OKLAHOMA CITY — Any Presidential election year is bound to be fraught with talk of exploding crime rates and claims of the necessity for stricter – even extreme – responses to spikes in violent crime.
Former President Donald Trump, in particular, has made near-constant claims throughout this election cycle of skyrocketing violent crime rates driven, in his mind, by “hundreds of thousands” of undocumented immigrants “flooding” across America’s southern border.
But do the facts back up any of those claims? Is crime actually on the rise in America? What about in Oklahoma, or even just Oklahoma City?
The data says no.
According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program – the trusted, standardized crime reporting system – nearly all crime is solidly trending down.
Let’s take a look at what the numbers say.
National numbers
The FBI’s Crime Data Explorer offers the public a clear and simplified way of visualizing crime statistics as reported directly by law enforcement agencies nationwide.
By practically every available metric, crime is down throughout the country, in many cases by double-digit percentages.
The data shows a 17% decrease in just the past year in violent crime across the entirety of the Southern region of states, in which Oklahoma is included.
Grouping cities by rough population, numbers show a decrease in all violent crime types during the same period of 16% for US cities with populations of 500,000 to 999,999 people.
Oklahoma City falls into that group with a population of roughly 700,000 in 2024.
The only visible increase in any crime type – violent or otherwise – in any region of the country from Quarter 1 of 2023 to Quarter 1 of 2024 was a 9% uptick in larceny crimes for the Northeastern states. All other crimes in every region of the US have seen decreases.
Oklahoma numbers
Zooming in more closely on Oklahoma’s stats requires looking at reports through the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) website.
Statewide reporting from between 2010 and 2024 shows numbers rising only slightly through the past 14 years, with significant bumps in 2019 and 2021 resulting from major population centers like OKC and Tulsa reporting their statistics to the system for the first times.
In Oklahoma City, person-to-person crime numbers, usually violent in nature and called “Crimes Against Persons,” have either risen only slightly or largely stagnated since 2019 (the first year of reporting under the new system,) even as the city’s population has increased by roughly 50,000 new residents during that same timeframe.
The only category in Crimes Against Persons in OKC that has shown a sharp increase in recent years is kidnapping, which increased by 36 reports between 2022 and 2023.
Changes in local reporting skew some numbers
Some recent changes in crime reporting in Oklahoma City actually obscure just how sharp the decline in violent crime has been.
Though the homicide rate for OKC appeared to stay almost exactly the same between 2022 and 2023 – with the OKCPD’s official count showing over 70 homicides for both years – a recent change in reporting methods actually inflated the 2023 numbers.
That’s because 2023 was the first year that the OKCPD had included fentanyl-related deaths in their homicide numbers.
Cases in which a person died of a fentanyl overdose in which the drugs could be traced back to the seller will now result in a homicide charge for the person who supplied the deceased with the deadly opioid.
“We had never counted those as homicides prior to this past year, so it skews the number for 2023,” MSgt. Gary Knight of the OKCPD told KOCO in January of this year.
When not accounting for the newly designated fentanyl-related homicides, the number of OKC homicides for 2023 falls into the 60s, a clear decrease from the 2022 numbers, even as the city’s population grew by roughly 8,000 people in that time.
Political claims about immigration
Former President Trump’s claims of out-of-control crime rates, then, are not supported by any official data.
Neither are his claims of illegal immigrants “flooding” into US cities or that undocumented immigrants are driving the violent crime numbers throughout the nation.
That’s especially true of Oklahoma.
According to data from the American Immigration Council (AIC), Oklahoma has seen a slight decrease in undocumented immigrants among the population since 2016.
AIC numbers estimate roughly 83,000 undocumented immigrants living in the state right now, down from roughly 85,000 estimated in 2016.
Those numbers don’t appear to correspond to any clear changes in crime rates or reporting statewide between those years.
In fact, the most volatile and oft-changing violent crime category for Oklahoma City since 2019 has been human trafficking crimes including “involuntary servitude” and “commercial sex acts.”
Those crimes are statistically much more likely to be perpetrated against undocumented immigrants than by them.
The only state in the nation for which clear data exists regarding the immigration status of felony arrestees is Texas.
According to that data, undocumented immigrants are far less likely to be arrested for felony crimes than legal immigrants or natural-born US citizens.
Rhetoric and facts don’t line up
Despite the dire rhetoric and fearful talking points across the full spectrum of political debates, mailers, television commercials, and stump speeches, there’s just no clear evidence to suggest that violent crimes are up or that immigration of any kind is fueling crime rates.
The data doesn’t back up the claims.
Brett Fieldcamp is our Arts and Entertainment Editor. He has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for 15+ years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
