ATLANTA — Atlanta's crime record is getting dragged into the political debate.
It all started with a remark from former President Donald Trump made during a recent rally in Atlanta, leading to a swift reaction from city leaders.
"Atlanta is like a killing field, and your governor ought to get off his a** and do something about it," Trump stated at an August 3rd rally at Georgia State.
He added, "Since I was president, aggravated assaults in Atlanta are up 17%...Murders are up massively."
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens fired back on Instagram, saying, "He told lies about the city of Atlanta about our crime rate, that it's a killing field, etc. I mean, no stats. Atlanta, Georgia, had the fourth largest drop in crime of any major city in the United States of America."
Following that post, the Trump campaign sent an email blast alleging cities in battleground states were safer under his administration.
The question
Were fewer violent crimes reported in Atlanta during the Trump administration than the Biden administration?
Our sources
The answer
Yes, fewer violent crimes were reported in Atlanta during the Trump administration than during the Biden administration.
What we found
Crime can be defined in a lot of different ways. Still, for this story, we looked at what's categorized as "violent crime" under the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program - such as murder, non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
We also looked at crime data APD self-reported on its website during the Trump administration vs the Biden administration.
Since we're only partway through 2024, we only examined the first 32 weeks of each administration's final year for an even comparison.
The data shows from 2017 to 2020, the last year Trump was in office, 348 murders were reported in Atlanta, along with 812 rapes, 3,946 robberies, and 7,132 aggravated assaults.
In comparison, the data from 2021 to 2024 shows more murders and aggravated assaults. In fact, aggravated assaults went up nearly 39%, which is even more than Trump said. However, rapes and robberies were both down.
When we tally the categories, there were a little more than 12,000 violent crimes reported from 2017-2020 and more than 13,000 from 2021-2024.
It is important to note, though, that Atlanta's murder and aggravated assault numbers peaked in 2022, but all four violent crime categories were down in 2023.
So, when Mayor Dickens says crime dropped in Atlanta last year, he's also telling the truth.