President Donald Trump might have his decades wrong.
During a speech in Philadelphia on Thursday, Trump mistakenly said the city's murder rate is on the rise, when in fact, it has trended lower since an especially bloody three-year period last decade.
Addressing Republican Congressional members gathered in Philadelphia, Trump falsely claimed city slayings were on the rise as he talked of families in America's urban centers.
"Right now, too many families don’t feel secure. Just look at the 30 largest cities. In the last year alone the murder rate has increased by an estimated 14 percent," he said. "Here in Philadelphia, the murder rate has been steady – let me just – terribly increasing."
During the course of the last decade, it has done the opposite. NBC10.com could not quickly corroborate his claim about a 14-percent increase in the country's 30 largest cities, but the Brennan School for Justice at New York University issued a report in December that noted a projected increase of 14 percent. It said Chicago is responsible for nearly half of the entire increase.
The murder total in Philadelphia reached a dark milestone in 2006 when 406 people died by the hands of others -- or most often, by the guns of others.
The next year, in 2007, 391 people were murdered.
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In January 2008, newly elected Mayor Michael Nutter came into office with a new top cop by his side, Charles Ramsey, and together, the two men promised to lower murders by at least 25 percent.
They made good on their promise, though some might say it took longer than they wished. Murders, despite some slight ups-and-downs year over year, have fallen drastically since those bloody years over a decade ago.
In each of the last four years, murder totals for the city have stayed well below 300, according to the Philadelphia Police Department.
Here is the total per year, according to the department's figures:
2005: 380
2006: 406
2007: 391
2008: 331
2009: 302
2010: 306
2011: 326
2012: 331
2013: 246
2014: 248
2015: 280
2016: 277
Mayor Jim Kenney, who served as a City Councilman throughout the 2000s, called Trump's false claim an "insult to the men and women of the Philadelphia police force."
He then attacked Republicans' "obsession" with undocumented immigrants.
"Our police officers have worked tirelessly and with great personal sacrifice to get Philadelphia’s crime rate down to its lowest point in forty years, while also successfully implementing reforms to strengthen police-community relations and uphold the rights of all our residents," Kenney said. "Our homicides are, in fact, slowly declining, and while we are not satisfied with even our current numbers, we are handicapped by Republican refusal to enact any kind of common sense gun control and by their obsession with turning our police officers into ICE agents – which will prevent immigrants from coming forward to report crimes or provide critical witnesses statements that can put dangerous criminals behind bars."
