Donald Trump likes to niggle Chicago as the poster child for violent crime, but over the weekend NBC had some fun with federal crime statistics, pointing out that West Palm Beach's crime was equal to the Windy City's in 2015.
It was a dog of a story, frankly. Correct in 2015, an outlier year. Totally false in 2016 and every other year that I can find.
West Palm, a city of 104,919 residents just across the Intracoastal Waterway from the president's Mar-a-Lago, did record 23 homicides in 2015. The rate of violent crime, which also includes rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults, was 9 for every 1,000 residents -- exactly the same as far larger Chicago.
See the federal crime stats in all Florida cities and counties in the attachment below.
NBC -- which the president labeled one of the purveyors of "fake news" even before this story was aired -- wrote this: "While Trump regularly rails about crime in the city that is the hometown of his predecessor Barack Obama and birthplace of Hillary Clinton, he's not said a peep about the past troubles in the city he drives through every time he comes to Florida."
Past troubles is right.
And while we're at it, Palm Beach is hardly Trump's hometown. Blaming Trump for ignoring West Palm's crime -- which is the sly implication -- is like blaming George H.W. Bush for the poverty around Kennebunkport, Maine.
The network quoted Ricky Aiken, a community activist (and no fan of the president) in the hardest hit crime zones of West Palm. "If he is serious about making changes in the inner cities, he would be welcome. But people like him tend to avoid communities like mine," Aiken said of Trump.
Trump's footprint in the actual city of West Palm Beach isn't as large as many think, that's true. Though the 33-story Trump Plaza is the tallest building in town, Trump recently sold it. He does still own the 27-hole Trump International Golf Club. And the Sun-Sentinel tells us the Trump Foundation has donated $25,000 for the Palm Beach Zoo, $5,000 to the Palm Beach Opera, and $1,000 to the Pediatric Oncology Support Team Inc. That's it.
The story is an intentional hit job.
It chides Trump for a comment he made during one of his debates with Hillary Clinton: "Trump complained that he never gets credit for opening a golf course where there is 'no discrimination against African-Americans, against Muslims, against nobody.'
"... The only gangs on the island are the legions of designer-clad matrons thronging Worth Avenue during the season ... Nor is anyone likely to riot over injustice, unless the B&T (Bath & Tennis Club) runs out of gin for G&Ts (gin and tonics)."
All Trump did is misspeak on the town/city. He said "Palm Beach" when he should have said "West Palm Beach." Big deal. The fact remains, Donald J. Trump did open a golf course where there is no discrimination, etc.-- and it was in West Palm Beach.
Now, I've got my issues with our president, God knows, but he has a point when he complains about the mainstream media. The whole story was a cheap shot. Reaching back two years to compare crime figures? Seriously?
During the first six months of 2016, the most recent crime records available (these from the state, not the feds), the town of Palm Beach recorded no homicides, no rapes, no robberies and just one aggravated assault. That's pretty near perfect. And even NBC admitted that.
And West Palm Beach saw a sharp decline in homicides in 2016 "after experiencing one of its deadliest years in 2015. ... 10 homicides in 2016, compared with 23 in 2015," said the Palm Beach Post.
Chicago, meanwhile -- after the first THREE months of 2016 -- registered 135 homicides, a 71 percent jump over the 79 killings in the same year-earlier period, official Police Department statistics show. It represented the worst first quarter of a year since 136 homicides in 1999, according to the data.
West Palm Beach Mayor Jeri Muoio, originally a New Yorker, resents any crime comparison to Chicago.
"We're a very different place from Chicago," she told NBC News. "We did have a spike in 2015 ... it was very upsetting to us all. Young black men shooting young black men."
Unlike Chicago, where most of the violence is gang-related, what happened in West Palm Beach was fueled by "historic personal beefs," she said. And like the rest of the country, West Palm has been dealing with a heroin epidemic.
It wasn't until the end of a long story that NBC said, "Also, unlike Chicago, the homicide wave that washed over West Palm Beach didn't last."
"Since 2007 our crime rate has steadily gone down," Mayor Muoio said. "There will always be peaks, spikes that happen. Overall, there is a significant downward trend."
Members of the media turn indignant when our thin-skinned president demonizes them. But look at this story. Does it really have a reason for being? What about it is fair?
However many of the 46 percent of voters who cast their ballots for Trump and saw this story get what he's talking about when he uses words like "fake news." This story really was fake news.
It seems to me there are enough real issues about Trump's presidency we can and should write about. We in the media, particularly the mainstream media, don't have to keep driving nails into our own coffin.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
Comments
Trump is "head & shoulders"
Yes, yes, no demonizing white
Check out "Stockholm Syndrome
Got a dictionary "Frank",..
Oh I know what the word means
You do it to your damn selves
West Palm Beach and its
The media brought the ill
Nancy - Trump is one national
Like former President Obama
I am a registered GOP voter,
Natalie Wood was a human name
All your commits show how