claim: “Violent crime is near a record 50-year low.”
evidence: "Claiming that Florida is unsafe is a total farce," DeSantis said in the announcement. "I mean, are you kidding me? You look at cities around this country, they are awash in crime. In Florida, our crime rate is at a 50-year low." But his statement rests on patchy, incomplete crime data. About half of the agencies that police more than 40% of the state’s population are missing from figures the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) used for a state-wide estimation. [...] Putting the crime data quality issue aside, DeSantis’ claims about Florida’s declining crime rates follow long-term national trends, and should not be a surprise to the public, according to Asher. "‘Crime is at a 50-year low’ should sort of be ‘no duh,’" he said. "Crime is falling. It's not that big of a deal." Both property crime and violent crimes have been on the decline nationally, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, a Justice Department program that surveys 150,000 households about crimes that happened to them.