Minnesota murder rates have risen under Democratic Gov. Tim Walz leadership as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate attempts to link spiraling crime trends of the 2020 era to the Trump administration.
“I just want to set the record straight, because facts do matter and there’s not an alternative set of facts. Violent crime was up during the Trump presidency, and that’s even not counting his crimes,” Walz said at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday.
Walz was named as Harris’ running mate last week, and has since hit the campaign trail to rally support for the newly-formed ticket with less than 100 days until voters head to the polls.
His comment on crime sparked critics to call out Minnesota’s violent crime rate under Walz’s leadership, with Fox News contributor Byron York outlining how murders increased in Minnesota after Walz was sworn in as governor.
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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a campaign event on Aug. 7, 2024 in Detroit. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“It turns out that rise included an increase in Minnesota. Here are the numbers of murders in Minnesota, starting in 2018, the last year before Walz became governor,” York posted to X.
Walz was sworn in as governor in 2019. Data from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety reviewed by Fox News Digital shows that in 2018, the year before Walz took office, the state recorded 104 murders, a figure that increased by more than 12% in 2019, when the state recorded 117 murders. Murders in the state in 2020, when violent crimes spiked nationwide, skyrocketed to 185. In 2021, the state recorded 201 murders, 182 in 2022, and 172 last year.
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Data from the state shows that in the four years before Walz took office, from 2015-2018, there was an average of about 113 murders recorded in the state each year, which has increased to 171 murders, according to the yearly average under Walz’s five years as governor.
Protesters throw objects into a fire outside a Target store near the Third Police Precinct on May 28, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The police precinct went up in flames late on May 28 on the third day of demonstrations over the death of George Floyd. (Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images)
Violent crime rates did spike to historic highs during Trump’s final year in the White House in 2020, which has been attributed to the widespread riots and protests that swept the nation following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day 2020.
FBI crime data reviewed by Fox News Digital shows that homicides in 2017, Trump’s first year in office, slightly dipped nationally from 15,320 in 2016 to 15,312 in 2017. The data shows violent crime again dipped in 2018, at 14,604 homicides, and again in 2019 to 14,678, before skyrocketing in 2020 amid the riots to 18,965 homicides.
A large fire burns on East Lake Street in Minneapolis during a third night of unrest following the death of George Floyd. (David Joles/Star Tribune via Getty Images)
All in, the violent crime spike of 2020 saw murders increase by nearly 30% compared to the year prior, according to FBI data. It marked the largest single-year increase in killings since the agency began tracking the crimes.
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Experts who have previously spoken to Fox News Digital pointed to an array of variables that contributed to the increases of 2020 and the years following, including: anti-police rhetoric voiced by Black Lives Matter and defund the police proponents, the pandemic, a culture of lawlessness promoted by liberal district attorneys, and the “Ferguson effect” – when police pull back during high-profile and violent crime trends.
Demonstrators protest the death of a Black man in police custody in Rochester, New York, Sept. 6, 2020. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid)
Minneapolis was the epicenter of the 2020 riots, where Floyd, a Black man, died at the hands of a White officer during a police encounter in the city. Floyd’s death was followed by social justice protests and riots across the nation, which came at a time when COVID-19 cases and government-mandated lockdown measures meant to control the pandemic upended society in unprecedented ways ahead of the 2020 election.
More than 1,500 buildings in Minneapolis alone were damaged or destroyed due to the riots, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
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Former President Trump holds his first public campaign rally with his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, at the Van Andel Arena on July 20, 2024, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)
The newly formed Harris-Walz ticket, which secured the Democratic nomination following President Biden dropping out of the race as concerns mounted surrounding his mental acuity, has focused its attention on Harris’ background as a California prosecutor when laying out its crime platform, most notably attacking Trump and his court battles.
“As a tough prosecutor, Kamala Harris dealt with men like Trump all the time: Rapists, con men, frauds, criminals – she’s used to guys like Trump, used to putting them in their place,” a narrator for a recent pro-Harris ad says.
Meanwhile, Trump has slammed left-wing led cities nationwide that didn’t do more to end the riots of 2020, and vowed to restore law and order across the nation to lower crime rates, including closing the border to illegal immigration.
“The cartels will be crushed, crime will plummet, incomes will soar, the wars will end, and the American dream will come roaring back bigger, better and stronger than ever,” Trump said at a rally last week.