Trump tells NC police event rising crime is 'brutal plague.' They say it's getting better

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Former President Donald Trump on Friday told members of the Fraternal Order of Police violent crime rates skyrocketed under the Biden administration, which contrasted with FOP’s endorsement hours earlier that cited lower crime rates.

Trump spoke in Charlotte for the FOP’s fall conference at the Hilton Charlotte University Place. He spoke for about an hour on a range of topics including crime, immigration and police funding.

In his speech, Trump said there has been a 43% increase in violent crime in the United States since Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden took office, including a 58% increase in rape and 89% increase in aggravated assaults — figures that contradict data from the FBI. The FOP’s own endorsement of Trump urged people to vote for him in order to “maintain these lower crime rates.”

Trump also repeated previous claims that people are coming into the country from foreign “mental institutions” while referencing statistics about the number of immigrants in the U.S.

“Harris and the communist left unleashed a brutal plague of bloodshed, crime, chaos, misery and death upon our land,” Trump said. “Law-abiding citizens forced to live in fear and danger and filth… very brutal attacks and slayings are absolutely commonplace.”

Trump cited the same figures about violent crime before, including at an August rally in Glendale, Arizona. According to PolitiFact, the Trump campaign draws the numbers from a survey published by the Justice Department. It relies on anecdotal interviews from people about crimes they’ve experienced and excludes murder.

Data compiled by the FBI from local police departments over a similar time period shows violent crime down by 4% from 2020 to 2022. FBI data from the first quarter of 2024 shows the violent crime rate went down by 15.2% from the same time last year.

But crime rates aren’t changing at the same rate everywhere. In Charlotte, violent crime increased by 8% in the first half of 2024 according to July data from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.

Trump said 20 million people or more, many from prisons and mental institutions, have entered the country under the Biden administration — a number much higher than how many “unauthorized immigrants” federal officials say are in the country.

The Department of Homeland Security estimated around 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. in April. The data are from 2022 and show around a 630,000 increase from 2020 figures.

“The days of foreign nations dumping their criminals into America are over,” Trump said. “I will shut down deadly sanctuary cities and we will carry out the largest deportation operation – because we have no choice – in the history of our country.”

Trump said multiple times Harris supports defunding the police while he supports increasing funding.

During a news conference ahead of Trump’s speech, Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead criticized a 2021 proposal by the Trump Administration that would have cut millions of dollars in funding from local law enforcement.

“Not only does Trump want to slash law enforcement funding, but he also wants to strip agencies like mine of crucial federal assets by weaponizing the FBI and Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies,” Birkhead said. “Under Trump, the Feds would waste precious time and money on his personal grievances, instead of pouring valuable resources into communities like mine that rely on assistance from my federal partners.”

FOP National Vice President Joe Gamaldi said Trump’s speech was exactly what FOP members wanted to hear.

“It was refreshing to hear a leader in our country say he wants to fund our police departments,” he said. “We’ve had to suffer through the defund-the-police movement. We’ve had to suffer through the revolving door criminal justice system, and we’ve had to suffer through the worst war on cops that we’ve seen in a generation.”

Gamaldi said he agrees with Trump that the country has a problem with violent crime and he believed Trump will work to put a stop to it.

Micheal Deedon, an FOP member from Colorado, said Trump’s speech was moving. He said the Biden administration has pandered to criminals and taken away law enforcement officers’ abilities to do their jobs. Trump’s stances on immigration and violent crime are good ones, he said.

“He’s willing to close the southern border, he’s willing to go after people that are killing everyday Americans with fentanyl, he’s willing to go after human trafficking that is coming in and taking over our country,” Deedon said. “It’s time that people can be safe again in our communities.”