroit police, who say Trump’s characterization is false.

“That’s simply not true,” Detroit Police Chief James White said. “I invite him to walk the streets of Detroit, and I’d be more than happy to do that with him and show him how Detroit is performing.”

Detroit has experienced a dramatic drop in murders, shootings and other violent crime in recent years, according to city, state and federal statistics. After surging during the pandemic, rates of violent crime have dropped back to where they were in 2019, the numbers show — dramatically lower than they were 10 and 20 years ago. Detroit had 252 homicides last year, the lowest number since 1966.

Over decades, murder has declined steeply nationwide. In New York City, there were 386 murders last year, down from 2,605 in 1990, according to the New York Police Department.

The FBI’s crime statistics show a decline in violent crime across the U.S. over the last two years, and other data suggests it continued to fall in the first half of this year. Last month, new FBI numbers showed that murder declined 11.6% in 2023, the largest single year drop on record.

“I don’t think there’s a chief in America that will tell you, we can all go home now, crime has ended in our communities,” White said. “But when we compare where we