SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Former President Donald Trump during a rally in New York last week claimed 30,000 Haitian immigrants moved to Springfield, Ohio in a matter of weeks. But the real numbers are much lower than that and the immigration into the town happened over a longer period of time.
As 10TV previously reported, the city of Springfield estimates the number of Haitian immigrants to be between 12,000 to 15,000. The immigration to the city started several years ago for jobs. It ramped up as knowledge of the city spread by word of mouth, according to Governor Mike DeWine.
Trump has continued to push the notion that the influx of Haitian immigrants has created skyrocketing crime in Springfield.
10TV obtained the crimes reported to the Springfield Police Division between 2021 and 2023 through the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).
In the NIBRS database, a city or jurisdiction’s crime rate is determined through “index crimes.” Index crimes are the sum of murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft.
10TV added up the numbers from 2021-2023.
- 2021: 3,106 index crimes
- 2022: 3,446 index crimes
- 2023: 3,578 index crimes
This translates to a roughly 15% increase in index crimes over the three-year period.
Looking deeper into the numbers, violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) did not increase substantially.
- Murder & Nonnegligent Manslaughter
- 2021: 5
- 2022: 6
- 2023: 9
- Rape
- 2021: 52
- 2022: 55
- 2023: 57
- Robbery
- 2021: 134
- 2022: 138
- 2023: 134
- Aggravated Assault
- 2021: 516
- 2022: 539
- 2023: 545
The largest increases were in theft crimes such as shoplifting and motor vehicle theft.
The data sheets provided to 10TV by Springfield Police do not break crimes down by demographic, meaning it does not know who is committing the crimes.
It is difficult to compare violent crimes prior to 2021 due to the change in reporting systems from the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) to NIBRS. UCR and NIBRS classify aggravated assaults differently, resulting in higher numbers of aggravated assaults post-UCR.
However, index crimes under the UCR system in 2017 were reported as 4,383 compared to 2023’s 3,578. That results in an 18% decrease in crime over the five-year period.